Proficiency or Exposure?: Rethinking Foreign Language Requirements within College Curriculum Reviews

This article analyzes the growing trend among US higher education institutions to replace foursemester, proficiency-oriented language requirement models with shorter exposure-oriented sequences frequently restricting exemptions and aimed at bringing languages into distribution requirement structures. By contrasting the history, strengths, and limitations of the proficiency model to the claims and drawbacks of the exposure model, the author suggests that the latter option can create more problems than it solves. The text highlights pedagogical issues and other factors that should be taken into account by institutions engaged in general education/core curriculum revision, in order to design better language requirements and improve language instruction in the context of a turn to internationalization and global learning.