Recent scholarship in professional development (PD) has advocated for solid conceptual frameworks and understanding of the complex process involved in how language educators may continue to develop and fulfil the current challenging teaching demands. However, specific relationships underlying departmental cultures and how language educators relate…

At a time when language programs around the United States are in crisis--the University of Rhode Island's Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures is realigning its curriculum to emphasize proficiency and intercultural competence within a strong liberal arts context. The result of the department's recent initiatives? More than…

The collegiate foreign language profession has become increasingly aware of the unnecessarily detrimental effects of bifurcated curricula on student learning and departmental governance, yet there have been few instances to date of departments that have been able to achieve unified, articulated programs of study. This article presents one foreign…

Many of the actions of Colombia's National Programme for the Development of Foreign Languages (Programa Nacional de Desarrollo de Lenguas Extranjeras--PNDLE) have been carried out in elementary and secondary education, but there is not much information about its impact in institutions of higher education. The aim of this article is to present the…

One of the key recommendations of the Worton Review of Modern Foreign Languages provision in higher education in England (2009) is more effective collaboration between language centres and language departments. This paper presents a fully integrated model of such collaboration and develops recommendations for language centres and language…

Describes two departments that house both English and foreign languages, one at a small private liberal arts college and the other at a regional state university. Discusses some of the problems that occurred when the two disciplines were combined and the surprising advantages of such a collaboration. (SED)

Investigating students' needs in three foreign language departments in a liberal arts college setting, the study discussed in this article aims to find similarities and differences in language needs among students enrolled in French, German, and Spanish and the extent to which students' perceived needs match the mission the departments have…

Rather than try and shield themselves from organizational change, language departments should turn current administrative attempts to streamline the campus to their advantage, particularly in the trend toward internationalization of the curriculum. Areas for expansion include languages across the curriculum, area studies, study abroad, comparative…

Five brief essays are presented in response to an earlier article on leadership in college foreign-language departments. They address issues of curriculum redesign, pedagogical change, the nature of language teaching, the professional identity of language teachers, the role of professional organizations, and the traditional departmental model. A…

A study investigated: (1) the average language proficiency level as determined by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) attained by 271 college seniors majoring in 6 languages (Spanish, French, Russian, German, Japanese, Italian); (2) current and projected uses of the ACTFL OPI by…

A state grant to the Department of Romance Languages of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville has allowed development of a proficiency-based curriculum for first- and second-year French and Spanish. Most of the effort to date has been preparation of the syllabus based on specified goals and objectives, or student outcomes, focusing on allowing…

A handbook designed to acquaint college and university language departments with recent developments in oral proficiency testing gives an overview of the rationale, development, procedures, and implications of oral proficiency evaluation. The discussion is placed in the context of college and university language teaching. An overview section…

The efforts of the foreign languages department at the College of St. Thomas to introduce a new major in international business illustrate the psychological barriers to innovation. Neither the college's business department nor the local multinational corporations took international business very seriously, and the new endeavor was received with…

The dramatic rebirth of the foreign language department in a four-year liberal arts college is documented. The process is described as having three stages: assessment of the department's curricular mission in light of the changed student constituency; development of a long-range plan for outreach and public relations activities to prepare the way…

When asked by the business department for a language component for its new area of concentration in international business, the modern language department of a small liberal arts college capitalized on a recently devised competence-based curriculum. The curriculum, established in the college's general education curriculum as an alternate track to…