Literature Analysis Is Not the End of Language Study

The recent Report from the MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages on the state of foreign language education in the US begins like this, (emphasis mine):

The United States’ inability to communicate with or comprehend other parts of the world became a prominent subject for journalists, as language failures of all kinds plagued the United States’ military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq and its efforts to suppress terrorism. Initiatives in critical languages began multiplying in educational institutions all over the United States… Legislative proposals to address the deficit in language and international expertise began appearing in Congress.

Not surprisingly, “the need to understand other cultures and languages” was identified by Daniel Yankelovich as one of five imperative needs to which higher education must respond in the next ten years if it is to remain relevant. “Our whole culture,” Yankelovich says, “must become less ethnocentric, less patronizing, less ignorant of others, less Manichaean in judging other cultures, and more at home with the rest of the world.Higher education can do a lot to meet that important challenge.” In May 2005 Senator Daniel Akaka made a similar point: “Americans need to be open to the world; we need to be able to see the world through the eyes of others if we are going to understand how to resolve the complex problems we face.” In the current geopolitical moment, these statements are no longer clichés.

Right on! Absolutely! I’ve been saying that for years, as, I suspect, have most of the other people who will ever see this report. However, more than simply preaching to the choir, the report had some very interesting things to say about how current foreign language programs are failing to produce students who accomplish these goals. Part of the problem, of course, is that not enough students actually learn foreign languages, but in the excerpt below, the MLA report makes a point about why programs may be both failing to attract students, and failing to turn the students they do have into truly competent cross-cultural language users; namely, these programs focus too much on literature study: