Leading Your World Language Program

Strategies for Design and Supervision, Even If You Don’t Speak the Language!

Catherine Ritz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367469764
• eBook ISBN: 9781000195781
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

An essential resource for district, school, and program leaders who supervise, evaluate, or otherwise support World Language programs, this book provides clear, practical guidance on leading an exemplary K–12 World Language program. No matter whether you speak the language, the effective approaches in this book will equip you with the tools you need to implement and evaluate World Language curricula in your school. Catherine Ritz provides a clear and research-based framework for World Language instruction aligned to rigorous national and state standards, and addresses essential concepts and topics, including program and curriculum design, assessment and evaluation, and strategic planning.

Whether you are a World Language department chair with years of experience, a school administrator with no background in language education, or a World Language teacher, you will find much to use in this book. It is chock-full of ready-to-use resources and tools, including:

• Templates for program and unit planning, observation protocols, and sample assessments
• World LAnguage program models for different age ranges, and a sample curriculum unit
• Additional resource lists and further reading recommendations.

1

World Language Education

Values and Methods

The time has come to examine how well we are currently preparing students to take on the challenges of living and competing in a global society. Students around the world are being raised in a multilingual environment and our monolingual students will be at a distinct disadvantage when competing on a global stage. I urge school system administrators, policymakers, and corporate and government leaders … to make a commitment to equip our students for the challenges they will face in the world of tomorrow.

(Lovejoy, 2010)

Let’s be honest, World Language education in the United States has been largely unsuccessful. Too many of us spent countless hours in a language class to only be able to say a few words years later. It’s a common joke amongst World Language teachers that they would be millionaires if only they had a quarter for every time someone came up to them at a party and said, “You teach Spanish? I studied Spanish for five years and I can only say, ‘hola’!” While a mere 10–20% of the U.S. adult population speaks another language in addition to English, only 16.3% of that number report learning the language at school (Commission on Language Learning, 2016, pp. 4 and 8). The majority of our bilingual adults acquired their second language at home (Commission on Language Learning, 2016, p. 8).

There are many reasons for the lack of World Language development in American students, but one important factor lies in the traditional teaching methods—which emphasize grammatical learning and vocabulary memorization—that persist in use despite evidence of more effective and engaging models of learning. To understand what the traditional methods look like in practice, let’s imagine that instead of trying to teach our students a language, we are trying to teach them how to play baseball. Using traditional methods, our would-be baseball players would find themselves in a classroom, seated in rows, where they would be taking copious notes on the structure of the game of baseball. Vocabulary quizzes would be given to ensure that all the right terminology had been memorized. Diagrams of professional players would be analyzed in detail to ensure students had mastered the correct structure of how to hold and swing a bat. And perhaps we would even have our students examine the trajectories of the ball depending on the angle with which the bat was swung. While this may be a fascinating class that many of us might be interested in taking (or not!), I think we can all agree that it would be unlikely that any of our students would actually become proficient baseball players with this method of instruction. No, even young children begin learning how to play baseball by holding the bat and trying to swing for themselves. We scaffold their learning by using Ts, larger balls, and lighter and wider bats. Actually playing the game—in a structured and supported way—is what leads to proficient baseball players. The same is true for our language learners. If we keep students in classrooms where they are doing nothing more than analyzing the grammar of the language and being quizzed on vocabulary, we cannot reasonably expect that they will develop proficiency in using the language to communicate. Like the baseball players, our students also need to be allowed to get out on the field and play for themselves. Traditional methods of World Language education are outdated and must be changed if we hope to see more of our students develop proficiency in a language other than English in our school systems.

But placing the blame for lack of language development solely at the feet of World Language education itself would be inaccurate and hugely unfair. Another major factor contributing to lack of language learning success in the United States is that Americans, quite simply, do not value language learning. Americans look around and see a world in which everyone speaks English—or so we think. Learning another language seems nice, but not essential. If the budget is tight, it’s easy to cut a World Language program. Nationwide, only 20% of our K–12 students are actually even enrolled in a World Language class (Devlin, 2018). Compare that with a median of 92% of K–12 students in European countries, where—by the way—learning a second foreign language is required in more than 20 countries (Devlin, 2018). In higher education, the last few years were devastating for language learning, with over 650 foreign language programs cut in a three-year period (Johnson, 2019). Although the methods used to teach languages must change if we are to see better outcomes for our students, we also need to take a hard look in the mirror about how we are valuing and supporting World Language education. Decisions are being made about what to teach our children, and too often the choice is not to include a language.

In this chapter, we’ll consider why Americans should prioritize learning another language beyond English, and examine some of the many cognitive and academic benefits of bilingualism. We’ll also look at some traditional methods in World Language education used in the United States, and consider a contemporary approach to more successful language learning experiences for our students that can be achieved with your leadership.

Doesn’t Everyone Just Speak English?

Everyone speaks English, right? Well, not quite. English is certainly a globally used, widely spoken language, but it’s not the only one. In fact, if we look at native speakers worldwide, English comes in third. The language with the largest number of native speakers is actually Chinese, followed by Spanish (Ethnologue, 2019a). Table 1.1 provides a ranking of first-language speakers.

Table 1.1 Top Ten Languages Globally by First-Language Speaker

Rank	Language (includes all dialects)	Native Speakers (millions)
1	Chinese Mandarin Chinese only	1,311 918
2	Spanish	460
3	English	379
4	Hindi	341
5	Arabic	319
6	Bengali	228
7	Portuguese	221
8	Russian	154
9	Japanese	128
10	Lahnda	119

Source: Ethnologue, 2019a

When we factor in second-language speakers, English does come in first, but not by much. Combining native and second-language speakers, English is spoken by 1,132 million people globally, trailed closely by Mandarin Chinese, which is spoken by 1,117 million people globally (Ethnologue, 2019b). Table 1.2 provides a ranking of the top spoken languages when factoring in both first- and second-language speakers.

Table 1.2 Ranking of Most Spoken Languages, Including First- and Second-Language Speakers

Rank	Language	Native Speakers (millions)	Second-Language Speakers (millions)	Total Speakers (millions)
1	English (all dialects)	379	753	1,132
2	Mandarin Chinese	918	199	1,117
3	Hindi (all dialects)	341	274	615
4	Spanish (all dialects)	460	74.2	534.2

Source: Ethnologue, 2019b

Let’s put these large numbers in perspective. There are approximately 7.5 billion people on the earth. So, if 1,132 million of them speak English as either a first or a second language, that translates into roughly 20% of the global population. To be clear, this means that around 80% of the world does not speak English. So, while English certainly is an important, widely used global language, it is far from being spoken by “everyone.” For us to cavalierly assume that the whole world speaks English—and that we don’t need any other language to communicate—puts Americans at a dangerous disadvantage. The view shared by many Americans that they don’t need to learn another language since they already speak English has prevented us from realizing the importance of being able to communicate effectively around the world. While children in other countries are being taught multiple languages in their K–12 school systems, our belief that English is the global language has kept us from preparing our students for a competitive future. We are not lucky that “everyone” speaks English; rather, we have been blinded by this false belief, to our own detriment.

Though we might think of it as an advantage, the spread of Global English has become a national handicap for us, for it has given us a false sense of security and actually clouded our understanding of the world beyond our borders. Being born speakers of the global lingua franca enables us to be lazy, to confine ourselves to a monolingual perspective …. It translates into ignorance and loss of power.

(Grandin, 2006, p. 184)

Even within the United States, it would be misleading to say that “everyone” speaks English. In fact, the U.S. Census Bureau (2017) found that 21.3% of Americans speak a language other than English at home. The number of Spanish speakers in the United States has increased 233% since 1980, and the number of Vietnamese speakers has increased 599% in the same time period (Lopez & Gonzalez-Barrera, 2013). Other languages are on the rise as well. Chinese, Portuguese, Korean, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Persian, and Armenian have all seen an increase in speakers in the United States since the 1980s (Desilver, 2014). To do business and communicate with members of our communities here at home requires language skills beyond just English.

The Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—which confront the daily realities of working in a global capacity—have long been advocating for stronger World Language education in this country. Former CIA Director Leon Panetta (2018) penned a strongly worded op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle in which he lamented American’s “myopia” in failing to realize the importance of learning another language. He explains the real significance of the lack of language expertise when facing global challenges and crises:

In times of great national security challenges, such as those we face today, as well as in times of great opportunity, such as the opening of new international markets, we find ourselves scrambling for people who can speak, write, and think in languages other than English. In those moments, we search high and low for people w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Meet the Author
• Acknowledgments
• eResources
• 1. World Language Education: Values and Methods
• 2. Talking the Talk: Essential Concepts in World Language Education
• 3. Program Design: Building Blocks for an Exemplary World Language Program
• 4. Curriculum Design: UbD Through a World Language Lens
• 5. Assessments: Fueling a Cycle of Language Learning
• 6. Evaluation When You Don’t Speak the Language
• 7. Implementing Change: Developing Your Strategic Plan
• Appendix A: Proficiency Target Rough Guide
• Appendix B: Program Planning Template
• Appendix C: Unit Planning Template
• Appendix D: Sample Thematic Unit
• Appendix E: Sample Rotating Thematic Curriculum Outline
• Appendix F: Framework of Essential World Language Instructional Practices Observation Protocol
• Appendix G: Focused Observation Protocol: Foundations of Lesson Design
• Appendix H: Focused Observation Protocol: Target-Language Use
• Appendix I: Focused Observation Protocol: Task Design
• Appendix J: Focused Observation Protocol: Curriculum and Assessment Design
• Appendix K: Evaluation Plan Template
• Appendix L: Strategic Planning Template
• Appendix M: Stakeholder Engagement Plan Template