The Cornell Language Program

Abstract

Most readers of HISPANIA are aware, through one or another published report or through professional gossip, that Cornell University has had under way since October 1946 a large-scale, long-term program of experimental instruction in modern foreign languages. During the first year of the program's existence, an article on its establishment and main features was published in this journal by Professor J M. Cowan, Director of the Cornell Division of Modern Languages.' I do not therefore feel it necessary to go into detail as regards the administrative set-up. By way of introduction I will restate briefly the assumptions and principles on which the plan is based; I will then discuss the program at the operational level, and will end by attempting some conclusions about its implications for the general language-teaching situation in this country. The underlying assumptions of the plan are, in brief, the following: (1) present-day American society needs speakers, as well as readers, of foreign language among its educated members; (2) most college students of a foreign language want fully as much to learn to speak the language as to learn to read it; (3) if they are going to speak the language, they must be specifically taught to speak it, and specific instruction in speaking means imparting to them a set of speech habits which they can acquire only through intensive and constant practice of a mechanical nature, through imitation and repetition; (4) 'if they are also going to read the language, they will become more efficient and more appreciative