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ARTICULATION IS AN ENDURING, COMplex, and problematic issue in foreign language (FL) education. For students and FL programs, the move from secondary schools to college or university is often characterized by abrupt change and frustration rather than smooth transition. Placement into university coursework, whether determined by achievement tests or self-placement, and certification for graduation requirements, often stated in terms of seat time (semesters/quarters of study), appear to be driven more by the demands of our bureaucracies than by our growing knowledge of language assessment and instruction. Since Fall of 1988, the University of Minnesota has had in place an innovative foreign language requirement that includes entrance and exit proficiency assessments for approximately 1500 students a year. This large-scale assessment program has allowed us to investigate articulation from a functional proficiency perspective.

US Department of Education report A Nation at Risk (1983) and the reports of the Holmes Group (1986) and the Carnegie Foundation (1986), an advisory committee formed by the Minnesota Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (MCTFL) commissioned a study of the pre-professional educational experiences of MCTFL members.1 The study, carried out during the academic year 1986-87, was jointly funded by MCTFL and the College of Education, University of Minnesota.2 The instrument designed for the study was a questionnaire consisting of six sections (see appendix).3 The first, a "demographic" section, addressed respondent characteristics (major, where teaching currently, number of years taught, levels taught, number of language teachers in district, highest degree attained, state in which pre-professional preparation occurred). The remainder solicited respondent perceptions concerning specific areas of preprofessional preparation: 1) general or liberal arts background; 2) major; 3) general preservice professional preparation; 4) preparation to teach a second language; and 5) student teaching. In Part A of each section, participants were asked, based on their own perceptions, to indicate: 1) their gain in knowledge or understanding; 2) the adequacy of preparation; and 3) the usefulness of the preparation. In Part B of each section, participants were also asked to respond to three open-ended questions: 1) "Which of the above areas would you like to see changed or strengthened?" 2) "Where should additions be made?" and 3) "What should be removed?"

Introduction - Rae Andre and Peter J Frost Leading the Learning Experience PART ONE: THE PROBLEM: TEACHING ON THE RESEARCH SIDE OF THE BRAIN Struggling with Balance - Cynthia V Fukami My Career as a Teacher - Howard E Aldrich Promise, Failure, Redemption Teaching and Research - Barbara A Gutek A Puzzling Dichotomy If It's Not Teaching and Research, What Is It? - Rae Andre PART TWO: ONE SOLUTION: LIVES THAT INTEGRATE TEACHING AND RESEARCH On Publish or Perish, Pedagogy, and Getting a Life - Bill Van Buskirk Synergies and Tensions: An Interview with Bill Van Buskirk From Outcast to Postmodernist - David M Boje Learning to Teach - Peter J Frost Lessons from a Life in Business and Academia Scholarship as a Career of Learning through Research and Teaching - Thomas A Mahoney In Search of Myself in the Context of Russian and American Humanitarian Culture - Nikita Pokrovsky PART THREE: FINDING SOLUTIONS IN PRACTICE Learning to Teach - Beverly J Cameron An Ongoing Process Teaching in the Real World - Jeff Mello Teaching from the Heart - Afsaneh Nahavandi Between Text and Context - Pushkala Prasad Restoring Connections in the OB Classroom Anatomy of a Colleagueship - Marcy Crary and Duncan Spelman Collaborations in and out of the Classroom Teaching as Leading - Donald C Hambrick PART FOUR: LEADING THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE Meditations on a Poet's Overalls - Peter B Vaill The Teaching Experience as Learning in Public - Karl E Weick The Power of Dialogue - Darlyne Bailey Celebrating the Praxis of Teaching and Research PART FIVE: A LOOK AT THE FUTURE: SOME QUESTIONS Conclusion - Rae Andre and Peter J Frost

a constant concern since public education began, the past ten years have seen a meteoric increase in reports and proposals for that purpose. The rhetoric of the various reports and proposals for the improvement of elementary and secondary schools, teacher education, teaching, higher education, including foreign language learning and teaching, appears to use the same strategy: alarm, negate, propose. Instead of building on examples of a positive direction, blanket condemnation of current practice seems to be the requisite for recommendations. And, in turn, these point toward the improvement of the political, economic, and security position of the United States in relation to some other political and economic system against which it needs to be defended. The betterment of education appears to be but a secondary issue. My intent here is to examine the most recent reports and proposals for the improvement of foreign language education in the context of recommendations for the enhancement of edu

ditional methods of testing second or foreign language proficiency has increased. Since the middle of the sixties, discrete-point testing has increasingly been considered too limited an approach to the evaluation of language proficiency. Current interest in more global or integrative tests is demonstrated in the literature of testing. 1 The CLOZE test is one procedure which is claimed to test global language proficiency. This paper examines two different methods of generating and scoring CLOZE tests in German at the university level, determines which of these combinations may be most useful in testing German at this level, and evaluates the contribution of researcher-determined logical factors (exclusively grammar, primarily grammar, primarily text, grammar and text equally represented, and grammar, text, and context equally represented) to student performance in the selection of items to fill CLOZE test slots.

This paper describes a short study investigating how fully potential users of the ACTFL (1, 2) and ILR Proficiency Scales (8) acquire the standard and thus accurately grade reading passages according to the scales. Because the study's participants came from three different languages, French German, and Spanish, English passages served for the training. The passages had been previously rated by the ILR Testing Committee and were subsequently rated blind by the participants in the study. The extent to which the standard was correctly applied was checked by two tasks, ranking passages for difficulty and rating them according to the scales. We hypothesized that if potential users of the scale could accomplish these tasks with suitable accuracy, then a major criticism of the reading proficiency scales and a significant impediment to their use could be overcome. In the present study, twenty-five participants in a five-day workshop designed items for testing proficiency in listening, reading, writing and speaking at the University of Minnesota. On the first and final days of the workshop participants attempted the ranking and rating tasks for reading texts. The success achieved on the two tasks suggests strongly that the reading proficiency standard can indeed be learned and passages ranked and rated accordingly.

Implementation of a graduate program for training second language teachers began in the fall of 1987. Components of the program include: (1) intensive 9-month on-site clinical experiences in a school district; (2) the development of skills in self-examination and teacher observation in which students utilize skills as reflective teachers to examine classroom processes and outcomes; and (3) a research component which allows them to consider questions of second language teaching and learning in actual classroom settings.

at a crossroads. Many of the recommendations of the fifties, sixties, and seventies have been consolidated into practice. Further consolidation may have fostered a certain realism. With enrollments in school foreign language programs on the decline, teacher lay-offs taking place due to economic conditions, and a general economic malaise gripping institutes of higher education, colleges of education, in particular, foreign language educators may have adopted a "hold-on-to-what-exists" attitude, assuming that further gains would not be possible. Finally, education has been experiencing concerns of a larger nature beyond the scope of second languages which deal with the scope, nature, and control of teacher education in general.1 Among others, these general concerns relate to selection of teacher candidates, application of theory and practice in actual settings, training modes, evaluation of training, evaluation of teacher effectiveness, and evaluation of teacher development programs. Because a crossroads has been reached, it is appropriate at this time to examine the status of teacher education in second languages. This article reviews criteria for success of both teacher education programs and language teachers across educational levels, examining what has already been achieved in preparing teachers. It further examines what progress may be achieved to help equip teachers for success. Finally, it offers a set of proposals to engage teacher education specialists in second languages in dialog about the future of teacher development. The terms "preparation," "training," "education," and "development" have been used in regard to readying teachers to function in the classroom. The first two are somewhat unsatis

Early in 1983, the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota embarked on an investigation of its foreign language requirement for the BA degree. After nearly a year of public hearings and deliberations, the Task Force appointed by the dean determined the then current language requirement to be inadequate and recommended the establishment of an entrance standard as well as the strengthening of the graduation requirement. In March 1984, the College of Liberal Arts Faculty Assembly approved the Task Force recommendations with only a few minor revisions. The key concept in both the entrance standard and the graduation requirement is proficiency, using the ACTFL Provisional Proficiency Guidelines. Since the publication of the Guidelines is relatively recent and since there were only a few certified testers for the ACTFL system, it was first necessary to hold a workshop to train Minnesota secondary and collegiate teachers. The first workshop was held in June 1984. Thirty teachers were trained, ten each for French, German, and Spanish. Shorter workshops were held during the 1984–85 academic year to plan the implementation of proficiency testing for speaking, reading, listening, and writing in French, German, and Spanish. The testing instruments for listening, reading, and writing were drafted in June 1985 and will be used for pilot-testing during Fall, Winter, and Spring Quarters in 1985–86. In Spring 1986, all secondary school seniors planning to enter the College of Liberal Arts in Fall 1986 will be tested for proficiency according to the ACTFL Guidelines.

dard part of many teacher preparation programs in all curriculum areas today, including foreign languages (DeLorenzo, 1975; DeLorenzo, 1973; Wolfe, 1971). Descriptions of some microteaching programs mention the possibility of using peers as pupils in the classes (DeLorenzo, 1975, p. 241; Weiss, 1972, p. 37), although Allen and Cooper (1972, p. 1) specifically "do not consider this to be microteaching," and prefer to give the name "microteaching" only to work with "real" pupils, as does Brown (1975, p. 132). Most of the literature in the field, beginning with the original Stanford University studies (Allen and Ryan, 1969; Politzer, n.d.; Bartley and Politzer, n.d.), has dealt with teaching real pupils, and the value of such experiences has been established in several empirical studies (Dugas, 1968; Kallenbach and Gall, 1969; Fortune, Cooper, and Allen, 1967). The value of peer-group microteaching as preparation for student teaching, however, has been consistently minimized, possibly because research studies have tended to regard peer-group microteaching as a replacement for teaching real students rather than as a preparation for such experiences (Altman and Ramirez, 1971; Kallenbach, 1967). Davis and Smoot (1969), however, found definite value in peer-group microteaching in modifying verbal teaching behaviors. In our opinion, microteaching of any kind cannot replace work in a school, such as in student teaching or in an internship. Yet as a pre-student-teaching experience, peergroup microteaching may have value that has not been recognized. Advantages of peer-group microteaching in second la guages include the following