A Radically Different Approach to Foreign-Language Instruction

“For too many years, we have maintained a language-learning strategy that simply does not work,” say David Young and J.B. Buxton in this Education Week article. “[We] seek to teach language to 100 percent of the students with a success rate of 1 percent.” Why the dismal results? Because there’s too much emphasis on grammar and translation and not nearly enough on learning to speak the language, say Young and Buxton: “If graduates of our high schools regularly reflected that, after four years of mathematics, they couldn’t solve for an unknown variable, we would be outraged. But we share a laugh when someone says, ‘I took four years of a language, but I can’t really speak it.’”

Of course there’s more to taking a course in Spanish or French or Mandarin than oral proficiency – there’s cultural awareness and sensitivity, global knowledge, and exposure to a new language. But because the typical instructional platform rarely has enough intensity or time, these courses don’t deliver oral proficiency or cultural knowledge. 

So what is to be done? Young and Buxton believe it is possible to have it both ways if we redeploy the existing world-languages teaching positions, curriculum, and support resources to prepare students for the world in which they live – while satisfying  the demands of states, businesses, and parents:

• Narrow oral proficiency goals to practical, relevant, real-life language skills, teaching a subset of the current curriculum in greater depth.

• Teach the other material in a way that helps students understand a country’s cultural identity and compare it to other countries.

• Teach global knowledge by comparing and contrasting countries that speak the target language. 

“To be clear,” say Young and Buxton, “students will not leave these classes with advanced language proficiency. What they will obtain, however, are the language skills needed to travel in countries that speak the language, an understanding of other countries and cultures, and an awareness of the global issues that impact both those countries and our own.”

What about the 10 percent of students who want a higher level of oral proficiency? Dual-language instruction is best for them, say the authors. These classes make the target language the vehicle of instruction in all subjects, and studies have shown that students master it at a much high level. A 50/50 split of English and the target language is best for ELL students, a 10/90 split is best for native English speakers.

“Language Education We Can Use” by David Young and J.B. Buxton in Education Week, Jan. 9, 2013 (Vol. 32, #15, p. 28), http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/09/15buxton.h32.html 

From the Marshall Memo #468