By Linda Prendez, On-line Forty-Niner
April 21, 1997
A team of educators at Cal State Long Beach is seeking to revolutionize the face of foreign language education, by extending its boundaries to other disciplines, and possibly giving students credit for proficiency in their home language.
CSULB is one of 16 universities nationwide, selected to participate in the Language Mission Project.
The project, co-sponsored by the American Association of Colleges and Universities and The National Foreign Language Center at John Hopkins University, is an attempt to find new and sufficient means to accommodate the growing need for professional foreign language skills.
"We were very pleased and honored to be chosen for this project," said CSULB team leader Dorothy Abrahamse, dean of the College of Liberal Arts.
Language professor Claire Martin said that CSULB attracted a lot of interest because of "its urban, commuter, multiethnic nature."
"We signify what California is all about," Martin said.
The aforementioned characteristics are definitely prevalent throughout California, yet Long Beach was the only California campus selected to participate in the Language Mission Project.
According to Martin, who is also part of the Language Mission team, CSULB's proposal stood out among the 114 university proposals submitted.
"Our team was composed of administrators and faculty from across the disciplines. We sent a powerful message that [CSULB] as a whole was behind foreign language instruction," Martin said.
One part of CSULB's proposal that exemplifies the dissemination of foreign language instruction throughout other disciplines is the "Applied Mission."
According to Abrahamse, traditional upper-division foreign language classes studied literature.
The "Applied Mission" ventures to create course work that transcends this trend. The mission includes developing foreign language courses that apply to specific areas of professional study.
"Today, students who are trained in specific fields must demonstrate proficient ability in different foreign languages to communicate with their patients, clients and other colleagues," Martin said.
Martin said that the need for foreign language proficiency is great, especially in the world of business.
CSULB already offers a joint program in engineering and German, through which students work an internship in Germany after five years of studying business and professional German language.
"Globalization of the marketplace and the increased expansion of communications is forcing corporations to learn how to work within other cultures," Martin said. "Knowledge of a foreign language is part of being fluent in another culture beacuase language is a cultural act."
Many students entering CSULB have skilled communication abilities in what Martin calls their "heritage language." The "Heritage Mission" of the project will endeavor to tap into the existing foriegn language resources of entering students.
"We want to develop a survey that will evaluate the foriegn language
abilities of these students," said Abrahamse. "If they are proficent
enough, we can give them credit for [their second language]."