Enhancing Romance

Ten years ago the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures began searching for new teaching strategies to supplant the traditional regimen of grammar drills and textbook exercises.

Under a new language coordinator, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Wilga M. Rivers, the department began a curriculum overhaul that brought new courses, technology, and methods of instruction. Since these changes began in 1974, enrollment in language courses has jumped 66 percent, Rivers says.

"We're developing the types of courses to suit the needs of Harvard students," Rivers explains, adding that because 70 percent of Harvard students come to the college with a solid knowledge of a language, the program incorporates a "great deal of work at the advanced levels."

The primary target of the intermediate and upper level courses is to give students a practical command of the language, according to Rivers. For example, the recently created Spanish Cd, "Spanish Oral Survival Course," was designed so that "if a student were helicoptered into Spain tomorrow, he or she could communicate," Rivers explained.

Responding to a perceived demand from students who plan to work abroad, the department has begun a series of "language for business" courses, the latest of which, "Spanish for Business," will start next year.

The French version of the course, introduced in the spring of 1982, goes beyond the basic vocabulary for working in a Francophone country. Students learn specific French business practices, like labor relations, and are prepared to take the French Chamber of Commerce exam, according to Senior Preceptor Judith G. Frommer, who teaches the course.

The department also offers "Portugese for Business," which Assistant Professor Naomi Hoki Moniz says is particularly relevant after Portugal's recent entry into the European Common Market.

Other practical courses added under the curriculum-development program include "Reading Italian," begun two years ago, and "Spanish for the Bilingual," for students looking to perfect their native language.

These practically oriented classes have expanded the department's curriculum, but greater use of modern technology--once limited to weekly treks to the language lab--now has become the foundation of both new and old classes.

An advanced Spanish class, for example, spends an entire semester watching Latin American soap operas via satellite in order to study the dialects and cultural idiosyncracies of Hispanic society, Rivers says.

Beginning in 1979 French F and French G students have written and filmed video programs imitating television's "Eyewitness News," shows which Senior Preceptor Anne Slack says "have to be humorous and far-fetched, or else we'd get terribly bored."

In recreating an entire program--news, weather, editorials and commercials--Slack says her students "have to learn body movements and gestures that are as authentically French as possible," since students at this level "usually have very good pronunciation and need only work on the little details you see at the advanced level."

With the videotapes, "they can see themselves as French as they can be and see their mistakes themselves," she adds.

Moniz says Portuguese students have recently used tapes from Brazilian television, to observe regional dialects and interaction between social classes, and they have also written and taped theater plays.

For instructors in the Italian section, extensive use of videotapes will have to wait a couple of years, because manufacturers are "just now beginning to see good material on the market," explains Luigi Burzio, an assistant professor in the department.

The modern technology drive in the department has also included studies of the integration of computer-assisted learning into courses, according to Frommer, who will study student reaction to computer instruction at this year's Harvard Summer School.

Senior Preceptor in Psychology Scott O. Bradner, a technical expert working with Frommer, says that in the next three months he and Frommer will be "developing test programs to experiment with next year, as well as creating an environment in which instructors can write their own programs even if they have no programming experience."

Bradner stresses that computer-assisted learning remains in the testing stages and that "there is nothing implied on the part of the University to buy any equipment."

Despite the individualized nature of computer-assisted instruction, Rivers emphasizes that the department's pedagogical approach to teaching language is "interactive" among teachers and students.

"We use the communication-task approach, in which interaction and shared tasks inspire communication between students and promote a less teacher-centered environment," Rivers explains.

Downplaying the intricacies of foreign grammar, intensive courses like Spanish Bab aim to teach successful language students the first three semesters of another language in just one semester.

"I speak entirely in Spanish and demonstrate everything--I put all my life in that class," explained Senior Lecturer Hugo H. Montero, who created Spanish Bab 18 years ago, and has taught it ever since.

"Hugo stands up there like an orchestra conductor and says a sentence. Each person around the room then has to change it a little bit--it's very fast, and there's no sitting and waiting," says Mark E. Fishbein '84, who took the class in the spring and afterward received a score of 770 out of a perfect 800 on the Harvard placement exam.

"Intensive courses in the Italian section have always been very good, and now we are offering intense elementary Italian both semesters," Burzio adds.

The intensive, interactive approach to language instruction may have begun at Dartmouth College. Although Dartmouth does not offer specific courses labelled "intense," according to John A. Rassias, a professor of French at the college, professors there "have a method in which there is full participation every minute of the hour."

"There is a high level of energy as students are asked questions rapidly in succession, and the attention level is extraordinary," he explains, adding that his Rassias Method is now used at more than 200 colleges nationwide.

Rivers partially attributes the success of the Harvard curriculum overhaul to a thorough training program for all doctoral candidate teaching fellows, in which they take a full-credit class on the methodology of language teaching and practice their own techniques in a classroom situation.

Prize

At the end of each year, the department also awards a $1,000 study prize to the best teaching fellow, "It's good incentive to see that their teaching is appreciated," Rivers says.

Another reason for the program's success, according to Rivers, is its flexibility. "I believe in giving people a chance to develop their own ideas," she says, adding that the writing requirements for language courses now focus on creativity--"things people will enjoy writing and discussing with other students."

Next year the four main sections of the department will continue revamping their curricula.

The French section will offer a new concentration in French culture and civilization, which will focus on literature and language while also starting new courses in French cinema and French feminist theory, for example.

"The concentration will be highly individualized, with a focus on France--but not just on languages and literature," explains Alice A. Jardine, the assistant professor in charge of the new concentration.

The Spanish section will introduce its "Spanish for Business" course, while Burzio says the Italian section will work on promoting its enrollment-starved intermediate level course.

Moniz adds that the Portuguese section may begin translating computer software already on the market into Portugese but that it will not offer any Portugese intensive course next year