Martha Abbott: Doyenne of Global Languages
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
Martha (Marty) Abbott,
Director of Education for the American Council on the Teaching
of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), whose previous work in education
includes over 30 years teaching and coordinating language
programs in Fairfax County (VA) schools, all levels, and
whose resume boasts language and literature study in Latin
as well as in Spanish, spontaneously offers up one of her
favorite sayings—from Vergil’s Aeneid, Possunt quia posse videntur—“They were able to do it because they believed they could
do it.” The mantra, which served her well in teaching,
reflects her ebullience and smarts. ACTFL could not have a
more enthusiastic and thoughtful head of its national initiative,
2005: The Year of Languages. Why now? She laughs, well, showing
how much humor informs her meeting the challenges, which are
difficult indeed. Well, she could say it’s because of
the alignment of the planets, but in truth, a lot of things
began to coalesce, especially after 9 /11: the government’s
acknowledgment that barely 30% of its employees in significant
positions could have translated terrorist chatter or Arabic
embassy documents; the fact that the European Union had had
its own successful Year of Languages in 2001, a program centered
on having EU citizens become proficient in another language
and somewhat conversant in three or four other tongues; the
emerging importance of China in the world economy; and the
need for bilingual speakers in regions with multi-ethnic populations
with whom The United States has vital interests, such as Afghanistan.
Do the efforts of ACTFL mean that Pashtu, even Arabic, will be taught K-12?
No, at least not immediately, Marty Abbott says, but the
initiative does mean to signal the importance of foreign
languages in American education. “We’re asking
American children to learn at least one language other than
their own.” The implication is that whatever the language,
the model will be formed.
The Year of Languages signals the kickoff of a major PR campaign at all
levels, federal, state, city, local, to acknowledge, fund,
study, and evaluate the study of foreign languages. A Discover
Languages logo has already appeared on TV, in newspapers,
and on signs in government agencies. Both the Pentagon and
the National Security Council, for example, agencies she
recently visited, pledging their support, as did Congress,
reflected in Senate and House proclamations (text is available
on the ACTFL website).
One of the more successful techniques to make ordinary citizens aware of
the importance of renewed attention to foreign languages
has been what Marty Abbott gleefully calls the “languish
ambush” or pop quiz, where ACTFL staff go out on the
street and randomly ask passersby, in a foreign language,
do you know what time it is? The results, she says, are what
you’d expect. ACTFL wants to change that, incrementally.
ACTFL, “the only national organization dedicated to the improvement
and expansion of the teaching and learning of all languages
at all levels of instruction throughout the U.S.,” notes
on its website the “ambitious” nature of the
initiative. It’s just the beginning, says Marty
Abbott. This is the wake up year, but she expects soon that
the organization will come up with criteria for strategic
research studies and for evaluations that will show foreign
language study as important to the schools as the arts. Yes,
she is aware of the bad reputation the teaching of languages
has had in the U.S. for a long time, at the bottom right
after mathematics as the most poorly taught discipline in
schools. But all that’s changing with new attention
to processes that stress comprehension, reading and speaking.
A middle school in Fairfax, introduced a Japanese Immersion
Program that was wildly successful, at least to judge from
the students eating sushi! Foreign languages like mathematics,
Marty Abbott points out, are the only sequential disciplines
in the schools. Teachers assume a continuum and rely on what
has been taught earlier, regardless of what grades and years
of study actually mean. Language study now involves content
areas, so that youngsters learning about the butterfly, for
example, get instruction in English that is then reinforced
in another language. One can only hope that 2005 will be,
as they say in Latin, an annus mirabilis.#
