adventures of a psychopathic magnet

The Saga Continues

An exchange between the head of the foreign language department and myself.

Dear Ms. Bollard,

I am just finishing my first semester in a foreign language class here on the Auraria campus and would like to express some concerns about the German department here at UCD.

I came to the German department not because of requirements for a major, as many of my class mates did, but because I want to learn German. I want to be able to converse without stopping every few minutes to think of a word, process what someone is saying to me or asking them to repeat themselves. Now, when we are almost at the end of the semester, I can truthfully say that I am no closer to accomplishing this goal than I was at the beginning of the semester. If anything, I am farther.

At the beginning of the semester I was accustom to hearing German spoken. I had just returned from a year in Austria and all my past German teachers spoke English only as a last resort. I remembered my high school Spanish teachers warning us about college language professors; how they only spoke in the target language, we would be forced to converse in that language, and if we didn’t work we would have no hope of passing. After all this, my intermediate German class seems like a joke. You can imagine my surprise when my professor not only conducted the class almost exclusively in English, but I wasn’t asked to say anything in German until the tenth week of school. We are given lots of work sheets to help with our grammar, but they all include the answers either right next to the question or at the bottom of the page and are never collected.

At first I thought maybe my high school teachers were wrong. Maybe this is the way college classes are taught, or maybe they were just trying to scare us into doing some actual work. I set up a meeting with my advisor to discuss dropping the class after the drop deadline. When she asked why I wanted to drop the class, I explained that all we did was learn grammar, large portions of it English grammar. She looked puzzled. I explained that we often spent entire class periods learning English grammar in English. I went on to tell her that at the beginning of October, I was yet to say anything in German for the class. She looked shocked. But there wasn’t much she could do. She handed me a withdrawal form, told me that this late in the semester, it would be better just to stick it out and tried to cheer me up by saying there was always next semester.

Looking through the course catalog, next semester doesn’t look very promising either. Most of the classes resemble the one I am in.

On an average day my professor speaks in English for about 95% of the class. That means the only time he speaks German is to read a few sentences and to tell us to have a nice day. I see no reason for that. How are students expected to learn a language if they never hear or speak it?

The University of Hawaii recently did a study on learning a second language through what they refer to as a modern immersion technique.
“Learning a language takes times and the more time students are exposed to comprehensible input in the language they are learning the better they will do. Modern immersion approaches to teaching second languages maximize the time students get to practice the language they are learning without being slowed down by having to translate what they hear and speak. The central characteristic of immersion is the teaching of language, content, and culture in combination without the use of the students' first language. Students are taught a second language they initially don't understand through the use of a variety of context clues provided by the teacher, including gestures, visual aides, and objects.”
Through this method grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and comprehension are all taught through practical use. When children first learn their native language they do not learn it through a professor drawing out grammatical formulas in a language other then the one they are learning. They learn by hearing, reading, writing and speaking. So why don’t we? What is the point of knowing a formula to construct a grammatically perfect sentence when you lack the vocabulary to fill it in and the comprehension to understand it when it is spoken or read?

For sometime I thought I was the only one in my class frustrated with the lack of German in a German class. Then I spoke with several of my classmates about our German course and what they thought of it. I found that while they weren’t as angry and frustrated as I was, they weren’t stimulated by the class. They were there for the credit and if luck would have it, maybe learn a few key phrases. They knew that if they got off a plane in Germany, Austria or Switzerland that they wouldn’t be able to converse with the locals. They knew that all the grammar in the world wouldn’t help you find the train station and that in a year or so they probably wouldn’t remember anything taught in the class. Most were afraid to speak German. Since we never speak it in class, we don’t get the opportunity to have our mistakes corrected in a learning environment. They said that they would probably say a greeting of some sort, then ask whoever they were talking to if they spoke English. Most said that they wish the university offered a conversational German course, or at least concentrated more on becoming comfortable in understanding and speaking in the existing German courses. Somewhere they could become comfortable speaking in a new language and where they could see how these grammar rules applied and verbs with almost the same meaning varied in context.

While grammar is an important part of a learning a language, it is not the only part. By teaching our German class in German, I think students would learn more practical, common side of the language without losing any of the grammar and structure. “An advantage of a natural environment or language immersion classroom, in which tasks and conversations center on real language use and the learning of needed terms and concepts is that teachers are less inclined to "dumb down" their talk and speak "teacher-ese" or "foreigner-talk." The richer the stimulus and the more real the language, the better chance learners of a second language have to become fluent speakers of that language” (O'Grady, 301).

I realize, that because of budget restrictions, it isn’t possible to offer a wide range of German classes. But I can’t imagine that teaching a language class in the target language would put a strain on the departments budget. I know that classes aren’t always full and many students take the class purely to fulfill degree requirements, but that shouldn’t mean that we can’t be exposed to, and learn, a second language while fulfilling these requirements. After all, isn’t that what the requirements hope to accomplish?

As I was leaving my advisor’s office that day, she told me that I should contact you about my concerns. I took her advise. I stayed in the course and called your office on several occasions. None of my calls were returned. So I decided to try once more to bring these issues to your attention before seeking alternatives to the UCD Modern Language department.

Sincerely,
Lauren Guthridge

Her response:

Dear Ms. Guthridge:

I'm sorry you have not been able to reach me.  We have had a temporary program assistant this semester, and if you left messages, perhaps they fell through the cracks.  I am on campus virtually all day, every day, but since I teach and also attend numerous meetings, I am not always in my office. In fact, I was out of town to present a paper at a conference two weeks ago; if you left a message then, and I lost it, I apologize.

At any rate, I would be happy to meet with you to discuss your concerns.  I am certainly aware of current second-language acquisition theory, and I agree that in many cases a communicative approach is a good idea, although Spanish and German offer somewhat different challenges.  In your letter you mention conversations with high school instructors, with classmates, and with a university advisor, but you don't mention a conversation with your instructor.  I think you will find that for university courses, it is always best to speak with the instructor first when you are concerned about a course.  Professor Phillips has chosen to teach German 2110 in English for very specific reasons, and I'm sure he would be happy to discuss them with you.

Please feel free to respond to this e-mail, or to try calling me again.  As I said, I would be happy to meet with you, and I am sure that Professor Phillips would be willing to meet with us, too.

With best wishes,
Kathleen Bollard, Ph.D.

What I am getting from this, is that she is fully aware of what is happening and has no plans to change anything. And for the record, I have talked to my german professor about this, he laughed.
Well next in the chain of command would be the dean. But they way things are looking, that probably won't do a whole hell of a lot of good.

posted by lulu @ 2:50 PM