Romance Language Dept. Reviews Teaching Fellows

First-year teaching fellows in language courses in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures compete for a $750 prize as part of the Department's efforts to monitor the quality of language teaching, according to Wilga M. Rivers, professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and coordinator of language instruction in the department.

In addition, all teaching fellows take part in an intensive two-week orientation before classes begin, while first-year teaching fellows also take a course on teaching techniques, Rivers said.

Faculty members in charge of the Department's 2000 students in French, Italian, Spanish, Portugese and Rumanian. Rivers said, also visit courses to evaluate the performance of teaching fellows.

The compulsory training course is based on the premise that even native speakers of romance languages cannot teach their languages without training. Hugo H. Montero, senior lecturer in Romance Languages and Literatures, said yesterday.

Montero, who has helped run the program for the last 16 years, said the training program at Harvard is "far ahead" of others in the country.

"At many universities there is no program at all. They simply give their teachers a book and tell them to teach. It is so sad to see," he added.

The course, which is jointly taught by Rivers and Montero, is divided into two parts: theory lectures dealing with the techniques of teaching romance languages and literatures, and practical demonstrations of the comprehension and translation drills actually used in classes.

Graduate students agree that the course is a valuable aid to teaching. "It gives you a theoretical and technical basis to develop a teaching method of your own," Franco A. Mormando, a graduate student in Italian who took the course two years ago, said yesterday, adding, "It makes you realize that you can't walk off the street to teach, that being a good teacher means being utterly prepared."

The $750 prize, awarded in the spring, goes toward sending the winner to the country where the language he teaches is spoken, Rivers said.

Teaching fellows are nominated for the prize by their course heads and are judged by three members of the university faculty outside the Department during surprise visits to the nominees' courses over a two-week period.

"Some don't like the competition. But I think it is good because it forces people to do their best in the classroom," Mormando, who won the prize two years ago, said.

Both Mormando and Debbie Contrada, a teacher in Italie E who won the prize last year as a teacher in Italian C, spent their award doing dissertation research in Italy and brushing up on their spoken Italian