Last week, I had a sit down conversation with Professor Ray Craig about teaching upper division classes and the language exam requirement for the Kent State English Literature PhD. We had a pleasant conversation, but my personal circumstances when it comes to languages other than English got me hot under the collar.
You see, the Kent State English Literature PhD program requires all students to demonstrate a high level of proficiency in a language other than English. I knew that going into the program, but I did not realize that I had to pass that exam before taking my qualifying exams. This is spelled out on the departmental website:
Doctoral students must complete a minimum of 27 hours of course work, pass three qualifying examinations distributed across two divisions of study, and defend a dissertation. All doctoral students must complete a foreign language requirement before taking qualifying examinations. Specific course selections for all students are determined in consultation with the student’s Advisory Committee, comprised of three graduate faculty members.
Why is this a problem? Well, my plan was to take the language exam either late in Fall 2009 or early in Spring 2010 in the hope that I would pass the exam. However, I figured I could at least take my PhD qualifying exams if I did not pass the language exam on schedule at the end of Spring 2010.
Why am I worried about the language exam? I never had any long term foreign language experience when I was young, and I only took two years of Latin during my first two years of high school (which was over 15 years ago). Now, I don’t want to detract from what I learned in Magistra Ingrid Metz’s classes and from our on-going friendship, which is substantial and in large part got me to where I am now, but I have to be honest in saying that I don’t remember much Latin. I remember the studying skills, and some of the language roots, but little conjugations and derivatives and no grammar. I could have stayed in Latin for a full four years, which I believe would have significantly added to my ability to retain and use the language, but I decided to earn a vocational seal in drafting to go along with my endorsed seal on my high school diploma.
Fast forward about eleven years when I was preparing to graduate from Georgia Tech. The BS in Science, Technology, and Culture program has a language requirement. You must take a 2000 level or higher course in a modern language of your choosing. Unfortunately, I could not fulfill this requirement with Latin, and I was not allowed to follow the letter of the requirement as some of my friends were able to do by taking senior foreign language film classes held largely in English. So, I was left with the need to start from scratch with another language. Granted, I should have planned ahead for this, but I didn’t. So, I was stuck taking French, because it was the only class offering an introductory class when I needed to begin the sequence from 1001 to 1002 to 2001 (I did try Japanese the semester before this, but I realized very early on that I would not be able to learn it at that time–the immersive classroom was too much on me and the unfortunate souls forced to be in a group with me). Luckily, I had a very understanding French native teacher, who I took all three French classes with and pass, thus earning my degree a year after I could have had it not been for my language deficiency.
At the time, I was very bitter about the language requirement, but more so with the knowledge that others got under the wire on it. And now, at Kent State, I am caught in the foreign language net again while others (but not all) get by following the letter of the requirement. So, this post is in its most reduced form just a bitter reflection on the fact that I don’t have adequate training in a foreign language and must get up to snuff in only a few months time.
The test that I will need to pass, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t so bad. I will have four hours to translate an approximately 10 page scholarly article in French with the aid of a dictionary followed by a discussion with the examiner in English about the meaning and content of the article. Even with a good mastery of French, I don’t know if 4 hours is really enough time, so I don’t know exactly what to expect in terms of my own performance on the test. I do have a French science fiction journal to practice with, but a word-for-word translation will be inadequate considering the proclivities of grammar and syntactic anomalies and idioms.
Please don’t get me wrong–I really wish that I were a language master, and I wholeheartedly respect anyone who knows more than their native language. Also, I realize that I put my self in a situation at a school with a language requirement. Some have no such requirement, and others have even more draconian and difficult requirements (e.g., having proficiency in two other languages).
However, I do feel that this requirement, at this point in the history of English Studies, is an antiquated and throwback prerequisite. I understand how knowing other languages can only help one’s scholarship and engagement with scholars who use other languages. But, the requirement at this point is only a hurdle and has lost a strong connection to its original signification. It suffers from what Mark Poster and others point to as a crisis in postmodernity–the dissolving of the sign linkage between signifier and signified. The language requirement, as I see it, refers to a outdated examination instead of to one of the requirements of a distinguished intellectual. Passing this examination will not mean in a deeper sense that I am and will continue to have proficiency in a foreign language. It is a sad fact, but I cannot devote myself fully to the mastery of another language at this point in my academic career due to the overwhelming requirements of qualifying exam preparation, publishing, and teaching. Why didn’t I begin earlier? I was completing coursework, reading, teaching, conferencing, and publishing. There never seems to be enough time, but there are always more demands made upon your time by yourself and others.
How can the foreign language exam have more meaning? I believe that a foreign language requirement that means more than merely a hurdle toward graduation should be integrated into the overall curriculum. This could be accomplished by requiring additional coursework or the production of a paper for publication in a foreign language journal would be more meaningful and reconnect the signifier with the signified–it will provide a real meaning for the requirement, which as I understand it, would be to produce cosmopolitan intellectuals who are able to move beyond the language networks of his or her native language. Additionally, foreign language instruction should be systematically integrated into K-12, so that students of all future pursuits may learn a language when their minds are most amenable to language mastery. Re-learning French when someone is 25 or 32 will not be as useful for that person as it would be for someone who learned French in addition to English at a young age. Additionally, foreign language instruction earlier in ones educational career will allow those students to engage in world culture in ways that the majority of Americans cannot do even if they wished to do so.
This isn’t a lament over the added stress of dealing with the foreign language exam, but it is one stone cast into the cultural waters to create some oscillations regarding foreign language requirements of PhD programs and the dearth of foreign language learning opportunities in American K-12.
I sympathize with your situation. Does Kent State allow any classes to be substituted for the language requirement? At PSU, I took a reading French class (that was very helpful) and that counted as my foreign language requirement. Also, the book we used, _French for Reading_, was pretty helpful (http://www.amazon.com/French-Reading-Karl-C-Sandberg/dp/0133316033/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249765455&sr=8-1). Also, I did some of my exercises in that class on Todorov’s book on the fantastic, which you might be able to get out of your library. It’s pretty simple French, but it might be a good starting place for some practice.
Also, I really get angry about the requirement in English, because at Penn State (and I don’t know if you have a similar thing at Kent), we are actually not allowed, in the English Department, to talk about foreign language works in our dissertations (there’s some magic number, like no more than 40% or something), so we are actually forbidden from using our language skills, when we acquire them.
Anyway, I feel bad for you (esp. as one of those “friends” who got through the upper level film class hole), and hope that it works out.
Ahhh yes, I had to pass a foreign language requirement in my MA program. I agree with your frustration at the 85% (or, insert arbitrary high percentage here)that pass through without actually having ANY real language skills – coupled with the rare chance that these skills will be/are used.
I took some French, but found it pretty useless as far as the translation exam went. I actually used the same book Andrew suggests above and found it to be fantastic, because there weren’t any ‘French for Reading’ classes at my university. Even going through a portion of this book will help you immensely. And if your goal is actually to translate a text for research, this book will help you far more than French classes will.
[...] to Foreign Language Monkey Wrench I wanted to thank everyone for the responses to my previous post about my thoughts, concerns, and worries about the PhD language [...]
I understand your frustration – especially since the programs you have been in so far have not really prepared you for that kind of exams. If that makes you feel better (I know it won’t :), over here (Poland – but things are similar in many European countries) every PhD candidate has to take a proficiency-level exam in a foreign language. Additionally, if you’re in modern languages (English, German and so on) you cannot take that exam in “your” language. So, if your diss in in American Lit (which means more often than not it’s written in English and most of your research is in English), you cannot take English – you have to choose some other modern language.
The translation task and a conversation in your native language about it does not seem that bad, either. Here, you first take a written exam in grammar/vocab and then there is an oral exam – naturally in that language – about your research, diss and such things.
Having said all that, I can see how such a requirement aims at opening prospective and future professors to the wealth of scholarship and discourses in languages and areas other than your own. In English/American Studies, for example, there is a huge – and I really mean HUGE – body of original and cutting edge scholarship (in the case of contemporary American Lit for example on writers that are hardly ever discussed in American journals, not to mention books) in French and German. The language requirement, at least in its intention, forces the candidates to somehow rise to the challenge.
The above is one thing, though, and the logistics of foreign language instruction and early reminders that one needs to master it is another.
In either case, I’ll keep my fingers crossed for your French.
Hey Pavel,
I completely agree with you that the purpose–and I think that the purpose of your language exam is even better than ours since you already demonstrate your language proficiency in the area you are working in, and you must reach out to another language further broadening your ability to research and share your work with a wider audience–is to broaden one’s horizon to the wider world of research and academic community.
Personally, I am just very frustrated, because it feels like I am reinventing the personal computer or a particle accelerator. My friend Bob commented on Facebook regarding my follow-up post to this one: “you have a right to bitch. the exam is completely worthless and only tests your dictionary-using skills. it could be far more relevant if American public schools didn’t start teaching foreign languages at the exact moment when people’s brains stop being receptive to them.” This is an elegant way of describing the American educational system. I believe that language instruction should be something integrated into the curriculum such that language work begins early and is continually developed throughout one’s educational career. So, I am calling for a systemic change to the way foreign languages are taught in the United States. Unfortunately, I do not believe that the importance of knowing other languages (for personal enrichment, combating cultural homogenization, improving one’s language center in the brain, allowing one to enjoy a wider world of culture without the intermediary of translation, etc.) is nearly impossible with reduced education budgets, not enough potential language teachers in the pipeline, and inadequate salary incentives to get those teachers in place in a reasonable amount of time. As for me, I will do my work, study, take the exam, and pass it. However, I am ashamed that I cannot, with the amount of time available to me due to my professional development and an infinitesimal sliver for life away from the academy, fulfill the spirit of the requirement and can only concern myself with muttering through triage-fashion instead of with elegant and surgical precision.
Thanks for the good luck–I will need it.
Jason