Foreign language program kicks off

Despite some concern last spring about funding for the University's Foreign Languages Across the Curriculum program, new courses are being offered under the program's auspices this fall. "Spanish 229: History of Spanish American Culture" is the first of an upcoming series of classes which will teach content, not grammar, in a foreign language. The program was outlined in the University's five-year Agenda for Excellence as an attempt to place foreign language study in a real-world context. Additionally, three new language courses -- "Russian 411: Advanced Russian for Business," an advanced section of French 202 devoted to the WWII era and a section of "French 212: Grammar and Composition" dealing with contemporary French politics -- are intended to bridge the gap between language proficiency and FLAC-level fluency. The introduction of the program this semester was somewhat unexpected. In February, Arabic and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Professor and FLAC Committee Chairperson Roger Allen said funding delays and budget cuts threatened to postpone the introduction of course programming until spring 1998. And even after Provost Stanley Chodorow found funding for the program, Penn Language Center Director Harold Schiffman noted that several departments were "resistant to change," with tensions over the introduction of FLAC courses affecting full-fledged cooperation. Schiffman said the program fell short of the six courses which were initially planned because "departments ? [were] dragging their feet." But Allen hopes to double the number of FLAC courses by spring, and added that "it's a question of getting faculty who have the time and energy to devote to a commitment like this." He stressed that a global outlook is necessary as students enter the next millennium. "Hey, there's a big, wide world out there, and they don't only speak English," Allen said. He added that content-based courses will eliminate the need for graduate student lecturers and will affect the composition of the graduate curriculum. "The FLAC course is a content course, not a language course," Allen explained. "We want students to go beyond the point where they normally drop." But since students from other schools must pass the College proficiency exam in order to gain access to these courses, Engineering and Nursing students may be at a disadvantage, Allen said. The one-year Nursing language requirement is less strenuous than the Wharton and College requirements "and the Engineering requirement is one year less than that, which equals zero," he added. And Systems Engineering Professor Keith Ross noted that some students decide to enroll in the Engineering School "in order to avoid the language requirement at all costs" and are therefore unlikely to take advantage of the FLAC courses.