TITLE: Foreign language resistance: A dynamic response through outreach, engagement and curriculum revision
Janice M. Aski

Data from the MLA (https://apps.mla.org/flsurvey_search(link is external)) as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (https://www.amacad.org/publications(link is external) ) reveal that from 2009-2013 there was a reduction in enrollments in Italian, French, Spanish and German nationally. If we narrow the MLA data search to just UVA, we see that the overall change in enrollments was -320 for these four languages (French -121, German -15, Italian +18, Spanish -202). This doesn’t appear to be a big change, but a lot has changed in the last four years. There is a substantial resistance to foreign language learning that originates from our colleagues outside of Foreign Languages, parents and students. In this talk, I will explore the reasons for this resistance and, based on these results, propose how the Foreign Languages need to represent themselves within the academy and in the community at large, and how curricula need to evolve in order to respond to the new educational landscape.

BIO

Janice M. Aski is Professor, Director of the Italian Language Program and Director of Undergraduate Studies at The Ohio State University. She specializes in foreign language pedagogy and historical Italian/Romance linguistics and has published articles in both areas. Her research in foreign language pedagogy has explored a variety of topics, such as testing, teaching reading at the elementary level, how first-year Italian textbooks and grammar practice activities reflect the current research in second-language acquisition, and an outcome comparison between traditional and hybrid Italian language courses. She is co-author (with Diane Musumeci, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) of the first-year Italian language textbook, Avanti! (4thedition), and co-author (with Cinzia Russi, University of Texas at Austin) of the monograph, Iconicity and language change.