Foreign languages and higher education: new structures for a changed world

Abstract

Institutional missions and teaching approaches typically reflect either the instrumentalist or the constitutive view of language. Freestanding language schools and some campus language-resource centers often embrace an instrumentalist focus to support the needs of the students they serve, whereas university and college foreign language departments tend to emphasize the constitutive aspect of language and its relation to cultural and literary traditions, cognitive structures, and historical knowledge. Culture is represented not only in events, texts, buildings, artworks, cuisines, and many other artifacts but also in language itself. So, if to sum up, to put it in English, making summary, the British methods have a number of distinctive features. Most of them are based on the integration of traditional and modern teaching methods. Differentiation by age group and multi-level approach enable the development of individual human beings, affect its outlook, system of values, identity, ability to think. An individual approach is of paramount importance nowadays.
Key words: constitutive view of language, freestanding language schools, value, individual approach, differentiation, identity.