ADFL Projects

The MLA's Articulation Initiative:
High School to College in Foreign Language Programs

Introduction

In an effort to make foreign language education more effective in the nation's schools and colleges, the Modern Language Association is sponsoring eight two-year projects, around the country, whose goal is to strengthen the transition between secondary and postsecondary foreign language programs. Project teams of teachers and administrators from high schools and colleges in Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Illinois, North Carolina, and Oregon are being mentored by foreign language educators experienced in building coherent programs across educational levels and institutions. The MLA's initiative is cosponsored by the Coalition of Foreign Language Organizations, a coalition of twenty foreign language membership associations and service organizations.

The MLA's articulation initiative is based on the conviction that strong language programs require coordinated efforts across institutional levels: time and accomplishments are wasted if college language programs do not begin where high school programs have left off, and high school language programs work best when they acknowledge the challenges that upper levels will bring.

Representatives of the eight two-year projects met in San Diego, CA, 29-31 January 1999 to report on their first year at work building consortial links, sponsoring workshops on Standards, gathering data on student attitudes and proficiencies, and laying the groundwork for new assessment practices. Participants were struck by the variety of approaches developed by the high school-college collaboratives in their efforts to reach similar goals. Teams reported individually, and then divided to discuss placement, institutional, and curricular issues. In a final session devoted to measuring and documenting the success of articulation efforts, team members underscored the importance of building understanding and support for extended, articulated sequences among local business, parent, and government groups. Three themes sum up the conclusions drawn at concluding session: Trust, not Turf; All Articulation is Local; and Content from the Beginning - Language to the End. Project representatives seemed to agree that they were returning to their home institutions with renewed energy and ready for a second year of hard work.

The meeting was the second sponsored by the articulation initiative. At the first meeting, leaders from the eight new projects joined representatives of the Coalition of Foreign Language Organizations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 6-8 February 1998, for a conference inaugurating the MLA's two-year initiative. Participants at the Albuquerque conference representing high schools, community colleges, and four-year colleges and universities already involved in articulation projects were asked to write one-page papers, which were distributed to the eighty invited attendees before the conference, to introduce issues and positions that would be discussed in Albuquerque.

The fourteen "one-pagers"--like the discussions for which they set the stage-were at times entirely practical, at times largely theoretical. We offer them here to provoke; to delineate areas of agreement and dissagreement among those interested in articulation; and to encourage thinking, discussion, and practice. Bette Hirsch and Hugh Anderson , Rosalinda Collins , and Ana Maria Myers describe two articulation initiatives centered at two-year institutions, Cabrillo College, California, and Polk Community College, Florida. Diane Birckbichler , Robert E. Robison , and Elizabeth Bossong focus mainly on the dynamics of change and the interpersonal issues that arise in the course of articulation efforts, basing their discussions on experiences in projects in Ohio and New York. John B. Webb discusses the specific concerns of a high school teacher striving to build articulated programs with postsecondary colleagues. Paul Sandrock delineates five key steps for "talking across levels and institutions," based on his experience in Wisconsin. Heidi Byrnes , Thomas Keith Cothrun , Dorothy James , and Claire Kramsch speak of articulation from the birds'-eye view of national observers rather than as participants in state-based projects. Dale Lange formulates a definition of articulation and then discusses the role of culture in articulation initiatives. Finally, Elizabeth Bernhardt , Micheline Chalhoub-Deville , and June K. Phillips address the central problem of assessment. The interested reader should also see the ADFL Bulletin 26.3 for more-extensive discussion by many of the same authors.

Coordinated programs are not created by theoretical discussions; they begin at the local level, when high school and college faculty members talk to one another and form connections across institutional cultures. Such conversations are not easy, despite basically common goals and a more or less shared student population. Teaching schedules and venues are different, and institutional cultures and expectations are often very different. Teachers at one level sometimes have little understanding of the professional pressures under which teachers at the other level function. The eight projects supported by the MLA's initiative High School to College in Foreign Language Programs will provide models of secondary and postsecondary teachers who have taken the time to listen to one another in an effort to coordinate second language teaching across institutions and levels.

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