Faculty Staff Q&A

Mark Ashwill has been at UB since 1990. Before becoming director of the World Languages Institute (WLI) in 1993, he served as assistant director for program support in the Office of International Education. Ashwill is also the campus advisor for the Fulbright Program. The WLI's homepage is at: http://wings.buffalo.edu/academic/department/AandL/world-languages/

What is the World Languages Institute?

The World Languages Institute is a unique section of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures (MLL) that offers language and culture instruction in 11 less-commonly-taught languages (LCTLs), including Arabic, Danish, Modern Greek, Haitian Creole, Hebrew (third-year only), Hindi, Indonesian, Swahili, Thai, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

While our primary mission is language instruction, the WLI also engages in fund raising in support of our programs; promotes global awareness and intercultural sensitivity on campus and in the community, and serves the international communication needs of the Western New York private sector. Every summer, the institute sponsors intensive programs in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian.

What's the most common misperception about the World Languages Institute that you would like to correct?

That the WLI is a separate language department. In fact, we are a fully integrated section of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, along with Chinese, Japanese and Korean, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Aside from language instruction and public service, the institute plays an important role as the department's experimental unit. Japanese and Korean are examples of programs that were upgraded as a result of student demand and interest over a period of years, changing curricular priorities at UB and the availability of resources. They were recently merged with Chinese to form the East Asian Languages and Culture section within MLL.

How does the World Languages Institute fit in with the Office of International Education and the English Language Institute?

There are many opportunities for collaboration with our colleagues in OIE and the ELI. Here are a few examples: WLI and Study Abroad Programs co-sponsorship of the historic Summer in Vietnam study-abroad program; 2) English Language Institute assistance with the pioneering Vietnamese Executive Program, and 3) International Student and Scholar Services co-sponsorship of the new Global Ambassadors Program.

What now are considered the critical languages of education, commerce and diplomacy?

According to a Modern Language Association survey of foreign language enrollments from 1990-95, there have been sizable increases in Spanish (10 percent) and even larger increases in Arabic and Chinese enrollments (40 percent), while French (-25 percent), German (-28 percent) and Russian

(-45 percent) experienced a significant decline in student interest. By contrast, enrollments in the less-commonly-taught languages rose by 23 percent. (American Sign Language, Hawaiian, Korean and Vietnamese accounted for 75 percent of this increase.) Among the LCTLs, Hindi and Swahili are also of strategic importance.

New languages are being taught by the World Languages Institute every year. How do you determine what languages to add?

This decision is based on student demand, budgetary considerations, the existence of quality materials, the availability of qualified tutors and the university's international activities and curricular priorities. Last semester, we offered Hindi for the first time in many years and ended up with an enrollment of 39 students, making it one of the largest supervised self-instructional Hindi programs in the country. We have also reactivated Haitian Creole for a select group of students this semester.

I'm excited about two proposed offerings for the 1998-99 academic year: American Sign Language and Irish.

Not all of your program's languages are taught in the classroom. How are some of the more unusual ones taught?

Since the departure of Japanese and Korean from the WLI, only Arabic and Swahili are taught in a conventional classroom format. The other languages are taught using a supervised self-instructional approach that teaches practical language skills through intensive practice with audio tapes reinforced by small-group tutorials with native-speaking tutors, many of whom are trained teachers of their language.

Tell us a little about the new Global Ambassadors Program.

This is an exciting outreach program for local schools. Global Ambassadors are UB international students and others with international experience (e.g., study-abroad returnees) who are interested in sharing their intercultural experience and knowledge with elementary or secondary students. Local teachers and their students have the opportunity to learn about a foreign culture(s), while the Global Ambassadors get a glimpse of K-12 education in the United States, as well as meet new people.

What's something most people don't know about the WLI and should?

Many people at UB are not aware of the extent to which the WLI is involved in activities that benefit local companies and schools, as well as individuals.

In a week, the institute will offer the second Japanese for Executives program in a year to 15-20 students. This six-week certificate program is designed to improve the effectiveness of Americans who deal with Japanese people and organizations. Last year, the WLI provided translation and interpreting services to over 30 companies, offered Japanese for Executives and the Vietnamese Executive Program, organized a language program for a local school, and-in cooperation with the University of Alabama-launched a pilot project of Japanese Close-Up, a videotape-based, distance-learning program for high schools.

What question do you wish I had asked and how would you have answered it?

One question that comes to mind is: how does the institute serve the university community and address the foreign-language needs of other faculties and schools? Aside from its basic mission of providing instruction in the less-commonly-taught languages, the WLI is a valuable resource and an asset to the university in many other areas. Examples of this range from translating foreign transcripts to helping a senior administrator prepare for an overseas trip by creating a custom-designed home-page with links to relevant World Wide Web resources.

A program that transcends curricular and departmental boundaries is Languages Across the Curriculum. It enables students to use their foreign language skills in non-language courses. Students who have intermediate reading proficiency in a foreign language meet once a week in small groups with a study-group leader to discuss readings related to the course in which they are enrolled.