MLA: reactions

The suggestions made by the MLA’s ad hoc committee are great in my opinion. As before, I have some highlights to share.

I was very impressed by the remarks on modifying the hierarchical structure that exists in most language departments; I really do believe that divisions only hinder the progress of the department as a whole. As far as the traditional model for language majors, “a two- or three-year language sequence feed[ing] into a set of core courses primarily focused on canonical literature,” goes I also agree that it “represents a narrow model” (2). Moreover, it doesn’t prepare students very well. One day they’re in a basic language course reading a 1-page story and the next they’re in a survey course reading Le rouge et le noir: total disconnect! (This is why I particularly appreciate the fact that our F250 students read a novella.)

The most appealing aspect of the text, though, was the focus on interdisciplinarity. Beginning by stating the utility of interdisciplinary courses for students who recently studied abroad (5), the committee goes on to address the other benefits of such courses:

Interdisciplinary collaborative courses could fulfill both the needs of the students and the goals of the institution’s program. Interdisciplinary courses are typically taught in English, but a credit-bearing discussion module taught in the target language can be added with the support of programs such as foreign languages across the curriculum (5).

Even more appealing are the proposed courses themselves, “Crusades in the Middle Ages; the Silk Road; literature and opera; the sonnet across four national literatures; turn-of-the-century Vienna, Paris, and London; literature and science; and interconnections between Germany and the United States” (5-6). I personally would love to teach “literature and opera” or “turn-of-the-century Vienna, Paris, and London.” Although the promised linguistic/literature courses are conspicuously absent given that

[l]inguists enrich the foreign language major through their ability to offer courses in second language acquisition, applied linguistics, dialectology, sociolinguistics, history of the language, and discourse analysis. In addition to learning the history and underlying structure of a particular language, students should be offered the opportunity to take general courses in such areas as language and cognition, language and power, bilingualism, language and identity, language and gender, language and myth, language and artificial intelligence, and language and the imagination (7).

Most importantly, though, and the committee says as much, “[t]hese courses [the more specifically linguistic ones as well as the others] appeal broadly to students who major in languages as well as to those who do not” (7).

To me, that is the central issue of this discussion. Persuading many more students to become language majors is a bit of an unrealistic goal in my opinion, but that doesn’t mean that all students, in every discipline, shouldn’t be encouraged to do something with language. I think that the kinds of courses proposed here, while they may not fit the bill for FL purists, are every bit as valid and as useful for students.