Students who study languages at the University are titled "proficient" after four terms of classes. But a report released by the Modern Language Association in May suggests that collegiate language programs need to makeover their curriculums if they expect to produce students with true cultural and linguistic understanding.

The 10-page report, drafted by instructors from universities across the country, says that language programs have developed into two-tiered systems in which literature "monopolizes the upperdivision curriculum." The report said that the age-old system, in which tenure-track professors rarely teach introductory level courses, devalues the early years of language learning and impedes the development of a unified four-year curriculum.

But the foreign language professors who contributed to the report recommend that lower-level courses be taught by tenure-track professors and include more cultural content.

French Prof. George Hoffman said the report describes a problem in college-level language departments, both at the University and nationwide, that contributes to the nation's lack of bi-lingual citizens.

"It identifies a real challenge facing University programs today," he said. "Languages are one of the biggest problems we have in the United States."

Hoffman said in the University's French department, few tenure-track professors teach lower-level courses.

Hoffman said he believes he was the only one out of roughly 30 professors in the Romance language department to teach one recently - French 235.

Hartmut Rastalsky, the German language program director, also felt that the report was accurate, but said that his department had already instituted the report's recommendations about ten years ago.

"It's great that they (the Modern Language Association) are saying this," he said. "Our department has already been doing this for a long time."

Some of the changes the German department made called for hiring professors with various specialties and expanding the department's upper-level curriculum to include courses on politics, culture and film as well as literature.

The addition of professionally geared courses - such as Business and Scientific German - allowed the department to appease concentrators with specific career goals.

The results were overwhelmingly successful, Rastalsky said.

Rastalsky said the number of concentrators jumped from between 60 and 80 ten years ago to more than 200 today. He said he thinks that students have been attracted to the program in the last decade because the department is giving them what they want.

"If you teach students more comprehensive material," Rastalsky said. "They're going to be more interested."

Dr. Nancy Florida, the chair of the Asian Language Department, said her department also made a number of reforms five years ago.

Florida said that the "two-tiered system" mentioned in the report did not appear in the 17 language programs in the Asian Language Department. Out of all the departments' first year courses, graduate student instructors teach 17 percent; Seventy-eight percent are taught by "full-time, highly trained educators."

One of the other major flaws in language departments the study points out is the fact that courses are overwhelmingly literature-based.

Some of the University's language professors were quick to defend their department's focus on literature, however.

"Literature is precisely the kind of study that provides a deep understanding of a culture," Hoffman said.

But Hoffman also said that in the French department, students tend to avoid such courses when studying abroad.

"Literature is extremely practical," Hoffman said. "Why is it that students don't see that?"

He said professors from the study-abroad program in France have told him that the University students they've seen try to avoid literature classes often weren't at the skill level to take more focused courses than the ones offered in literature, leaving them with few other options.

LSA sophomore Ashleigh Begres, who is majoring in Spanish, said that she found literature courses to be useful.

"They touch on everything, even the linguistic aspects," she said. "I'm definitely not getting a bad education."

Other students are not as content with their instruction.

LSA junior Baird Campbell, who is majoring in French and Latin American and Caribbean Studies, originally started off taking French classes in the Residential College. RC language classes are known for being more intensive than the LSA classes.

Campbell has described his LSA language classes as being "a joke."

"They focus on analyzing literature, but a lot of it just seems like busywork," he said.