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Chapter XI: Changing Times and Changing Needs in Second-Language Learning

Over the past ten years, the systematic study of the future has become a new, highly visible phenomenon. As Shane has noted, research on the future aims "to help policy makers clarify their goals and values and choose wisely from among the alternative courses of action available to them." x Cornish defines the new discipline of "futuristics" as "a field of activity that seeks to identify, analyze, and evaluate possible future changes in human life and the world. The word implies a rational rather than mystical approach to the future, but also accepts artistic, imaginative, and experiential approaches as offering contributions that can be useful and valid." 2 Where teachers and other educators are concerned, futures studies can be described as a methodical process of making educators aware of possible alternative futures and their consequences, in order to reach policy decisions regarding the development of curriculum, the improvement of educational administration, and various other factors involved in schooling. 8 In this final chapter certain approaches to dealing with the future are examined with the intent of relating those approaches to the study of foreign languages in a society that is projected to be, and to the needs of students, most of whom will be spending the rest of their lives in the twenty-first century.