Memphis State University

I offer this note as an entry in the ongoing dialogue¹⁰⁵ on recent SLA research findings and their implications for our profession and our Association. Some rather profound changes have been called for in this dialogue, but the one which would seem to be most indicated is precisely that one which nobody seems to want to talk about. I refer, of course, to the matter of FL requirements and how their existence would seem to be totally inconsistent with what the researchers are telling us.

I wonder how many have shared the following experience with me? As I read the current writers on SLA, I have one reaction over and over again, namely, that at every turn I find the scientific method seems to be confirming the convictions I had arrived at intuitively years ago. To illustrate: What instructor in our system has not been long ago convinced that repeated correction of student errors seems to be a largely futile effort where the great majority of students is concerned? Who has not been exasperated by the fact that students can indeed do «set up» drills beautifully only to evidence pitifully little real communicative competence when the structure of the drill is removed? Who doesn't know deep down that grammar mastery on the one hand is somehow at least partly distinct from real-situation proficiency on the other? How could anyone have failed to know that when students talk about themselves and things they think are important, they show much more life than when forced to talk about Juan and María and their faraway problems in a faraway culture?

Such observations as these, which now turn out to inform virtually every tenet of the recent methodologists, have long been the stuff of faculty meetings and coffee breaks among FL teachers, have they not? The recent theorists have simply made it respectable to express such things openly and to wonder without feeling like apostates about the effectiveness of what we have been working so hard at for so long. At last it has become not only respectable but even fashionable to say that where our great mass of students is concerned, honest-to-goodness FL acquisition has always been embarrassingly rare.

And there is one other thing we have always known and not talked much about. The theorists themselves don't even make much of this point. It is that there have always been out there among our masses of unmotivated and undistinguished FL students those precious few who did acquire proficiency (perhaps many of us in the Association are among them), no matter how they were taught. These have made their accomplishment in the dullest of supermonitored grammar-translation classes, under the tight control of the straightest-backed marinets of the audiolingual years, and even in the classrooms of not a few instructors who neither knew nor applied any definable theory at all. Indeed total honesty requires us to recognize that many students have acquired FLs in spite of their textbooks and teachers.

So, a high degree of failure in spite of excellent instruction on the one hand and success   —156→   by a few in spite of the odds against them on the other -these are facts which at last it is becoming permissible among us to speak of. But never too much! As with Don Quijote after the adventure of the batanes, we must not laugh at ourselves too hard, apparently. And, among FL teachers, the extension of doubt to the point of questioning the efficacy of general FL requirements is that guffaw which would get -as it did for Sancho- powerful whacks across the back of the doubter. The subject of FL requirements is within our profession nothing short of a genuine taboo.

Yet recent research and its implications would seem not to permit us to ignore the matter of requirements any longer. If at an earlier time one would have found himself alone on a limb of personal persuasion in doubting the value of FL requirements, research findings now offer that skeptic solid support for a stance calling for options to FL skills requirements. Have all of us not found ourselves thinking again and again as we read those who advocate a Natural, Communication/Proficiency-oriented approach, «Fine, that's quite right, I agree fully, and I could and would do just what you suggest if my students would play the game with me»?

Virtually everything about current thinking tells us that the high level of affective input prerequisite to real FL acquisition exists only in the intrinsically motivated learner. And, by definition, intrinsic motivation cannot be compelled. One can realistically require a student to recognize and name the instruments of the orchestra, as a matter of general education, but by no means can one require a student to «sound good» on the cello. The learner must want to do that, and, sadly, success is not guaranteed even then. Don't we know intuitively, and doesn't research now confirm for us, that something analogous applies to FLs? And if we do know this, doesn't virtually everything else we do in our insistent effort to impart FL skills to the unwilling take on a disturbing irreality? Are the current writers on SLA not telling us this between the lines of virtually everything they say?

But always between the lines! The reader of the «Hispania Dialogue» will find contributors skirting deftly around the obvious. Even when they do get into the subject of motivation, which to judge by the bibliography cited by VanPatten (215-16) is quite extensive, none will make the call for a fundamental readjustment of our assumptions concerning what percentage of students can realistically be expected to gain FL proficiency in a system of fairly general FL requirements. Let us consider briefly just how close some have come without violating the taboo.

Elaine K. Horwitz cites positive student attitudes and motivation as a primary prerequisite of SLA¹⁰⁶, and Bill VanPatten gives as his Research Finding Number 7 that «improvement in linguistic accuracy and overall proficiency is more a result of motivation and other affective components in the learner than of other factors» (211). Then, quoting Dulay, Burt, and Krashen, VanPatten adds that «research now suggests that attitudinal and motivational factors have more to do with the successful attainment of communicative skills ... then metalinguistic awareness does» (211). Further, with specific reference to that set of realities which molds the mentality of Americans toward FLs, VanPatten puts his finger on one more of those things we already knew: «Indeed one can question whether there is any motivation at all for most learners to acquire (not learn) much of the FL they are exposed to [because] most ... have not chosen to study another language out of interest [and indeed] many of them do not consider language learning a particularly valuable or enjoyable experience and are often resentful. [It is] a skill they don't want and never intend to use» (212).

Yet these and other observations which would seem to be the preamble to a call for reexamination of FL requirements lead VanPatten only to admonish us in the most orthodox and benign manner to redouble our efforts to «create motivation where there might [might!] otherwise be none» (212).

Another writer, Ruth L. Bennett (176) admits that «we need an endless number of activities to keep students interested», and this explains why at FL teachers' meetings «the session on motivational techniques is always the most crowded one». But Bennett, too, stops short of violating the taboo by suggesting that it just might be the FL requirement itself which explains all this foot-dragging in our classrooms.

Renate A. Schutz (187-93), comes somewhat closer to the unutterable when she allows that attainment of significant FL skills in our particular country and system is probably not a realistic goal on any broad scale. She   —157→   suggests opening up options as to the particular skill a student might prefer to develop but stops short of calling for an opting out of FL skills altogether. Even Schulz's on-the-mark observation that FL skills requirements are akin to some (non-existing) requirement of artistic or musical proficiency does not embolden her to take the next logical step and advocate the creation of a «language appreciation» option for general education purposes.

These examples should serve to illustrate the all-powerful nature of the taboo I am speaking of. Yet we all know that intrinsic motivation is the sine qua non of meaningful FL acquisition. Not until that fact is brought out of the closet and some distinction made between the want-to's and the don't-want-to's will we ever be able to do with satisfaction what we are trying so hard to do. But of course this lower -division instructional role of our profession is tightly tied up with our research role, and we are acutely aware of this fact. We wonder with reason whether governing boards would continue to support research in Hispanic studies at present levels should that huge cushion of elementary and intermediate enrollments upon which we rest ever diminish significantly.

And diminish significantly it well might without the kind of requirements we now typically find in force. How much diminution there would be is difficult to predict, but certain data are to my mind revealing. Current enrollment figures in my state reveal that only about 5% of high school students who enroll in Spanish I elect to take Spanish III, and just over one and one-half percent go on to Spanish IV. The same report also shows that newly announced requirements including two years of FL for admission to Tennessee state universities (in 1989) have effected a 100% increase in Spanish I enrollment from 1982-1983 to 1985-1986¹⁰⁷.

Surely these data say a great deal about not only how unmotivated youngsters are to take Spanish in the first place, but also about how the experience fails to create motivation to continue beyond the bare requirement. At the college level, my own in formal observation of retention rates beyond the required four semesters would suggest a similar student motivational profile, and I doubt the picture varies a great deal nationally.

A recent study of students in Japanese courses at three state-supported universities provides insight into the question of FL motivation and requirements and, surprisingly, is revealing with reference to Spanish. (Presumably because enrollment in Japanese has no way to go but up, the topic of requirements seems not to be a taboo in our sister association the ATJ.) Hiroko C. Kataoka¹⁰⁸ arrives in this study at the following conclusions, which I will comment upon briefly:

First, there is «no indication that compulsory foreign language requirements had increased enrollments in Japanese [but, rather, that] other reasons had attracted students ... rather than rules passed down to the students by the administration» (188). In fact, of fourteen reasons cited, only 3.5% indicated the FL requirement as their main reason for taking Japanese (188). When all data were analyzed it was seen that «nearly half of the students who were studying Japanese did so on a completely volunteer basis» (189), and the most frequently cited specific motive of the Japanese students was «enjoyment», followed by «career concerns», and «interest in Japanese culture» (195).

Could it not be that the Spanish analogues of the students who gave these responses for Japanese constitute that precious group mentioned above, that is, our students who have left us in possession of real Spanish proficiency -or at least well on the way thereto? Shouldn't these motivated few become our Association's primary concern, rather than those unmotivated many who actually impede our ultimate success? Wouldn't our efforts be better expended upon a search for ways to identify and cultivate these precious few instead of rigidly forcing them always to be saddled with that mass of unmotivated classmates who are an embarrassment to their progress?

Kataoka's conclusion (which has important «back-door» implications for us in Spanish) is that ATJ members who support increased FL requirements with the expectation that these would bring more students into Japanese might just as well desist from their position: «There are indications ... that greater foreign language requirements would send students to other foreign languages, especially those perceived as easier to learn than Japanese» (190). Need we guess which FL would be the major «beneficiary» of this flight to «easier» languages? Unless we are willing to take (continue?) a fairly cynical stand that bigger is   —158→   always more secure and therefore better, the presence of a FL requirement may even be seen as a detriment to quality of product, causing as it does high numbers but predominantly low motivation -or worse, to repeat VanPatten's term, resentment. For too long in Spanish we have been willing, in the words of the proverb, to confundir la hinchazón con la gordura. So who will take the lead in the reexamination of FL requirements? Educators outside FLs are too distant from the facts to be aware of the extent of the problem -and besides, it is not good form for one discipline to set upon other. Students are powerless. All their resistance to FL requirements over the years has come to nought. (Institutions which dropped requirements more or less thoughtlessly after the sixties have now generally reinstated them with similar lack of rationale as evidence of their commitment to «standards».)

The initiative, it would seem, must come from us in the FL field, precisely where the subject is most sensitive. Yet just as the rank and file of the Order of Firemen cannot be expected to be enthusiastic over a recommendation that the number of firehouses be reduced, so also those FL professionals in their early or mid-careers will doubtlessly urge rationales against any movement suggesting an improved but ultimately reduced profession. The task would therefore seem to fall to the most mature, the most secure, and the most convinced, regardless of personal considerations. Now is quite simply the time to look first to the long-term improvement of FL education in this country, rather than to narrower individual concerns. The claims made for FL requirements have simply not been supported by the product, research suggests strongly that they never will be, and some other approach just has to be found.

Whatever the particulars of the new mentality toward requirements, there should be two guiding purposes: (1) to educate all students in the important areas of world culture and the phenomenon of human language, and (2) to produce from among the willing and able a cadre of FL-proficient citizens equal to the need.

The first of these interests would be furthered greatly by our adopting a position urging the creation of appropriate educational options to the present FL skills courses. Obvious possibilities in this respect are courses in cultural geography, area studies, linguistics, and literature in English translation. The second aim, FL proficiency, should be immensely favored by the removal of the disinterested students from our classrooms. No longer would standards have to be affected by that nagging concern over those who never really wanted to bet here in the first place. We should also, I think, put teeth into our practiced stand against cultural insularity by encouraging our students to add the dimension of one of the lesser taught languages to their preparation.

But perhaps most important of all, FL faculties should work harder to establish FL education) as a worthy member among college and university disciplines. The practice of appointing our FL educators as a kind of willy-nilly appendage to the prior interests of research in literature and culture must be discontinued if FL teaching is ever to be esteemed on our campuses. In this connection also, we must work concertedly toward the modification of tenure and promotion criteria so as to provide incentives for faculty to devote their time and enthusiasm to the improvement of FL education, both in our own departments and in the school systems of our respective communities.

Bennett, Ruth L. «How Much Theory, How Much Practice?» Hispania 69.1 (1986): 176.

Horwitz, Elaine K. «Some Language Acquisition Principles and Their Implications for Second Language Teaching». Hispania 69.3 (1986): 684-89.

Kataoka, Hiroko C. «A Pilot Study of Japanese Language Students at Three State Universities in the United States: Implications for Japanese Language Teaching Policy». Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese 20.2 (1986): 179-208.

Sackett, Theodore A., ed. «Hispania Dialogue on the Present "State of the Art" of the Teaching of Spanish and Portuguese»: Hispania 69.1 (1986): 176-229.

Schultz, Renate A., «From Achievement to Proficiency through Classroom Instruction: Some Caveats». Hispania 69.1 (1986): 187-93.

Tennessee State Department of Education. «A Report of Enrollments in High School Courses Included in the State Board of Regents 1989 Admissions Standards». January 1987.

VanPatten, Bill. «Second Language Acquisition Research and the Learning/Teaching of Spanish: Some Research Findings and Implications». Hispania 69.1 (1986): 202-16.

Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 71, Number 1, March 1988