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probably feel that it does not address their and their students' concrete
concerns about the shape of their Russian program and its place in the national
landscape.
Four missions of foreign language study. In examining the goals of
undergraduate language programs, Brecht & Walton (1994) describe four
possible missions. Naturally, these missions are not entirely separable, but
they do provide a means for institutions to think through what it is they intend to
offer their students. These missions, which are clearly relevant to high school
programs as well, can be described as follows:16
- The general education missionseeks to develop cultural awareness,
intercultural sensitivity, global perspective, insights into the workings of
language, and systems of logic;
- The applied language missionsupports the acquisition of task specific
competencies, i.e., usable language skills for occupational, recreational,
or logistical purposes;
- The specialist mission(i.e., the major) is dedicated to the transmission
of high-level, field-based expertise in order to ensure the continuity of the
profession and of the field;
- The heritage preservation missionfocuses on the maintenance or
acquisition of language for the preservation or enrichment of cultural
identity.
The question of which one or more of these missions should lie within the
scope of an institution's program needs to be considered in conjunction with the
institution's entire curriculum. This choice clearly has consequences for the
institution as a whole and not just the foreign language curriculum. Different
languages within an institution may even accord different status to the different
missions.
While it is neither necessary nor appropriate for a program to focus on
only one of these missions, it is important for institutions to have thought through
their curricular goals enough to know which goals are primary. A program that
chooses to focus on the general education mission will structure itself and
allocate resources very differently than a program choosing to focus on the
heritage preservation mission. Many programs will reflect a blend of these
missions, but even in this case, it will be useful to prioritize the missions in order
to develop courses appropriately and use resources properly.
What is most important at this point in the discussion is the fact that
decisions about program and course design cannot be made intelligently
without reference to the larger mission of the institution and the program.
Similarly, as will be discussed in more detail below, the framework presented in
this document presupposes that providing students the ability to make the
16Richard D. Brecht and A. Ronald Walton, cited by David Maxwell in NFLC
Perspectives (Fall 1994, p. 1).
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