We began our careers in academia in 2007/8 around the same time the Modern Language Association published its 2007 report, Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World. The report was a stark wake-up call; it made language programs in higher education explicitly aware of their limited production of multilingual/multicultural actors who could compete on a global stage. The response(s) to the report we would subsequently hear at conferences, or in faculty meetings, or that we would read about in the Chronicle made one thing clear: as higher education began to react, there was a sense of paralysis due to the enormity of the goals established in the report. How does (or how can) one restructure a centuries-old institution to meet the exponentially growing demands of globalization? Of course, there is a flaw in the question; one will not do much at all. The sort of restructuring called for, such as doing away with the traditional two-tier system, would require a total response among language programs, which would require a reconceptualization of long-established missions, an orientation to new curricular approaches addressing different learning outcomes, and for many, a different job description. As the tenure clock ticked, the best thing for us to do was to go back to our respective research agendas and continue working on projects that had already been set in motion.
Approximately one year later (in the fall of 2008), the Great Recession arrived, and the discussions around the copy machine drastically changed. Faculty-meeting agendas went from, “How do we restructure?” to “How do we survive?” Budgets would be cut and language programs – those with lower enrollment numbers in particular – would face an existential crisis. The larger programs – the typical Spanish program – were lucky; they merely needed to figure out how to do more with less. Language program directors would explore how (and if) learning outcomes could be achieved in larger classes and in less time, and they would occasionally report to the unit head what would and would not be realistic. The recession exacerbated the challenges put forth in the MLA 2007 report and reinforced the reality that the world had not merely changed, but rather, was still in flux. In fact, as we write this preface, wearing an N95 mask, and anticipating the next virtual meeting, we wonder if the writers of the report were not prophesying something larger; the world’s response to unexpected social phenomena would forevermore be more intense, and more immediate, due to the ongoing development of information technology and communication. Academia would not only need to reevaluate itself and reidentify its mission, but it would also need to pay closer attention to the changing landscape of its students, whose interests and needs most poignantly reflect the demands of the changing world. Now, we find ourselves in a continuous mode of adaptation to keep up with them, and it is on us to show them how and why the world needs multilingual actors with an awareness of context, of interlocutors, and of themselves, to come together and co-construct solutions to global problems, like never before. We (academia), likewise, need to become more aware of the discourse we are having with our students and acknowledge our influence in the co-indexing of their identity as second-language learners. That is the motivation of the present work.
Our previous work exploring L2 advancedness informed the positions we take throughout the book. Reference Malovrh and BenatiMalovrh and Benati’s (2018) edited volume, The Handbook of Advanced Proficiency in Second Language Acquisition (Wiley-Blackwell), and Reference Menke, Malovrh, Malovrh and MenkeMenke and Malovrh’s (2021) edited volume, Advancedness in Second Language Spanish (Benjamins), brought researchers together to explore advanced L2 learning within various frameworks and across multiple genres. Overwhelmingly, the most common conclusions across the twenty-eight chapters of the former volume, and twenty-one chapters of the latter, were that more research needed to be done to better understand advanced proficiency, advanced language use, and the advanced language user, before we could productively discuss issues pertaining to programmatic restructuring and reconceptualized missions in higher education. In this book we contribute to such a research agenda by examining the multiple dimensions of higher education pertaining to language learning and the production of globally minded citizens. We provide reviews of what we know about the (advanced) L2 learner, about the different actors and architecture of foreign/second-language programs in higher education, and of our assessment of advanced language use. We examine L2 learners’ and L2 professionals’ beliefs and awareness toward advanced (and sophisticated) language using mixed-methods analyses. And we explore a dimension of L2 advancedness that we believe has been overshadowed by inquiry focusing exclusively on cognitive aspects of language learning, that being L2 identity. Ultimately, we opine, the demands alluded to by the MLA (2007) report for academia to be more consonant with the changing world require, first and foremost, self-reflection and a reimagined self-identity as players on a global stage, among its professoriate, its administrators, and its students, alike.
