The MLA and the Study of Foreign Languages

PMLA ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 99 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G. Mead
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Modern Language Association ◽  
Easy Task ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Foreign Language Study ◽  
Language Study

In surveying the contributions of the Modern Language Association of America to the teaching and study of foreign languages in our country, especially during the last three decades, I hope to recapture the mood and spirit of past events and to pay tribute to those colleagues who took leading parts in them. This is not an easy task, but it is a welcome and a challenging one. Many of these colleagues are deceased, others are retired, and few if any of us during those intensely active years, I suspect, gave much thought to the task of gathering materials and memories for a chronicle of the MLA's role in the development of foreign language study. But it was an inspired and inspiring time—one happier than the present for education in our country—and I am grateful for the opportunity to set down a brief, personal, and inevitably incomplete memoir.

The College Teacher of English and Foreign Language Study

PMLA ◽  
1954 ◽  
Vol 69 (4-Part2) ◽  
pp. 22-25
Author(s):  
J.H.F.
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
English Language ◽  
College Graduates ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Modern Language Association ◽  
Standing Committee ◽  
Language Program ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
College Teacher ◽  
Foreign Language Study

Since its organization fifteen years ago, the Commission on Trends in Education, a standing committee of the Modern Language Association of America, has been concerned about the increasingly unfortunate consequences of the monolingualism of most American college graduates. Mastery of the English language and of English or American literary studies must remain forever provincial to those lacking a knowledge of foreign languages, and it is surely important, in peace as in war, to be able to communicate directly with other peoples. The Commission on Trends in Education is therefore enthusiastically supporting the Foreign Language Program of the Modern Language Association in its study of our linguistic inadequacies and its attempt to remedy them.

MLA Foreign Language Proficiency Tests for Teachers and Advanced Students

PMLA ◽  
1962 ◽  
Vol 77 (4-Part2) ◽  
pp. 31-42
Author(s):  
Wilmarth H. Starr
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
American Association ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Foreign Language Teaching ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Modern Language Association ◽  
Language Program ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
South Central

I. Brief History of the Project: Since 1952, the Foreign Language Program of the Modern Language Association of America, responding to the national urgency with regard to foreign languages, has been engaged in a vigorous campaign aimed in large part at improving foreign-language teaching in our country.In 1955, as one of its activities, the Steering Committee of the Foreign Language Program formulated the “Qualifications for Secondary School Teachers of Modern Foreign Languages,” a statement which was subsequently endorsed for publication by the MLA Executive Council, by the Modern Language Committee of the Secondary Education Board, by the Committee on the Language Program of the American Council of Learned Societies, and by the executive boards or councils of the following national and regional organizations: National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations, American Association of Teachers of French, American Association of Teachers of German, American Association of Teachers of Italian, American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages, Central States Modern Language Teachers Association, Middle States Association of Modern Language Teachers, New England Modern Language Association, Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Northwest Conference on Foreign Language Teaching, Philological Association of the Pacific Coast, Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, and South-Central Modern Language Association.

scholarly journals Transdisciplinarity across two-tiers

AILA Review ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Chantelle Warner
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Modern Language Association ◽  
Affective Labor ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Language Pedagogy ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
Status Differences

Abstract In the ten years since the Modern Language Association published their report, “Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World” (2007) dissatisfaction with the “two-tiered configuration” of US foreign language departments has become increasingly vocal. While the target of the criticism is often the curriculum, it has often been noted that programmatic bifurcations mirror institutional hierarchies, e.g. status differences between specialists in literary and cultural studies and experts in applied linguistics and language pedagogy (e.g. Maxim et al., 2013; Allen & Maxim, 2012). This chapter looks at the two-tiered structure of collegiate modern language departments from the perspectives of the transdisciplinary shape-shifters who maneuver within them – scholars working between applied linguistics and literary studies. These individuals must negotiate the methodologies and the institutional positions available to them – in many instances, the latter is what has prompted them to work between fields in the first place. The particular context of US foreign language and literature departments serves as a case study of the lived experiences of doing transdisciplinary work in contexts that are characterized by disciplinary hierarchies and the chapter ends with a call for applied linguistics to consider not only the epistemic, but also the institutional and affective labor needed to sustain transdisciplinary work.

The Foreign Language Program in 1964

PMLA ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-32
Author(s):  
Donald D. Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Modern Language Association ◽  
National Defense ◽  
Language Program ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
National Defense Education Act ◽  
Title Vi ◽  
Education Act

Our major activities this year, as in each of the past five years, have been undertaken either with foundation support or through contracts with the United States Office of Education under the National Defense Education Act. In February John Harmon became Director of the Materials Center, changing places with Glen Willbern, who became Director of Research. Under Mr. Willbern's direction and through a government contract we have just completed a survey of modern-foreign-language enrollments in junior and senior colleges as of the fall of 1963. We are currently negotiating several contracts through Title VI of the National Defense Education Act. The first is to gather statistics on offerings and enrollments in all foreign languages in public and non-public secondary schools. The second is to make a survey of current college enrollments in all foreign languages. Since gathering statistics on the classical languages is not a justifiable expenditure of national defense funds, the Modern Language Association will pay out of its own funds the proportion of the total cost needed to gather the facts on Latin and Greek in schools and colleges.

Languages and the National Interest

PMLA ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-29
Author(s):  
Franklin D. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
National Interest ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
National History ◽  
Foreign Language Study ◽  
Language Study

Probably never in our national history has there been such a positive interest in the study of foreign languages. I use the word positive deliberately, for I am sure all of us can identify points of negative interest in this matter, even in our recent past, to the extent that, in some quarters, the disappearance of foreign language study in this country was actually considered inevitable and desirable.

Philosophia Regina

PMLA ◽  
1958 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Whitney J. Oates
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Modern Language Association ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Bear Market ◽  
Classical Philology ◽  
Foreign Language Requirement ◽  
Language Requirement ◽  
The Many ◽  
American Philological Association

Mr. Chairman, President Fred, President Starck, ladies and gentlemen of the Modern Language Association: I suppose on this occasion, as a member of the American Philological Association, I should be tempted to reflect upon the event in the year of the great schism, 1883, when forty youthful modern linguists, smarting under the tyranny of classical philology, struck their historic blow for freedom, and formed the Modern Language Association. Suffice it to say that after years of rivalry, we have all come to the realization that we are allies in a common cause, not only within the conventional humanities but also with our colleagues in the other areas of learning. No doubt the sense of kinship between classicists and scholars in the modern foreign languages has been enhanced by the experience of adversity. Certainly a classicist has had to learn to live with, and ultimately profit from, a perpetual “bear” market. But, happily, in recent years, the whole strategy of fighting defensive rear-guard actions has been abandoned, and a new spirit of confidence has appeared. A case in point is William R. Parker's excellent piece entitled “Why a Foreign Language Requirement?” There are also the many classicists who have sworn a mighty oath never again to utter a word of apology for the classics, but rather to start from the assumption that any intelligent and sensible man knows how important they are.

scholarly journals Teaching English As A Foreign Language To Students With Learning Disabilities

2021 ◽  
Vol 03 (04) ◽  
pp. 385-388
Author(s):  
Razzakova Gulchekhra Rustamovna ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Learning Disabilities ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Foreign Language Instruction ◽  
Students With Learning Disabilities ◽  
School Students ◽  
Foreign Language Study ◽  
Language Study

Foreign language study is an increasingly prominent part of education everywhere. Not only are high school students nearly always required to study a foreign language, but many lower and middle schools have added foreign languages to their curricula, whether as enrichment or a requirement. While it has long been recognized in the learning disabilities field that foreign language study would be a terrific challenge to learning disabled students, somehow this fact has been widely ignored in the field of foreign language instruction and in schools in general until very recently. The following article looks into the ways to teach foreign languages to students with learning disabilities.

The Language Of Revolution

PMLA ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-18
Author(s):  
Frank Mankiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Peace Corps ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Modern Language Association ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Narrow Definition ◽  
Definition Of

For a Peace Corps official to speak to the leading organization of teachers of foreign languages is somewhat analogous to a speech by Secretary McNamara to the assembled space manufacturers. We are certainly, at this point, the largest users of your product—if we correctly understand each other that your product is the modern man (or woman to be sure) trained in the use of a language other than his own. I realize that this is a narrow definition of the work you do, but I hope that in the time allotted to me I will be able to satisfy you that we in the Peace Corps, as you in the Foreign Language Section of the Modern Language Association, share a broader concern for the uses—past, present, and future—of language.

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