A look at an innovative (and flamboyant) foreign language professor who created a special immersion program that I was privileged to take, after the jump …..
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Certain academic courses can be unpopular just by the way in which they are taught. History, for example was a dreary subject for me as a child because — at least the way I was taught in elementary and junior high school — was rote memorization of the names of generals. I plan to devote a future Top Comments diary to the high school history teacher Jimmie Driftwood, who made the subject exciting using music (which I have previously profiled in a Cheers & Jeers music profile).
Another is the study of foreign languages: so many of my peers hated the old language lab method, and wished there was a better way. I enjoyed taking French, and knew that my father spoke it just well enough during WW-II (in his MP brigade) to get some plum assignments in Algeria and liberated France. Still, I was glad to leave it behind after a year in college (due to it some dull classes).
In the 1980’s, I recall watching on 60 Minutes someone who offered at least the possibility of a new way: Dartmouth College language professor John Rassias who made learning exciting: explaining how to make an omelette by …. well, cracking eggs over his head! Yet I was struck by two points from the story: he noted that during the Iranian hostage crisis a few years earlier, only three people from the U.S. Embassy could speak the local language (Farsi) and that his methods produced results: graduates of his classes retained more abilities than whose training was mundane. And while he normally taught Dartmouth students, he did have a summer immersion program open to all. “Someday, I gotta take his class”, I thought. Then, I moved on to other interests.
Fast-forward to the year 2001, a few years after I had relocated to the town adjacent to Hanover, New Hampshire where Dartmouth College is situated (and whose medical center I began working at two years earlier). In the interim, I had discovered the Internet (being able to peruse both Le Monde and the Québec newspapers on-line) and being frustrated at what I had lost. And secondly: after my mother’s death, we found some letters (in French) written to my grandmother (during the war) and to my father (after the war) from people he had befriended in Algeria and France. I wrote about this in a Top Comments diary five years ago this month on what would have been his 92nd birthday (he died at only age 58).
I determined that as his son (Ed Tracey, Jr.), I wanted to translate the letters myself — and saw this as the right time to finally take the Rassias Immersion Program — a ten-day straight program, in which during breaks and in post-class gatherings and activities, one was to speak only the foreign language (or English in an ESL program). After twenty-five years off, I decided to take a community college course first, so I would not go in cold. Before I tell the tale, a bit about John Rassias himself.
Born in Manchester, New Hampshire in 1925 to Greek immigrant parents, he served in the Marines in WW-II in Okinawa. Following his death, he was described in — of all places — a Wall Street Journal editorial (which often disdains non-American ways) thusly:
He turned to the study of French and other romance languages in the 1950s and developed a language program as a consultant to the Peace Corps. At Dartmouth he adapted that into what became known as the Rassias Method: that has been used for instruction in 180 languages around the world.
Rassias rejected the rote repetition of language instruction in favor of immersive classes that engaged students in rapid-fire drills and often dramatic set-pieces. The idea was to get students thinking in the foreign language while enjoying the experience of learning (and) his passion/personality made him a student favorite.
Indeed, one of the central tenets of his method was to “Speak a language in order to learn it”, rather than “Learn a language in order to speak it”. That is what his ten-day “boot camp” immersion program — formally known as the Advanced Language Programs — are all about. Though an expensive program (even for someone who did not need room and board) and an imposition on my work schedule — I finally signed-up in the summer of 2001.
At registration, you are given an interview (in the language of choice) to assess where you initially begin. There were Rank Beginner, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced levels … and all sorts of gradations in-between. Once the program began, you could request a transfer to a lower level (if you were struggling too much) or upward (if you were not sufficiently challenged) and some of my classmates chose both of these options.
The daily class was structured into Master Classes (combining several sub-groups) and Small Group sessions (with 4-6 students). The Master Classes (three a day) are taught by college or prep school instructors, in a more typical classroom setting, with grammar and spelling as part of the curriculum. Scribner Fauver (an instructor at Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire) was an absolute delight; funny, irreverent and knowledgable … he alone was a joy to be with.
The Small Group sessions, though, are what make the Rassias proram unique. Run by Teaching Assistants, they involve students in a semi-circle, and consist of various drills. They are rapid-fire, and involve the instructor pointing to class members randomly when it is “their turn”. And they emphasize the element of surprise: comparing it to a “no-look pass” in basketball, they may look at a certain person … then snap their finger at someone else, whose “turn” it actually is. And, just having answered and your thinking it was over: on occasion, they may call on you twice-in-a-row. Believe-you-me, you do not daydream during these sessions.
Some involve simply reading passages from the text (one sentence at a time), some involve stating a sentence, yet being asked to conjugate verbs — I still remember something about going to the library — then asking a student “Nous!” (We go to the library), “Elles pluriel!” (They go to the library) and asking for months of the year, different tenses, etc.
After class, there are often cultural activities — once, we did poetry reading, another time singing, another time putting on a mini-play. All reinforcing what you have learned. As a commuter, I did not attend the nightly dinners that those from out-of-town would attend (at a higher price) yet it was still an experience just what I did partake of.
Professor Rassias’ daughter Helene ran the business office of the program, leaving him to be its overseer each day. And this he did during the one English aspect of the program: the common luncheon each day. All students regardless of language gathered for a lunch (included in the program) where announcements were made about logistical matters (transfers, the shuttle bus services, etc.) . It was there I got to meet him, and as a marketing man, he asked how I learned of the program (advertisement, magazine article, etc.) When I told him it was the 60 Minutes interview in the 1980’s — and that I was “Not lacking, just slow” — he was pleasantly surprised, yet told me not to upbraid myself. I had a chance to talk with him several times, and he explained various concepts and slang terms not covered in class.
The bonus of the program was the project I had in mind: to translate my father’s letters. I had already spent the springtime just copying the French words into large print, and had started the translations themselves (here is the first page of a letter from 1948, one of the few that scan cleanly).
When I met Helene, showed her one of the letters and asked if anyone on her staff could correct my translations (when complete) — she said it would be her honor to do it. And she did find some idioms that I missed, and also surmised that I had transcribed a word or two incorrectly … yet said that it was trivial compared to the labor-of-love that I put into the project. I was quite grateful.
John Rassias died last week at the age of 90. His death was written about (as noted previously) in the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and also in the Washington Post, the New York Times as well as a more colorful (and in-depth) one in the local paper, the Valley News — and he was quite active in the Connecticut River Valley (spanning the border between Vermont and New Hampshire), speaking at school board meetings, encouraging them to expand (not cut) language programs.
As noted, it was an expensive program (more than $1,000 fourteen years ago as a commuter; it’s more now) and I have not parlayed it into a job travelling to foreign countries, etc. For a time, the program was also offered as a Weekend Refresher (3-day) mini-course at Fairfield University in Connecticut; unsure if they still do so.
And yet ….. it remains a highlight of my life, with memories to last a lifetime. Vaya con Dios, John.
In his younger days …. …. and more recently … Now, on to Top Comments: -------------------------------------From TrueBlueMajority:
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