Tug of War Over Teaching: The Goal is Proficiency

by Kristen Brustad

The University of Texas at Austin is currently home to the premier Arabic Studies program in the nation. Our Arabic Language Flagship is a federally funded mandate to produce the professionals the United States needs to understand political currents in the Arab world, including revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen. We have graduated 26 students in the past three years with advanced to professional proficiency in Arabic.

Some of these students are working for the government now, two in jobs they can’t tell us about. Others are seeking higher degrees, and one is engaged in very low-cost research on Islamic movements in Egypt. For undergraduates to accomplish this level of proficiency was unheard of five years ago. Today it is reality. Efficient? Yes, if we consider that it used to take twice as long for the most dedicated students to reach this level of proficiency. In terms of class size? Not so much.

I and my colleagues in Arabic are not at the top of the efficiency charts in terms of the number of students taught — certainly nowhere near the top 20 percent cited by Richard Vedder of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. Fortunately, our costs are subsidized in part by the National Language Flagship, so our bottom line is pretty good, but we are not a cheap program.

We could certainly become much more “efficient” if we expanded class size to 50 or 100 students. I could lecture six hours a week to 50 Arabic students with little preparation on my part – lecturing is easy, and I can take up lots of time showing videos and explaining the finer points of Arabic grammar. The best part about lecturing on grammar is the more you lecture, the more questions students have. It quickly becomes an exercise in hypothetical. Efficient? Many students are being taught. But are they learning Arabic? Not so much.