"Cultivons notre jardin": Strategies for Building the Foreign Language and Literature Program

Abstract

THE reinstatement and/or strengthening of the for eign language component of the undergraduate cur riculum offers an exciting challenge to foreign lan guage faculty.1 Awareness of the findings of the President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Study, as well as growing concern over students' literacy levels, may encourage building a program in language and literature or even restoring a foreign language requirement in many institu tions. While administrators, colleagues, and perhaps students and their parents will all be involved in deliberating these issues, we, as the faculty, bear a special responsibility for leadership. Our leadership will benefit from our preparedness to meet the questions and concerns of these con stituencies. Clearly each institution has its own needs, and each foreign language department will develop its own method of reassessing the role of foreign language and literature study. The strategies suggested below are designed to support the process of strengthening the foreign language program, whether or not language requirements are at issue. The process includes gathering information, es tablishing a rationale, clarifying needs, developing resources, and sometimes changing institutional pol icy. The order of the suggestions below does not suggest a fixed modus operandi. In some situa tions, for instance where there are only two foreign language teachers, securing outside help in the form of a consultant might precede collection of relevant data on foreign language study in the college. In other circumstances, when student enrollment and faculty staffing patterns permit, a department chair man might offer a faculty team released time to develop the statistics, bibliography, and other rele vant data needed to support the reassessment pro cess. Where nearby institutions have particularly successful foreign language programs, a college con sidering reinstatement of foreign language require ments might regard visits to these departments as a sensible first step in reassessment. Each department should develop its own plan. The logic of steps within this plan will, of course, be determined by internal departmental and institutional factors.