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UC CONSORTIUM FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING

• Consortium website
• Preamble
• Charge
• Organization and Governance
• Conclusion
• Press release on Founding Director

PREAMBLE

On October 15, 1999, the Chronicle of Higher Education announced a new study by the Modern Language Association that reported the highest number of enrollments in foreign language courses in U.S. institutions of higher education on record. Enrollments nationwide have risen 4.8% since 1995, reversing a 3.8% decline between 1990 and 1995. Within the UC system, this growth has been even more dramatic, with enrollments in foreign language courses up by 10.8% between 1994 and 1998. Spanish enrollments accounted for almost half of the 26,729 increases, but increases were reflected across the board, and particularly in Asian languages.

How do we explain these shifts, and how do they affect us? Changing demographics in the population of California no doubt have contributed to the increase in students studying Spanish and East Asian languages. Spanish has become the de facto second language of California; increasingly it is the only foreign language taught in California high schools. This contributes to the popularity of Spanish with undergraduates who want to make use of the only investment in foreign language they have been able to make before entering UC. It also means that the many students who want to study other languages must begin in college. Furthermore, a great many students, especially those of Asian and Latino ancestry, arrive on campus with prior exposure to a language other than English in the home and want to continue with it as their foreign language. They constitute a new clientele of "heritage learners" whose needs are not addressed by traditional modes of language pedagogy or standard curricular offerings.

In other words, enrollments in foreign language courses and the demand for new areas of instruction are increasing both nationally and at the University of California and, in the coming years, the teaching of foreign languages may take place in different demographic and academic contexts than it did twenty-five years ago. Undergraduates study languages for many different reasons (for personal enrichment, academic preparation, professional development, general education) in addition to the reasons why students major in traditional national literature departments. Shifting enrollment patterns and new curricular pathways will change the academic landscape in some areas, challenging us to formulate coherent policies about the academic, cultural and intellectual contexts in which research universities should offer foreign language instruction.

Furthermore, following the national trend in the humanities, many of our national literature departments are accepting fewer graduate students. Increasing undergraduate enrollments in these departments (composed of both majors and non-majors) may necessitate new approaches to the staffing of language courses, which traditionally have been taught by graduate students on most UC campuses. Whether professional language teachers are hired (as opposed to faculty or graduate students who teach language but conduct research in literature or linguistics) or whether research faculty themselves participate in the teaching of language, we will have to maintain coherent and stable language programs as we address complex questions about academic priorities, educational policy and intellectual mission, staffing, intercampus cooperation, and resource allocation.

Foreign language instruction traditionally has been labor intensive, and expenses tend to grow exponentially as a decision to offer new courses leads to a commitment to intermediate and advanced as well as elementary instruction. Campuses by necessity have duplicated each other's efforts, even in the preparation of course materials. New technologies and new strategies for distance learning, however, provide new opportunities in these areas. Although language instruction always will require human interaction and many hours of classes and practice per week, it is clear that instructional technology will offer significant possibilities for changing the way foreign languages are taught and learned.

As CD-ROMS and website-based instruction move into the space of the traditional language lab, the time is ripe for UC faculty to take the lead in developing innovative and collaborative means of delivering instruction in foreign languages. The technological tools to accomplish this goal already exist, but the training and planning essential to its successful realization have never been attempted systematically across multiple campuses. With leading authorities in foreign language pedagogy and research, the University of California has the potential to engage in systemwide planning and to pool resources and share in the development of pilot courses in these areas. Moreover, the mandate to address the Tidal Wave II of students anticipated by the UC system should inspire more creative uses of summer sessions and the development of intensive summer programs for foreign language instruction. These might also allow campuses to coordinate efforts and offer instruction in certain languages at only one or two campuses. There is also enormous room for growth with UC's Education Abroad Program, and we should seek new ways to connect EAP to the curriculum and summer language study.

Finally, even if enrollment patterns and student interest did not compel University of California to confront these issues, it would be our responsibility as a state university and national leader in higher education to address the significance of the study of foreign languages at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Americans may increasingly believe that U.S. economic and geo-political dominance will make English a universal language, but the combination of globalization and the multicultural environment of California makes foreign language study imperative for our students. The University of California can and will need to show leadership in this area and to spearhead coordination and collaboration with K-12 educators on issues of foreign language education where this is practical and appropriate.

The more than 300 languages spoken in California's K-12 schools provide a concrete indication of the multicultural and multilingual background with which our students enter college. The state's future economic prosperity also depends upon our students' ability to function in an international context. A recent report by the California Department of Education cites this recommendation of the California Economic Development Corporation: "Internationalize all curricula to provide greater understanding of our place in the global economy, through international studies and stronger requirements for foreign languages and cultures." The Stanford University Graduate School of Business, for example, recently has placed a greater emphasis on foreign language courses. It is not our mission to play Berlitz to business schools and international studies programs any more than it is our job to provide mere language instruction to our heritage language students. However, our faculty have a necessary role to play in integrating language study into these areas in a pedagogically and academically serious way. It is the responsibility and the strength of our humanities divisions and liberal arts curricula to offer rigorous language instruction in a humanistic, cultural, and comparative context. In this way we can prepare our students (and the future workforce of the state) for the global economy and the multicultural environment in which they live.

The challenges and responsibilities presented by these demographic and academic trends make it crucial that we pool our resources (both financial and intellectual) and develop strategies and programs for the future. We believe that a University of California Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching would be able to address some of the theoretical, pedagogical, and professional problems that we all will face. The worst case scenario is that the changing landscape of foreign language instruction will be allowed to overwhelm divisions of humanities, skew academic priorities, and shift resources from traditionally strong research areas to instructional programs removed from academic contexts. In addition to depriving the academy of rich linguistic and intellectual resources, it would also create a large group of lecturers whose professional needs are increasingly neglected by the system. It could necessitate costly duplication of course development at a moment when UC faculty are taking the lead in new technologies of language pedagogy and other universities are developing "brand name" products in distance learning curricula. It could leave our graduates unprepared for the workforce.

Alternatively, we could share our collective resources and talents in order to draw upon our world class research and pedagogical expertise in foreign language learning and teaching. Together we could explore policy issues and institutional strategies, and address issues of state and national significance. We believe that a relatively modest investment now would be cost-effective in the long run and would address compelling instructional and administrative problems of our campuses while there is still time to think ahead. We know that all of our campuses will share most of the problems brought about by the enrollment trends in foreign language study and instruction. It would be best to address them thoughtfully, informed by the best expertise and experience our faculty have to offer. A UC Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching would help us to share and, indeed, together discover some of the solutions to these problems.

CHARGE

The Consortium has the overall mission of fostering communication and collaboration across the UC campuses, across and among language groups (e.g., between teachers of German and teachers of Spanish, and among teachers of German at various campuses), and across the various disciplines that inform the learning and teaching of foreign, classical, second, and heritage languages within the UC system. It has four areas of responsibility:

• Curricular planning and institutional programming;
• Research and development in language learning and teaching;
• Professional development of language teachers; and
• Outreach on the regional, national, and international levels.

1. CURRICULAR PLANNING AND INSTITUTIONAL PROGRAMMING

In the last five years, several initiatives have improved foreign language instruction remarkably across the UC system. The Intercampus Academic Program Incentive Fund, before it was discontinued, promoted the development of course materials in African languages and in Russian; it made possible course sharing using distance technologies in Italian, Russian, Japanese, and Spanish, and promoted the use of interactive video in Russian and video teleconferencing in Greek and Hebrew. In addition, several campuses have established Centers or Institutes for the enhancement of second-language acquisition and teaching: the Second Language Acquisition Institute at UC Davis, the Berkeley Language Center, the Language Resource Program at UCLA and the Linguistic Minority Research Center at UCSB. These developments, however, have not been coordinated and, except on a local level, the resources have not been shared equitably across the campuses. The Consortium can help articulate and disseminate the various models of foreign language delivery, curricular innovation, and institutional programming across the various campuses.

The considerable variability from campus to campus in the distribution of foreign language instruction is another curricular and institutional planning issue to which the Consortium should direct its attention. UCB and UCLA, for example, offer courses in 55 and 63 world languages, respectively, and maintain the study of less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) so vital to our national and international well-being and security. With the exception of UCSB, which offers instruction in fewer languages than UCB and UCLA but still offers a relatively broad range, the other campuses typically, and quite reasonably, support instruction only for the principal European and Asian languages. At present, no bureaucratic or programmatic infrastructure exists that could be used to extend the sphere of language instruction in LCTLs from UCB and UCLA to the other campuses. The Consortium should take the lead in exploring how to harness recent advances in technology to nurture language study at a distance and thereby open access to a population wider than just one campus. Expanding language delivery and student access will not necessarily decrease UCB's and UCLA's cost of maintaining a large number of LCTLs. However, it should provide the means to enable them to spread benefits out over the entire system, thereby ensuring a prudent and economic use of scarce resources.

Any discussion of distance learning of course raises legitimate concerns that the technology, once in place, might supplant the face-to-face instruction that is essential for effective language learning. The Consortium should work quickly towards establishing guidelines that reflect the current understanding of the importance of a mix of live and mediated delivery, guidelines that can be used to establish criteria for approval of distance learning initiatives based on need and feasibility. At the same time, the Consortium should undertake an evaluation of current research on the pedagogical issues related to the various combinations of delivery systems.

The Consortium's charge is therefore to facilitate the review and planning of language teaching both on individual campuses and across the system and to encourage greater intercampus cooperation. In addition to the tasks mentioned above, the Consortium should provide advice on such curricular matters as:

• Data collection and appropriate institutional response to shifting enrollments, new curricular pressures, job placements, etc.;
• Articulation of EAP and language instruction on the various campuuses; and
• The "virtual university" model and its potential across the UC system.

The Consortium should facilitate cooperation in such areas as:

• Academic and alternate disciplinary contexts for language instruction (e.g., foreign languages across the curriculum, distance learning).
• Articulation of credit for non-UC language courses.
• Development of a clearinghouse of foreign language curricular initiatives both intra and intercampus.
• Articulation of International and Area Studies with language study on campus.
• Links between academic language or language-related centers within the UC system, e.g., Humanities Research Institute, Berkeley Language Center, SLA Institute at UC Davis, Language Resource Program at UCLA, UC Nexus, the Linguistics Minority Research Institute.
• Links to the various research communities within the UC system in the fields of Education, Linguistics, Anthropology, Applied Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, Literature and Cultural Studies, Media and Communication Studies and International and Area Studies. The Consortium can help bring the research done in these fields to bear on the learning and teaching of any of the 78 different languages taught at the University of California. The Consortium should also establish links with research groups outside the U.S. that investigate the learning and teaching of English as a Second or International Language, as well as national languages taught as second languages within their respective national communities (e.g., Deutsch als Fremdsprache in Germany, Francais Langue Etrangere in France).

2. RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Collaboration and cooperation can best be accomplished in the context of the University's research mission. The state of California, and UC in particular, have the largest concentration of scholars and researchers in the fields of second-language acquisition, applied linguistics and related research areas, and psychology in the country. The linguistic and cultural diversity of the State, and the unique concentration of foreign, second, and heritage languages (including Native American languages) taught within the UC system, make the Consortium a natural research environment to investigate the learning and teaching of languages in instructional settings.

The Consortium's charge is therefore to encourage, stimulate and fund on a competitive basis various research initiatives which are aimed particularly, although not exclusively, at testing the value of various experiments in pedagogy and delivery (referred to in the first charge). These initiatives may be of a single-campus or a multicampus nature and may have an intra or intercampus focus. These initiatives may include:

• Pedagogical projects, e. g., instructional or curricular innovations, materials design and development, development of new testing techniques, new uses of technology;
• Language teaching research, e. g., evaluation of materials, methods, instructional activities, or the use of technology; conceptualization of various approaches to language instruction; theoretical or empirical studies of various aspects of second language acquisition in tutored environments.
• Conferences, workshops and colloquia on any aspect of language learning and teaching. These events can be addressed either to all language teachers or more specifically to those who teach the same language or the same level of instruction across the UC system. Topics could be: The teaching of heritage languages; Multimedia technology and the development of L2 literacy; The role of literature in language teaching; The "focus-on-form" approach in language instruction; Language learning and cultural identity.
• Cross-disciplinary conferences that bring together linguists, applied linguists, anthropological and educational linguists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, literary scholars, media specialists, to shed light on various aspects of language study.

3. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
A significant portion of the language instruction throughout the UC system is delivered by Lecturers (Unit 18 or SOE), who in some cases are also responsible for training the graduate student instructors. In many cases, these faculty members have specialized training/expertise in a field directly related to the teaching of languages (e.g., second language acquisition, applied linguistics), but their positions allow them very limited access to travel and research funds and provide virtually no incentive for professional or intellectual growth. Ladder-rank faculty, particularly from fields less obviously related to language teaching, do not necessarily fare better in terms of resources to support them in learning about current research, theory, and practice in the teaching of languages. By increasing access to professional development resources and by creating local opportunities for professional development of language faculty, the Consortium can raise the morale of instrctors, strengthen the quality of language programs, and enhance the status of language teaching across the system.

The Consortium's charge is therefore to provide an intellectual and professional forum for the pre- and in-service training of language teachers across the UC system. It supplements, rather than supplants, the development opportunities offered by individual departments on individual campuses. It should sponsor teacher training events that are run by language program coordinators or applied linguists taken from various campuses. Possible Consortium initiatives are:

• Regularly scheduled workshops for teachers of language-specific or generic groups on topics of common interest (e.g., Intermediate German, Spanish for Native Speakers, Teaching Writing at the Intermediate Level, Articulation of Instruction between Secondary and Post-secondary Sectors);
• Summer workshops, summer institutes for language instructors;
• Clearinghouse for library and software materials developed or available at the various campuses through Consortium Website, Listservs, Newsletter, etc.;
• Clearinghouse for information regarding the governance of foreign language instruction across campuses including enrollment data, language requirements, placement procedures, teaching and testing practices, curricula, etc.;
• Travel grant program to enable language instructors to attend professional meetings; and
• Grants program for research projects.

In order to support these initiatives outlined above, the Consortium will develop a plan for extramural funding from private and public sources.

4. OUTREACH
The University of California has a tradition of outreach to schools and community colleges across the State. The California Foreign Language Project has strengthened the ties between UC and the teaching of foreign languages in California's elementary and secondary schools. In addition, UC has nurtured links with various linguistic communities. For example, the Native American Master-Apprentice Project has helped revitalized Native American languages in Northern California. These initiatives would benefit, however, from being associated with a larger outreach effort on the national and the international scene.

The Consortium's charge is therefore to actively seek links with the various linguistic, academic, professional, research, and business communities that have an interest in furthering the learning and teaching of foreign, second, and heritage languages on the regional, national, and international levels.

• Links with linguistic communities , especially of speakers of less commonly taught languages like Vietnamese, Tagalog, Finnish.
• Links with K-12 outreach programs that seek to improve students' ability to meet the E (language) requirement for entrance; work with the California Foreign Language Project in the professional development of K-12 language teachers, particularly in the area of incorporating instructional technology into language instruction.
• Links to professional organizations across the U.S.: the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC), the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), the various National Language Resource Centers (e.g., Minnesota, Hawaii, San Diego), and, outside the U.S.: the European Council, the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA), and the Federation Internationale des Professeurs de Langues Vivantes (FIPLV).
• Links to the business communities in California that seek job applicants with foreign language competencies.

ORGANIZATION AND GOVERNANCE OF CONSORTIUM

A Director, a Steering Committee, and a Board of Governors will work together to set the direction for the UC Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching.

The Consortium Director
The Consortium Director, a Senate faculty member, will work with the Steering Committee to develop the Consortium's programs and address its various charges. The founding Director will be appointed for five years. Subsequent directors will serve 3-5 year appointments. The Director, in consultation with the Steering Committee, will set priorities for a given year and will be responsible for carrying out the tasks associated with those priorities. In particular, the Director will be responsible for developing a fund raising plan to assure sufficient resources to support the Consortium's programming. The Director will be assisted by a full-time administrator who will implement the fund raising plan, among other things, and a part-time technical support person.

The Steering Committee
The Steering Committee shall consist of the Director, two representatives from each campus, and a representative from the Education Abroad Program. The Director serves as the Chair of the Steering Committee. Each campus that has foreign language instruction will appoint its two representatives: one administrator (dean, department chair, etc.) and one faculty member directly involved in language teaching. The Steering Committee will advise on policy issues and conduct the major business of the Consortium. The Steering Committee will meet two times a year; its members will serve for three-year terms and will have staggered terms to ensure continuity.

The Board of Governors
The Board of Governors shall have representation from within UC, from the academy outside the University, and from other institutions, Foundations, and entities such as the national language centers. The broad representation of the Board will give it the necessary stature for enhancing the University's national visibility as a leader in the foreign language field. The Board advises the Consortium on national trends, related programs and policy issues. Its members will be selected by the Consortium Director in consultation with the steering committee and will be appointed by the President of the University of California to serve for three-year terms. The Board will meet annually.

CONCLUSION

Now is the time to apply the collective resources and talents across the UC to plan for language teaching and learning in the UC system. Now is the time to develop innovative and efficient means of delivering language instruction. New technologies and pedagogies provide excellent opportunities for systemwide planning that will help eliminate duplication, while simultaneously enabling support of cutting-edge research in language pedagogy. Burgeoning enrollments require creative solutions to increased language demand, and the demography of our students and the requirements of a global economy heighten the urgency of our attention. The proposed UC Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning offers a structure to accomplish these goals. And the collaborative manner in which representatives of different language interests across the system worked to develop this proposal exemplifies the Consortium's potential to be visionary, cooperative and pragmatic in planning for language teaching and learning in the UC system.

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