But Teachers Are in Short Supply : Foreign Language Study on Rise

To a fast-growing number of U.S. high school and college students, French is now considered essentiel , German is notwendig , Spanish is imprescindible, Russian is nuzhen and Japanese is hissu .

In plain English, it means foreign language study is surging in popularity. This is especially true of Japanese and Chinese.

Yet the Americans still trail youngsters in most industrialized countries in terms of foreign language ability. Education professionals caution, furthermore, that future progress is doubtful without better teachers--and more of them.

Almost a third, or 30.9%, of the nation’s 12.5 million public high school students are studying modern foreign languages. That represents the largest proportion in 70 years, and up 21.3% in 1982, according to a soon-to-be-published survey by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages made available to the Associated Press.

Spanish and French remain by far the most popular languages. Some 2.3 million high school students and 411,000 college students are learning Spanish, recent surveys showed, and 1.1 million high school students and 275,000 college students were enrolled in French studies.

Asian Tongues Gaining

College-level courses in Chinese and Japanese showed the largest gains: 23,454 were studying Japanese in 1986, up 45.4 % from 16,127 in 1983. In the same period, enrollment in Chinese classes rose 28.2%, from 13,178 to 16,891, according to the Modern Language Assn.

Reasons given for the increases are school evaluation reports stressing language study, universities and colleges requiring a foreign language for admission or graduation, a heightened awareness of foreign trade issues, increased foreign travel, and a general trend back to educational “basics.”

Foreign economic competition, language experts say, is apparently causing some Americans finally to begin shedding their longstanding indifference to other cultures and the expectation that others should understand English but Americans need to know no language but their own.

According to the MLA report, scheduled for publication in January, the number of college and university students studying a language other than English reached 1,003,234 in the fall of 1986, up 3.9% from 1983, and it was the first time in 14 years that college foreign language enrollment exceeded 1 million.

The 12 most widely studied foreign languages, in order of popularity, are Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Latin, Japanese, ancient Greek, Chinese, Hebrew, Portuguese and Arabic. Among these, Hebrew courses lost the most enrollment, a decline of 14.1% to 15,630, the MLA report found. Enrollment in ancient Greek courses fell 9% to 17,608, and Arabic fell 0.5 % to 3,417.

Changes Across Nation

An October survey by the Joint National Committee for Languages, a Washington lobby for foreign language and exchange programs, also found a wide range of activity at the state level, including:

- An Arizona state task force is considering requiring foreign language instruction in grade schools;

- The Colorado Department of Education has hired a full-time foreign language consultant and the University of Colorado has established three years of a foreign language as a requirement for admission;

- The University of Delaware has reinstated a two-year foreign language entrance requirement;

- Florida language enrollments this fall are up 16% at the elementary level, 8% in middle schools and 11% at the high school level;

- The University of Iowa is recruiting college sophomores to teach Russian, Japanese and Chinese.

- Minnesota secondary school enrollment in foreign languages nearly doubled, from 14.4% in 1982-83 to 27% in 1985-86;

- Oregon language class enrollments are up 11% even though the state university has no foreign language requirement;

- Virginia operates academies that offer high school students six weeks of total immersion in a language.

Shortage of Good Teachers

Foreign language study still faces formidable roadblocks in many states, however, and even the encouraging signs are being interpreted cautiously.

For example, enrollments for Japanese may be soaring, but many students don’t survive the first year because of the difficulty of that language and poor teaching techniques, said Eleanor Jordan, a veteran Japanese instructor who has taught at Cornell and Williams universities and is now with the new Johns Hopkins National Foreign Language Center in Washington.

It is also hard for most school districts to assess the abilities of foreign language teachers.

“Particularly in Asian languages, there is no one who can check this person out,” Jordan said. “We have to train good teachers of foreign languages. There is a mythology that native speakers can teach simply because they know the language. The profession needs to be professionalized.”

Most high schools and colleges still regard foreign language study as an elective course rather than a graduation requirement.

Only one-sixth of the nation’s 1,300 baccalaureate-granting colleges and universities require foreign language study for a bachelor’s degree, according to preliminary tabulations of a yet-unpublished survey by the American Council on Education.

High School Electives

No state requires foreign language for high school graduation, according to the Education Commission of the States in Denver. The District of Columbia requires all high-school degree candidates to study a foreign language for one year.

Many states could not increase high school foreign language lessons even if they wanted to because there simply aren’t enough teachers being trained.

The latest federal statistics show that 9,810 U.S. college students earned bachelor’s degrees in modern foreign languages in 1986, up slightly from 9,158 in 1984, but sharply lower than the peak of 19,457 in 1970. Just 1,656 master’s degrees in foreign languages and 427 doctorates, were granted in 1986.