Listening and memory training in translation

I may appear to have drifted from the topic of foreign language instruction, but I am trying to make the point that we share a community of interests with our colleagues in English and mathematics, and indeed with all teachers at the secondary school level. Foreign languages are the most fragile and vulnerable part of the humanities curriculum. All of us man the front line in a constant battle against obscurantism and the Madison Avenue mentality, but high school teachers are in the trenches. Foreign language instruction is bound to suffer if verbal and mathematical skills decline and if the Good Humor Man approach continues to flourish. Anyone involved in FL teaching also has a stake in the maintenance of high standards of oral and written skills in the English language, because the level of those skills determines the quality of the students we see in our own classes. A foreign language can, of course, be taught well or badly, like any other subject, but learning must involve effort, memorization, precision, and a good knowledge of how one's own language works. That is why we should all welcome the “back to basics” movement that appears to be gaining ground in various parts of the country. Both students and parents are beginning to realize that all the fancy talk about innovation and creative freedom does not help much if a graduate cannot read and write beyond the eighth-grade level and therefore cannot get a job. Frustrated by this discovery, some parents have threatened to sue high schools for awarding diplomas under false pretenses--which is precisely what some schools have done.

Perhaps those of us in Russian studies are more aware of the shared community of interests and of the need for students to have a solid grounding in basic verbal skills. We certainly have more to gain, first, because Russian is such a late arrival on the American educational scene, and second, because Russian requires a good understanding of grammar and syntax (not that one can do without this understanding in learning other languages).

The University of Virginia Slavic Department draws heavily upon applied linguistics in teaching Russian. The discipline of modern linguistics was largely created by Slavists and hence figures as a subject of central importance in most Slavic departments. At the same time, this approach recognizes the obvious fact that Russian is a highly inflected language having, for example, six cases. A student who cannot distinguish between subject and predicate or accusative and dative is likely to find the going rough. On the other hand, Russian grammar is logical and predictable; students willing to make a reasonable effort usually do very well.

Russian classes are anything but dull. Our beginning text is A Russian Course by Alexander Lipson (Slavica Publishers). It is a text with excellent layout, tapes, and an exceptionally good workbook manual. The book offers an ideal combination of liveliness and linguistic sophistication. The first three chapters present a microcosm of the Russian language in practice by use of the question-and-answer technique and frequent repetition. Thereafter the grammar is introduced in stages because the student now has an understanding of how the language works in practice. The instructor speaks Russian from the outset, eliciting correct answers by writing symbols or matchstick drawings on the blackboard; he needs to be on his toes and to be something of a ham in order to create the proper atmosphere of give and take in the repetition of “rituals.”

Lipson's text abandons the old-fashioned type of grammar sentence and opts for nonsense phrases which force the student to focus as much on the linguistic nature of the words as on their meaning. Much fun is had at the expense of Socialist Realism and Soviet propaganda claims of breaking cement-mixing records, but it is verbal play rather than social criticism. Students learn a great deal about the fascinating inhabitants of the twin cities of West Blinsk and East Blinsk, the latter being renamed Gubkingrad in honor of Gubkin, the renowned hero of Socialist Labor. There is also the continuing saga of Superman ( Sverxcelovek ) and Superboy ( Sverxmal'cik ).

The point of all this silliness is that students enjoy the pleasures of contrastive grammar, of punning with sounds that exist only in English or only in Russian. Not only do they acquire a useful set of phrases, but they learn to generate their own “rituals.” They begin to understand that language, any language, is a system tending toward, but never quite reaching, perfect balance in its various components and prosodic features. They enjoy being “behind the scenes,” getting an insight into the ways in which the linguist formulates rules for what takes place in a language. They enjoy learning about linguistic universals, about the relationship between front and back vowels and hard and soft consonants. They perceive a parallel between consonantal and pronunciation changes in Russian ( krast'--kradu ) and in English (wit--wisdom; Christ-- Christian).

I have the impression that many FL instructors lack linguistic sophistication and do not know as much about the theory of language as they could or should in order to employ an up-to-date methodology. It might well be that we need a program of fellowships to enable foreign language instructors at all levels to “retool” and acquire some understanding of linguistics, semiotics, and communication theory.

Our students are not abandoned at the end of the first or second year, although Virginia does have a two-year FL requirement. A determined effort is made to coordinate all four levels of the Russian language program so that students who wish to may continue with Russian in a coherent manner; quite a large proportion do decide to go on with the language. As a continuing text we use Genevra Gerhart's The Russian's World: Life and Language (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich). The aim of the book is to tell the American student “what every Russian knows,” and it succeeds admirably. Gerhart gives the connotative as well as the denotative value of Russian words, thus putting cultural flesh on the linguistic bones, breathing life into the frame.

We place particular emphasis on foreign study. Naturally, a summer or semester in Leningrad or Moscow does not fit every student's plans, but we do offer these opportunities to qualified students through our membership in such organizations as the Council for International Educational Exchange and the American Council of Teachers of Russian. Closer to home, students have available the total-immersion summer programs at Indiana and Middlebury, as well as the weekend Russian Language Camp sponsored in the fall by the University of Virginia and James Madison University. Attendance at such domestic programs--or, even better, study in the country itself--provides a target for the student to aim at, a time and place to utilize what he or she has learned.

We are fortunate at Virginia in having excellent cooperation among foreign language departments. One immediate result of this cooperation has been the acquisition of a demonstration classroom with excellent video-tape equipment. This superb facility provides both faculty and teaching assistants with an opportunity to observe themselves and others performing, and to correct errors or improve techniques. All foreign language faculty and teaching assistants hold regular meetings to discuss problems and methodology.

Each department and each college or university has its own institutional mission, and it is both natural and healthy that there should be a wide variety of approaches and emphases. However, the FL program must remain central to the concerns of the traditional language and literature department. If there are no students with a solid grounding in the foreign language, then there will be no majors, no upper-level courses in which the FL is used, and ultimately no graduates with a true understanding of the life and culture of the country concerned. A department that neglects its language program loses its heart. Every effort should be made, whether the institution has a foreign language requirement or not, to make the language program as successful as possible.

The second major focus is, of course, the study of literature. It can be an enormously civilizing and liberating experience for undergraduates, providing we do not insist on burdening them with an unrelieved diet of close formalist analysis of the sort inflicted on us in graduate school. At the risk of excommunication by adherents to the exclusively intrinsic study of literature, I must say that I believe it is a mistake to insist that undergraduates share our enthusiasm for formalist or structural analysis of texts. A department should make such courses available, but it should also offer courses of a more humane breadth which treat, for example, the relationship between literature and the society from which it emanates, a topic that Harry Levin has written on with his customary wit and elegance.

Whatever the approach, FL departments should never allow themselves to be isolated. No one relishes playing the FTE game, least of all those of us involved in the study of literature, concerned as it is with the problematical and contingent in life and the larger questions of the human condition. And yet, if we believe in the value of what we are doing, we ought to have the courage of our convictions and be prepared to defend our discipline in an honorable and intellectually responsible manner. A foreign language department should consider carefully engaging in cooperative joint programs or courses with other FL departments (and English departments), as well as with non-language departments involved in area studies programs. Another useful idea is to offer courses in English translation. Some people frown on such courses as a sort of betrayal, but if they are offered as supplementary courses to the department's core program they can provide a useful service and, if taught well, attract good students. After all, not every student interested in the novels of Dostoevsky or Camus or Thomas Mann or Borges may have the time to study the foreign language to a level where he or she can read them in the original. Quite often a student becomes interested in the language through a literature course in translation.

Team-taught courses provide another useful addition to a department's offerings--for example, a course on civilization and culture, or on contemporary society, taught by an FL faculty member and someone in the history department. Such interdisciplinary courses are by no means easy to put together or to teach but they can be very successful.

These are all ideas that have worked quite well for us, but this is certainly not an exclusive or prescriptive list. Nor do I want to suggest that we have no problems, either in the Virginia program or in Russian studies across the country. Enrollments are down in many institutions. If foreign languages are the most vulnerable part of the humanities curriculum as a whole, then Russian is probably the most vulnerable among them, certainly more vulnerable than the more traditional and better established languages.

In fact, until about twenty years ago Russian hardly existed at all as a language taught in the colleges, let alone the secondary schools, of this country. It is true that World War II and the Cold War aroused considerable interest in the Soviet Union, but, with very few exceptions, neither war had much impact on the American educational system. Appropriately enough it was the Russians themselves who obliged us to pay more attention to their language. The catalyst, of course, was sputnik , a new word that entered the language to symbolize both awareness of Soviet achievements and anxiety over an apparent failure of American science and technology to keep pace.

One important response to sputnik was the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958, which resulted in millions of dollars being poured into language and area studies programs. Among the so-called critical or strategic languages, Russian has benefited most from NDEA legislation. Twenty years later we now find that Russian is taught in practically every respectable college and university in the country. Major institutions have Russian departments, or even Slavic departments where not only Russian but other major languages such as Czech, Polish, or Serbo-Croatian are taught. There are now twenty-three doctoral programs in Slavic languages and literatures where only three or four existed prior to 1958. Fourteen Slavic area studies programs continue to receive federal support under NDEA Title VI, which also provides Foreign Language and Area Studies graduate fellowships to major Slavic programs. It should be noted that in awarding these fellowships preference is now given to students in the non-Russian Slavic and East European languages and in disciplines other than literature, history, economics, and political science, which are felt to have come of age at the graduate level.

It seems to me entirely proper that the traditional foreign languages should maintain their preeminence. However, long years of neglect of other major world languages can only be remedied in the short run by the sort of federal boost provided by NDEA, which has brought the American educational system more in line with the economic and political realities of the twentieth century. It is worth remembering that many of the so-called “smaller” languages are in fact spoken by hundreds of millions of people: Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Arabic. No one would suggest that what this country needs is a samovar in every kitchen, but clearly it is a matter of national interest that a language such as Russian should be made available in a substantial number of our schools and colleges.

The position of Russian is certainly much better than it was twenty years ago. However, the rather panicky reaction to sputnik brought with it some problems because it created a hothouse growth of Russian and East European programs that could only flourish, or in some cases survive, with constant financial support from outside sources. Some programs put down roots; others have begun to wither. It is obviously unhealthy and impractical for foreign language instruction to depend upon the inscrutable shifts of Soviet policy or the momentary shifts in the climate of international affairs. There still exists the danger under NDEA that some programs are obliged to balance on a seesaw of grant and detente; in other words, good news is bad news and vice versa.

We have a habit in this country of throwing money at problems. This leads to a sort of “greening of America” with a difference. What I mean is that federal assistance and private funding increased FL enrollments for a time, but all the while SAT scores were declining. This is a point we would do well to remember as we enter what may be a new era of federal funding for foreign language and area studies. One unexpected result of the Helsinki Accords has been to bring the importance of international studies to the attention of President Carter. Each signatory commits itself to “encourage the study of foreign languages and civilizations as an important means of expanding communication among peoples--for the strengthening of international cooperation.” Having signed the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the United States finds itself in a rather embarrassing position since it needs to do a great deal more than it is currently doing to “encourage the study of foreign languages and civilizations.” In response chiefly to the actions of Representative Paul Simon of Illinois, the President has ordered the creation of a Presidential Commission on Foreign Languages and International Studies, which should submit its report during 1978.

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