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Questions and Answers:
Professor Isabelle de Courtivron
Isabelle de Courtivron, Professor of French Studies and Section Head of Foreign Languages & Literatures, is particularly interested in bilingual and bicultural issues and teaches "Where Is Home? Growing Up among Worlds." Why should MIT students learn languages? Why shouldn't they? Any informed, educated global citizen needs to know more about the increasingly trans-national, trans-cultural, trans-linguistic world in which we live today and in which our students will work tomorrow--regardless of their disciplines. Our international students at MIT know this already and constitute a large part of the population in our language classes. Just because English has become a world language does not mean that those who speak it exclusively can rely on this knowledge. If they do, Americans will become the only monolinguals in the world (though this is tempered by the fact that many Americans are already bilingual in English and Spanish). Learning a language is learning about a culture, about how people live, function, think; it is learning about their history, their values. It means getting a much broader critical perspective on our own culture and thus becoming a wiser and more informed citizen. These essential lessons must form an integral part of an MIT education, whether this be for political reasons (need I mention 9/11?), economic reasons (the global economy), or simply because our students are all citizens of the world and it behooves them to know more than just their tiny corner of it. What are the goals of the FLL English as a Second Language program? Our English language courses are designed for the intermediate through advanced/bilingual English speakers that form a substantial part of MIT's multicultural student body. These grade- and credit-bearing classes meet according to the MIT academic calendar. They involve regular attendance, assignments and exams. The major goal of the program is to foster accuracy, facility, and appropriateness in Anglo-American communication in a variety of academic and professional contexts: teaching recitations; conducting labs; giving conference talks; making presentations to sponsors; participating in meetings; and writing memos, grant proposals, reports and journal articles. This is the reverse of the first question, and ensures that international students teaching at MIT and/or in the U.S. have a good command of the language in which they teach our students, and a solid understanding of the culture in which they live, even if temporarily. As one who "lives in France and works in the US," what does it mean to you personally to be bicultural? This was a facetious remark on my part, meant to illustrate an exciting if somewhat divided existence between two countries with radically different histories and approaches to life. Being (at least) bi-cultural enables you to automatically "triangulate" that is, to get beyond simplistic dichotomies and develop a broader, more objective perspective on everything--from everyday customs to large political events. By knowing deeply at least two cultures, you have a much sharper perspective
on both, and thus on everything around you. You become more adaptable,
you are able to integrate the best of both worlds and to combat the worse
of both, and to bring this understanding with you into the classroom.
In my case, traveling between Boston and Paris not only "doubles
my pleasure" (as the old ads for gum used to say) but I think that
it makes me a more balanced educator and role model.
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Institute of Technology