Language Power to the People

 

The many who crave language knowledge in America have risen in rebellion against the many who have failed (we could even say refused to give it.

Language teaching used to be in the control of "the faculty," a Prussian guard of grammarians who taught that after all the conjugations, declensions, irregularities, and exceptions were mastered, surely fluency would follow. What followed instead was a parade of hapless Americans who, after eight years of good grades, could not go to the desk clerk at a hotel in a country whose language they'd studied and ask if they had any messages!

"The faculty" taught rigidly by the book, the grammar book, and all our desire to learn to say useful things and converse were dashed.

Today foreign languages are no longer "electives." Those suddenly faced with their first need to command another language are besieging Berlitz and other commercial language schools and buying the Pimsleur cassettes and other self study courses. We, the laymen, are picking up our tools — language workbooks, cassette courses, phrase books, flash cards — to try to make up for our failure to learn, while all those incredible Europeans were learning English in their public schools!

Two, four, six, eight years of high school and college study in a foreign language, and still our American graduates can't tell whether the man on the radio speaking the language they "learned" is declaring war or recommending a restaurant!

Has one single American graduate ever stepped into a job that called for a foreign language with nothing more than the language he learned in high school or college? It's not a cruel question. Most Americans can get by on the reading they learned in school. And the math. And the history. Why is that when it come to foreign languages our graduates have to rush into expensive private instruction to start all over again?

One hero of language learning in the United States is Dr. Henry Urbanski, professor of Russian, former chairman of the department of Foreign Languages of the State University of New York at New Paltz, and now director of the Language Immersion Institute. Once upon a time Dr. Urbanski's "immersion" heresy would probably have resulted in his getting banned from university life. Today Urbanski is showered with praise and honour.

 

His immersion programme defies the language teaching tradition of rote regimentation and grammar worship. There are no charts to learn, no homework, no drudgery, and no tests. It's all fun, it emphasises real conversation between teacher and students, and it all takes place over a weekend. If Henry Urbanski could have thought of any more rules to break, he would have.

Urbanski's immersion programme is open to everybody. Those with no educational background in languages whatever join with people with graduate degrees in languages and men and women of all levels of qualification in between. The programme begins at seven P.M. on a Friday for an hour of introduction and orientation. The students then break up into small groups in separate rooms and jump into the foreign language under the command of dynamic, enthusiastic instructors who keep a high energy Ping-Pong of basic conversation going back and forth with all students participating. At ten P.M. Friday the classes break and the wise ones go straight to bed without food, wine, or small talk, knowing that the routine resumes early Saturday morning.

Even when classes break for lunch Saturday afternoon there's no break in the language. The groups have lunch together in the language they're learning. Then they return to class and keep on going.

On Saturday at dusk some of the students begin to report phenomena resembling out of body experiences. Urbanski jokes, "Only when this constant bombardment collapses your resistance can the new language come surging in like an angry sea through a broken dike."

Even the students who were suggesting wine and talk the night before hasten to bed in order to meet the dawn on Sunday, the final day. Sessions continue clear up to a late lunch, after which there's a "graduation" exercise, whereupon everybody vows to return at the next opportunity for immersion in the next highest level of their language.

Dr. Urbanski wants his immersion students to have fun. Walk down the corridors during teaching hours (or follow a group on a "language hike" through the mountains around New Paltz) and you'll hear laughter, clapping, singing, and what sound like pep rallies in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, and the other languages of the weekend.

"Why make students suffer unnecessarily?" Urbanski asks. "Learning a language doesn't have to bring pain and suffering. We believe in providing a nonthreatening environment in which students are rewarded for their progress but not punished for their errors." An immersion graduate added, "The festival spirit wakes us up, keeps us sharp, lubricates the flow of new words, and anesthetises us against the pain of grammar."

Urbanski never promises you can go straight from a weekend of foreign language immersion to a booth at the United Nations and simultaneously interpret a foreign minister's address. What immersion promises is a more than elementary introduction to the language, a good grounding in its words and melodies, the ability to "defend" yourself in that language without help, and a solid base from which you can grow, either through self study or more courses. No claim is made that students will be fluent by the end of one immersion weekend. "We teach linguistic survival," says Urbanski. "After a few immersion weekends our students can manage in the language."