Though my first institute experience was only a short decade ago, it already seems a little unreal, not to say antique. The directors and staffs of those early institutes made perhaps the greatest efforts of anyone to rethink freshly the old problems. After our somewhat disconcerting language deficiencies were so dramatically revealed by World War II, and after the comprehensive six-year study by the Modern Language Association known as the Foreign Language Program, it was to be expected that the first institute directors should above all emphasize audio-lingual skills for direct oral communication. In view of the fact that, in the war emergency, linguistic scientists had exerted greater leadership and imagination than foreign-language teachers, it was also natural that by 1959 applied linguistics should be one of the established features of any institute program. It is amusing to recall the consternation of some foreignlanguage teachers, notably the Big Ten chairmen, as they became aware of this slightly modern intrusion. I find it reassuring that some of these Big Ten universities are now exerting leadership in the continuing effort to modernize the teaching of language. Another feature of some of these early insti utes, as of some of the later ones, was the use of so-called "shock" languages, such as Jap nese. Their use represented a deliberate effort to shake ourselves out of our