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

Abstract

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.

United States universities have included language among their core requirements since their inception. In 1665, Harvard University President Charles Chauncy proclaimed that “in the first yeare after admission, for foure dayes of the weeke, all Students shall be exercised in the study of the Greeke and Hebrew Tongues” (qtd. in Maccoby 1971). The fourth semester language requirement most common today imposed itself in the 1980s and 90s, with the takeoff of teaching methodologies focusing especially on proficiency—“the ability to use language in real world situations in a spontaneous interaction and non-rehearsed context” (ACTFL 2015: 4). Existing time-to-proficiency estimates (still largely current) established that approximately four semesters were needed to achieve Intermediate competence, the lowest range at which students were considered to possess enough skills to perform independently in academic and work settings. In recent years, the fourth-semester model, often incorrectly understood as four semesters, came under attack, and institutions began reducing the potential number of terms to three or two (when they didn’t eliminate requirements entirely). Even more recently, a large-scale revision of general education requirements has started to take place, and colleges are once again transforming language requirements in reference to calls by the federal government to internationalize the curriculum with the goal of producing “graduates with international and foreign language expertise and knowledge” (USC Title VI, Sec. 601, emphasis added). In that context, a focus has emerged on showing commitment to international education by exposing all students to language study without exception: in the new models gaining ground, while it is frequently possible for novice learners to fulfill the requirement with a second- or third-semester course, users already highly proficient are also frequently obligated to take at least one foreign language course, or course in a foreign language (while the two terms are used interchangeably, the latter may feature no explicit attention to language acquisition). What follows is an attempt—from the point of view of a longtime (Spanish) language-literature-culture department chair, and directed at language instructors, university administrations, curriculum review committees, and faculty senates—to analyze comprehensively, in a single essay, the major implications of this paradigm shift, in order to provide institutions engaged in curricular reform a clear idea of factors to consider and cautions to exercise. In particular, language faculty are urged to seize a proactive role in educating administrators and faculty outside their field as to the history, aims, and possibilities of language requirements and the latter’s potential place in curricular revisions, as well as in drawing institutions’ attention to the responsibilities beyond core requirements involved in furthering widespread second language knowledge.

Context: Internationalization Directives vs. Foreign Language Education Standards

A strong motor behind the wave of curricular revisions undertaken by US colleges and universities has been the challenge to “internationalize” higher education. Internationalization has been variously defined by different bodies; in its documents, the American Council on Education (ACE) has described it as “the efforts of institutions” to prepare students “to live and work in a society that increasingly operates across international borders” (CIGE 2012: 3). These include “incorporating global perspectives into teaching, learning, and research; building international and intercultural competence among students, faculty, and staff; and establishing relationships and collaborations with people and institutions abroad.” This section discusses how, in relation to the teaching and learning of languages other than English, the rhetoric of internationalization currently driving curricular reform from the administrative side contrasts to objectives established by Second Language Acquisition (SLA) professional associations so that at times it seems the two fields speak entirely different languages. Where the latter have long been advocating for standards-based, proficiency-oriented language education, the former emphasizes that “foreign language study provides important cultural and contextual knowledge that enables a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of global issues” (Helms and Tukibayeva 2014). What may look like a subtle difference translates into often irreconcilable views of what college-level language study should entail, especially in relation to second language proficiency as a skill.

In its 2013–14 report on “Internationalizing the Curriculum,” the ACE identifies four curricular levels at which action must take place: individual courses; academic program components (majors and minors); degree programs (general education and language requirements); and disciplines beyond individual institutions. At the third level (degree programs), the ACE recommends delineating clear learning objectives such as enabling students to acquire “communication skills, including the ability to use another language effectively and interact with people from other cultures” (Helms and Tukibayeva 2014, emphasis added). It takes care to insist, however, that “student learning outcomes must be institution-specific in order to succeed.” General education requirements are emphasized as instruments to bring internationalization to all students, rather than just “self-selectors” who are already “internationally inclined.” Regarding language requirements, the ACE observes that the years 2001–11 saw a “steady decline” in institutions requiring foreign language study for graduation, and that only 2% of surveyed institutions required it for more than two years. Although the report’s response to these statistics is negative, it also eschews explicitly recommending that all colleges should have a requirement.

The ACE does not comment on the facts that “among those institutions that have maintained a commitment to language study” (emphasis added), it is sometimes a general education, sometimes a standalone, requisite; the majority exempt students who demonstrate prior proficiency; and requirement models vary. It sidesteps the questions of what the aims of a college-level requirement should be—whether they should differ, for example, from those of a high school or a commercial language school—and which of the various existing models may better serve particular goals. Jan H. Hulstijn (1995), for example, differentiates between the needs of learners seeking “survival knowledge” or with a “low educational background” and of learners at the late secondary or college level (381), and most college students are likely to find a second language useful in situations beyond travel including study abroad, postgraduate education, and the professions. However, while providing links to several requirement examples, the ACE singles out (by reproducing its explanatory flowchart) the Yale University model, which requires all students to take at least one course in a foreign language, and three semesters for those with no previous training. Since none of the other sample requirements rule out exemptions from coursework (for example, for those who are already bilingual), it follows that the report highlights this model because it “requires all students, regardless of prior proficiency, to take at least one foreign language course” (Helms and Tukivayeba 2014). One might conclude, then, that insofar as the ACE puts forward a notion of what a college language requirement should be, it should be one in which all students engage with a foreign language by taking a course, rather than one in which all students graduate with at least a minimum level of proficiency (the federal government’s expertise and knowledge) in a language other than English.

It is interesting to compare the ACE’s discourse to that of language pedagogy associations. Between 1993 and 1996, a Collaborative Board initially composed of associations of teachers of French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Classics first elaborated the National Standards for Foreign Language Education, adaptable “from K16” (NSFLEP 2006: 20). The task force created eleven general standards in the goal areas commonly known as the Five Cs: communication “in languages other than English”; attainment of “a knowledge and understanding of the cultures that use that language”; connections to “bodies of knowledge that are unavailable to monolingual English speakers”; comparisons through which “students develop greater insight into their own language and culture and realize that multiple ways of viewing the world exist”; and multilingual communities “at home and around the world” in which students can participate in various capacities (31). Representing the disciplines beyond individual institutions—the fourth curricular area that, according to ACE, should be involved in internationalization—the Standards Collaborative went far in proposing concrete learning objectives. The generic Cs and accompanying language-specific recommendations ultimately pertain to the two central aims its Statement of Philosophy outlines, linguistic and cultural competence: “The US must educate students who are linguistically and culturally equipped to communicate successfully in a pluralistic American society and abroad. This imperative envisions a future in which ALL students will develop and maintain proficiency in English and at least one other language” (7, emphasis added).

The reference to communicative proficiency starkly contrasts to the ACE’s elusive emphases on commitment, empathy, or experience. The internationalization report argued, citing Dr. Suzanne Shipley, President of Shepherd University, that “as long as we ignore the need for Americans to become familiar with a foreign language … we dilute the cultural experience possible with internationalization. Global learning requires empathy” (qtd. in Helms and Tukibayeva 2014). In comparison, the Standards Collaborative stresses language literacy goals that will equip students to conduct themselves in English and at least one other language, given equal weight by the symmetrical syntax. Where, perhaps because of its very focus, the internationalization report alludes to the importance of interaction with people from other cultures, the teacher associations acknowledge that American society itself is increasingly pluralistic—multicultural and multilingual—even as English becomes a world language: the goal is ultimately to promote functional bilingualism among all American citizens. Thus the emphasis shifts toward learning a second—not necessarily foreign—language. In considering proficiency, one should remember that it is not just a general concept, but rather points to “what students should know and be able to do” at various stages (NSFLEP 2006: 13). Hence, National Standards are inseparable from competence scales and assessment tools such as the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ (ACTFL) “Proficiency Guidelines” and “Performance Descriptors for Language Learners.” As postulated by the Collaborative, a language program must be standards-based and designed to facilitate the achievement of a proficiency level identified as appropriate for a particular group of learners, as assessed by relevant performance criteria.

In higher education, the disciplines’ approach has slowly but surely begun to have an impact at the ACE-designated levels 1 and 2 of internationalization reform: individual courses and academic programs. The takeoff of Cultural Studies, and a corollary emphasis on culture[s] as the subject common to the wrongly designated “lower” and “upper” levels of formerly “language and literature” departments, have given rise to innovations both academic and organizational, like the Integrated Curriculum pioneered in the late 1990s by Georgetown University’s German department. In an institutional context where language and literary-cultural studies are unlikely to be separated—an undesirable goal in any case if one understands both as central to “translingual and transcultural competence” (MLA Ad Hoc Committee 2007)—developments in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) or Teaching Languages for Specific Purposes (where preparation for literary-cultural study can be as “specific” a purpose as business, law, or medicine) have similarly contributed to more seamless undergraduate programs. Professors and Chairs trained in literary-cultural studies are giving increased thought to ideal integration between language, literature, and culture (for example, Pino 2009 and 2014). More departments are hiring faculty with degrees in SLA or Teaching Second/Foreign Languages (TS/FL) to teach language courses, whether or not their institutions have similarly progressed in opening up the tenure track to them. There is greater collaboration between language and literature-culture faculty, as the result not only of increased coexistence, but of encouragement from—once again—professional bodies, most notably the Modern Language Association’s (MLA’s) call, in its 2007 report, Foreign Languages and Higher Education, to bridge old departmental divides. More departments (like the joint Spanish program at Columbia University and Barnard College) have begun not just to strengthen the language component of upper-level courses, but also to offer superior (fourth level) language courses alongside literature and culture. Language teachers have revitalized their classes through post-communicative methodologies drawing from advances in cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and several branches of linguistics. Much dissemination and training are taking place at meetings such as those of the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning established in 1986 by University of Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, and Yale; or, specifically in Spanish, at Columbia/Barnard’s Methodological Developments in Teaching Spanish as a Second or Foreign Language yearly workshops, begun in 2008 and which have already led to the publication of one methods volume (Ruiz-Fajardo 2012). While very few language/literature/culture programs have engaged (or been able to engage) in radical curricular reform, small steps are gradually being taken in many to improve second language acquisition.

Whether the same progress is taking place at the ACE-designated institution-wide degree programs level obviously raises the question of how “progress” is defined. If it is understood as an increased turn toward standards-based education aiming to systematically produce graduates with expertise in and knowledge of languages other than English, the answer must be a resounding “no.” In fact, the most significant trend seems to be the turn away from proficiency-based formulations of language requirements (insofar as they existed). Institutions revising their curricula are abandoning the prevailing paradigm in which completion of the fourth-semester course is considered evidence of intermediate proficiency, itself regarded as the minimum appropriate for college graduates (hence, I will call this arrangement the proficiency model). In that structure, first-year students typically take a placement test to determine whether they must start college language study in the first, second, third, or fourth semester. Those exceeding specified scores in that test, or in Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams, or otherwise demonstrating advanced knowledge, normally place out of the requirement. Newer schemata usually specify a required number of semester or courses—which, although always lower than four (either two or three), changes among institutions—with high-proficiency students often not exempted from coursework. In this model, the (shorter) requirement is described purely in terms of time, without any reference to the vocabulary of proficiency, as in: “students must complete a two-semester sequence of the same language.” Where only an elementary proficiency level is reached, the requirement is more in line with the ACE’s general allusions to cultural and contextual knowledge enabling nuanced understanding of global issues than with SLA professional associations’ established standards goals. Because this arrangement brings language into line with exposure-oriented distribution requirements, I will call it the exposure model.

The Proficiency Model: History, Strengths, and Limitations

To be sure, the proficiency model is far from perfect, and its decline must be analyzed seriously. If proficiency-oriented instruction can occur at any level, why wouldn’t a two- or three-semester model be just as effective? In evaluating this, it is necessary to return to the origin of the fourth-semester choice—its presumed relationship to intermediate proficiency—and achieve a reasonably clear idea of what constitutes the latter. In its 2012 “Guidelines,” ACTFL establishes five proficiency levels: Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, Superior, and Distinguished (Intermediate is the second out of five, and the first four are subdivided into Low, Mid, and High). The “Performance Descriptors” designed in conjunction with the “Guidelines” provide instructors a tool to assess performance in three modes of communication common in classrooms (interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational). Table 1 shows sample differences between levels.

Table 1.

Explanation of ACTFL proficiency levels (see ACTFL 2015)

It should be evident from these descriptors of the first two (out of five) proficiency levels that, far from being the midpoint in a small-medium-high proficiency universe, the Intermediate level is the point at which learners first become able to create their own meanings, communicate in longer expressive structures, or self-correct.

To make things clearer for the nonspecialist (like me), I will relate the language of ACTFL to that of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), which provides additional nuances for understanding proficiency. CEFR outlines three main competence levels, each subdivided into two, as seen in Table 2.

Table 2.

CEFR competence levels

ACTFL’s intermediate range is generally considered equivalent to A2/B1 levels. CEFR also provides descriptors of performance in separate domains (personal, public, occupational, and educational); however, an advantage for the layperson is that it also provides succinct global explanations of all levels. A B1/Threshold user, for instance, can

understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc. Can deal with most situations likely to arise whilst travelling in an area where the language is spoken. Can produce simple connected text on topics which are familiar or of personal interest. Can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.

(Language Policy Unit 24)

In discussing college requirements, it is important to note that B1 is the lowest level whose description addresses occupational and educational settings. It is, indeed, the ‘threshold’ to the ‘independent user’ categories, where independence refers to the extent to which the learner can do without “speech adjustment on the part of the interlocutor; … the chance to ask for clarification; and … the chance to get help with formulating what he/she wants to say” (Language Policy Unit 205). ACTFL itself is referring to independence when it points out how Intermediate, unlike Novice, learners are able to use language in ways that have not been practiced and memorized.

During my own college’s recent language requirement debate, in which my department contested the ultimately approved change from the proficiency model to an exposure model (two semesters with no exemptions), a concerned student wrote me that “one of my friends, who is currently in her final semester of completing the requirement, told me that she really doesn’t feel you can learn a language in two years. She said that, at this point, she does not feel at all confident in her language skills. Frankly, I find that kind of hard to believe.” My student and her friend clearly have different ideas of what reasonable expectations are for an Intermediate proficiency requirement. The latter sees no hope that it is possible to learn a language in two years, which is the case if one thinks of advanced or superior proficiency. Because learning a language as an adult is inevitably a confidence-mining experience for students constantly asked to stretch their communicative limits, goals need to be detailed, and quality self-assessment tools made widely available to provide learners grade independent criteria for evaluating their own progress (the grids included as Appendix A in CEFR are a good example). Without them, they are liable to measure themselves against an idealized standard. But not only are institutions failing to define accurate learning objectives; as Johanna Watzinger-Tharp (2014) points out, often they suggest that “a two-course requirement equips students with the ability, or competence, to conduct research or to complete an internship using the foreign language” (134).

If intermediate-range proficiency is the minimum level that enables use of the language for tasks associated with work and study (outside the language classroom), the remaining question is whether it can be achieved in four semesters. In the opinion of Richard Brecht, Director of the University of Maryland’s Center for the Advanced Study of Language, “it isn’t that people don’t think language education is important. It’s that they don’t think it’s possible” (as cited in Friedman 2015). This dim view isn’t limited to “people” outside the field: again anecdotally, during my institution’s recent debate the college newspaper reported that a language instructor did not see proficiency “as a useful measurement … mainly because there are some languages where you won’t get proficiency in four semesters” (Hirsch 2015). The instructor focuses on the difficulty some languages present for English speakers, apparently concluding that the notion of proficiency should be abandoned altogether. The last large-scale study of college students’ second-language proficiency seems to have been John B. Carroll’s MLA-sponsored 1967 survey of 2,784 graduating majors in French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish, which found “a[n across-the-board] mean learning outcome of advanced-high” (Rifkin 2005: 3). However, the fourth-semester/Intermediate correlation originated in time-to-proficiency estimates current in the 1980s–90s and still largely accepted. The State Department’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI), responsible for the language training of diplomats, has issued guidelines based on historical experience at its School of Language Studies, where English-speaking adult learners typically engage in intensive non-immersion classroom-setting work—that is, for at least thirty-five hours a week between class time and “independent study” and assuming little or no external, real-life use of the language (Jackson and Kaplan 1999: 76). Hence, their estimates are expressed in classroom (not contact) hours, although in other settings—including colleges—much learning occurs outside the classroom. In reference to the International Language Roundtable skill level descriptions (ILR, predating ACTFL and CEFR), the FSI identified a scale of six proficiency levels. The relevant ones here are S1 (elementary proficiency) satisfying “routine courtesy and travel needs” and S2 (limited working proficiency) satisfying “routine social and limited office needs” (73), as CEFR’s B1 is considered equivalent to an interlevel S1+, and the ACTFL Intermediate range to S1–1+. Languages are divided into three difficulty categories. As outlined in ATSM International’s government-sponsored “Standard Guide for Use-oriented Foreign Language Instruction,” estimated time to S1 and S2 proficiency level is as follows:

Table 3.

Estimated time to S1 and S2 proficiency levels

Based on those figures, rough estimates to S1+ (arbitrarily placing it at the exact midpoint between S1 and S2) may be calculated at 275, 425, and 725 hours.

Although schedules vary, if one assumes an average of 3.75 hours of instruction per week and fourteen-week semesters, over a four-semester period a student will have spent about 210 hours in the classroom. However, homework time can easily double, and perhaps even triple that total, to a range of 420–630 contact hours, and it should be additionally considered that increasingly available online access to authentic materials in other languages (virtually non-existent when the guidelines were drafted) can replicate parts of the immersion experience by allowing external real-life use of the language—thereby increasing the efficacy of acquisition. As corroborated by studies such as those of Sally S. Magnan (1986), Erwin Tschirner (1996), or Benjamin Rifkin (2005), an intermediate-range goal is extremely feasible for Category 1 and 2 languages, and even for Category 3, especially keeping in mind that “in a proficiency context, a language user who meets the criteria for the Intermediate level, but is not able to do so for some content areas or tasks all of the time … would be rated Novice High,” whereas “in the Performance Descriptors [used in instructional settings], the same profile would place the learner as entering into the intermediate range because most of the time … the performance is in the Intermediate range” (ACTFL 2015: 6, emphasis added). Even questioning Category 3 proficiency goals, it hardly seems that giving up on Categories 1 and 2 can be the solution. Thought should rather go into how to enhance instruction, as well as into whether requirements must be identical for all languages or might be adapted to encourage study of Category 3 and Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) without sacrificing presently met aims in Categories 1 and 2. As to whether it is possible to reach intermediate-range proficiency in fewer than four semesters, the answer depends on factors including, among others, program quality and total contact, but research points to the task being arduous. As an example, Elena Schmitt’s (2014) recent study of proficiency results in French, Italian, and Spanish after a three-semester (192-hour) requirement at a northeast state university found that, despite “recent changes in the curriculum” (113), “the majority of students were unable to achieve the targeted Intermediate-Low level” (120). Subtracting one or two semesters from the fourth-semester model almost certainly places Intermediate proficiency out of reach for all languages.

If “confounding the completion of coursework and competency” (Watzinger-Tharp 2014: 134) leads to misunderstandings that can make administrators, students, and faculty in language and other fields lose sight of what different requirement models can accomplish, why, then, are fourth-semester requirements not habitually phrased in terms of proficiency? One obvious reason is that they are couched in the same language as that of other curricular requirements. Another is the understandable hesitation of language instructors—especially those suffering from lack of training, support, and incentive—to be held accountable for students’ performance. Accountability is ultimately related to assessment: how can colleges know, before they hold faculty responsible for the results of their teaching, whether students are attaining goals? Early discussions of language requirements described two methods of approaching foreign language proficiency for credit in higher education: “The first solution is to use time as an indicator (a seat-time requirement). … The second solution is to require tested competence in a foreign language (a proficiency requirement)” (Lange 1990: 2). In the 1980s, some universities began to experiment with true proficiency requirements as thus described. In 1980, for example (even before the 1986 publication of the first ACTFL 2012), the University of Pennsylvania made minimum performance on standardized and internally created proficiency tests a condition of graduation. In 1982, the University of Southern California specified “that students will have completed their foreign language requirement only when they have attained a minimum level of oral and reading proficiency … as demonstrated by performance on a[n in-house] specific proficiency examination” (Smith 1984: 240). Today, University of Pennsylvania’s foreign language requirement is fulfilled “by completing the fourth-semester level course” and USC requires “language level III of a foreign language sequence” (University of Pennsylvania; University of Southern California). What turned proficiency specifications into seat-time formulations is easy to surmise.

Making satisfaction of the requirement contingent on successful proficiency testing brings up a number of issues: which tests satisfy validity standards; who administers/corrects them; what happens in case of discrepancies between proficiency testing and course grades? The largest predicament is what to do about students who will inevitably not pass, as successful acquisition depends on individual learning patterns as much as on program quality. It is no surprise that most institutions returned to the “seat-back” method—which, as we have seen, does not mean that the fourth-semester requirement is arbitrary. It is of course possible to teach anything ineffectively for two, three, four, or eight semesters. The crux of the matter therefore lies both in the caliber of instruction and the requirement’s length. Semester reductions should stem from careful analysis of whether enough quality advances have been made that what was previously done in four terms is now attainable in fewer. Fast forward to 2015: if faculty and administration should have learned anything from scrambling to produce the assessment plans now required by accreditation commissions, it is also that assessment needs to focus on programs as much as on students. If a university has any type of requirement, the mandate must be twofold: from students, commitment to enough study as can lead to proficiency levels that allow independent language use in academic/professional settings; from departments, performance, as demonstrated by whether a majority of students consistently reach desired proficiency.

The Exposure Model: Claims and Drawbacks

As a shorter requirement without a minimum proficiency objective and with few or no exemptions, what does the exposure model offer that the proficiency model did not? Beyond its obvious appeal to university administrations interested in streamlining core curricula, one of its most frequently touted potential benefits is that it may motivate more students to undertake the study of LCTL or Category 3 languages (which include languages revalued in the context of internationalization/globalization) instead of sticking to those in which, due to proficiency placement, the fourth semester may not actually take four semesters to complete. This purported advantage was addressed in the previous section: while encouraging the study of Chinese or Arabic is a worthy aim, doing so at the expense of achievements in the teaching of Category 1 and 2 languages is at best a dubious strategy. A better answer may lie in the consideration of differential learning methods and objectives for different language categories. Some colleges have increased mandatory contact hours for Category 3 languages in comparison to Categories 1 and 2. Another possible solution would be to offer incentives for students to choose to study higher difficulty languages, such as exempting them from certain other internationalization-related general education requirements if they pursue the language requirement in that way; or creating comparative language majors within which acquisition of lower- and higher-difficulty languages can be combined into a single course of study with potentially very useful applications in the professional world.

A second presumed strength of the exposure model is that the customary exemption restrictions are typically viewed as evidence of an institution’s special commitment to international or global education, as no student is allowed to graduate without taking a certain number of foreign language courses or courses in a foreign language. In this respect it should be remembered that a reduction in the minimum proficiency level that can fulfill the requirement is simply a cutback in whatever college-wide competency goals the proficiency model sought or reached, unless it is accompanied by increases in the efficiency of instruction at every level. Nevertheless, scaling back the requirement has not generally followed improvements in language teaching. On the contrary, universities still rarely acknowledge SLA-TS/FL as a specialized field. Most colleges continue to hire literature-culture faculty to teach language, among other reasons because they are likely to have some training in language pedagogy and thus fulfill multiple needs in resource-strapped programs. Consequently, as Bill VanPatten (2015) remarks, countless so-called language departments lack a single specialist in the “language sciences” (2), and most instructors are still not “experts” (4) who can design teaching materials based on knowledge of how learners’ minds internalize linguistic functions. The ensuing scenario affects SLA-TS/FL experts who do make it into departments where they are ill-equipped to “speak with a strong voice in crafting curriculum design” that might improve instruction (Swaffar 2014: 34), as well as literature-trained instructors who must reeducate themselves—with little institutional support—to teach language competently. Mostly, however, it harms the two contingents’ potential teamwork, eminently necessary for departments to achieve ideal integration and balance between translingual and transcultural competence objectives. Commitment to a language requirement without commitment to a minimum proficiency level in fact privileges the transcultural over the translingual, implicitly assuming that global expertise and knowledge can be achieved without reaching a baseline ability to operate in a second language in academic/professional contexts—essentially, in English. Institutions should thus examine their priorities conscientiously and perhaps consider whether establishing an alternative transcultural/global requirement track for students who do not wish to pursue language study through the fourth semester might not be preferable to reducing the lowest common denominator for satisfying the language requirement.

Proponents of the exposure model advocate clear, if institution-specific, learning outcomes, but in fact the model often entails a renunciation of assessment and accountability. Even stated as a “seat-time” requirement, the proficiency model related to Intermediate-range proficiency and referenced performance descriptors for assessment. In an academic climate stressing the importance of study leading to knowledge and skills, and of “accountability for student success” (AACU 2011: 5), authors of exposure requirements elude specifying any objective beyond the vague aspiration for students to experience contact with another language. One might argue, of course, that the ACE’s outcome suggestion mentioned earlier (acquiring “communication skills, including the ability to use another language effectively and interact with people from other cultures”) is a concrete goal that first- through third-semester students can achieve. Here the differences between the vocabulary of internationalization-oriented institutional associations and administrators and that of proficiency-oriented language teachers become painfully evident. In contrast to ACTFL or CEFR descriptive benchmarks, the cited outcome example does not define its key terms. What kind of communication/interaction? What constitutes effectiveness? What evinces the ability to use a language? Reading, writing, listening, and speaking in a second language are activities in which students may equally engage in third grade or as postdoctoral fellows: at what level can they be considered evidence of independent proficiency suitable for the needs of college graduates? Most importantly, unclear learning outcomes spare institutions from assessing their own performance. For example, in a proficiency model, it is possible to gauge (through formal or informal testing at the end of the language requirement, which my own program has been periodically performing since 2008) whether the majority of students falls within a describable competence range minimally adequate for academia and the workplace—a potential advantage in the job market and graduate/professional school applications. The success of a language requirement nevertheless becomes harder to measure when students can satisfy it with anything from the second semester of the first year of study to an advanced upper-level course.

Another apparent advantage of the exposure model—and one that may affect Spanish departments especially—is its claim to increased equity: no longer will students whose AP/IB scores may reflect no real competence, but rather the privilege of having attended top high schools, be able to evade college language courses. Supporters of this view are sometimes wary of placement testing, convinced that no high school language class can be equivalent to a college course despite the fact that thought on how to translate the National Standards into coherent and effective teaching has been quite visible at the secondary-school level (Phillips and Abbott 2011: 4–5; Swaffar 2014: 40). Nevertheless, the idea that, while the privileged are easily exempted, students from disadvantaged backgrounds are “stuck” with the requirement, rests on two inaccurate presuppositions. The first is that exemptions are from the requirement as opposed to simply from coursework, although even students who place out completely in fact fulfill the requirement through testing or other acceptable evidence of proficiency beyond the Intermediate range (and there is such a thing as standards-based, evidence-based reliable proficiency/placement testing). The second is that exemptions are a matter of privilege. There is, however, no evidence of a clear correlation between socioeconomic status and language proficiency at the K–12 levels. American and foreign native speakers, as well as heritage speakers and other students from diverse US neighborhoods—who, by and large, do not come from wealthy backgrounds—often place higher in the language sequence or entirely out of the requirement simply because they grew up in different types of bilingual environments.

Given the size of the US Latino population and the predictable interest of students with a background in the language and content objectives of Spanish departments, these tend to house a larger number of heritage/native speakers than other language programs. Mandating further study from students who are already highly proficient can result in discriminatory situations if members of certain ethnocultural groups, including underrepresented minorities, end up routinely held to a higher standard. Whereas the exposure model no longer requires Anglo-American students to reach intermediate proficiency in a second language, heritage and native speakers who have presumably already demonstrated sufficient English proficiency to be admitted to an American university must take either further courses in their mother tongue or courses in a third language. Language study is, of course, neither onerous nor pointless, and it behooves departments to attract proficient students to compelling advanced courses; however, at issue is not the desirability of language study but the establishment of different learning outcomes and goals for different student populations along criteria most often related to ethnicity.

Institutions must be careful to weigh the internationalization goals formulated by institutional bodies against the multilingualism/multiculturalism goals laid out by language pedagogy associations, to make sure the first are not achieved at the expense of the second. If certain students arrive in college with substantial experience outside a monolingual, monocultural world, there is no reason why they should not be exempted from baseline requirements they already meet and proceed to further language study wholly by choice. Furthermore, heritage and native speakers making compulsory use of credit hours to further already advanced language competence may be missing the opportunity to devote more time to remedying real lacunae in their pre-college preparation. As Amaury Nora and Gloria Crisp (2012) explain, “although Hispanic students have been shown to be equally likely as White students to major in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics], they are significantly less likely to earn a degree or certificate in a STEM field” (3)—partly due to the fact that their STEM instruction at the high school level is more apt to be inadequate because of factors like funding inequities than that of white students. At the same time, English speakers not asked to reach intermediate proficiency in another language also remain at a different kind of disadvantage. As is well-documented, effective second language learning develops the brain, delays the onset of Alzheimer’s and other dementias, and even facilitates more objective decision-making; it also commands higher average salaries than those offered to monolingual job candidates (see Mackey 2014; Sauer 2013; Laka Mugarza 2014; G. 2014).

If the exposure model’s conception of equity is questionable, so is its purported commitment to language literacy. Suppressing the exemption of high-proficiency students will keep enrollments high—a fact that has pushed some departments to throw their lot behind changes in the hope of at least increasing their upper-level student numbers. Lower-level enrollment losses may not be as great as feared, since for obvious reasons, most study-abroad programs in a foreign language still require four semesters for admission (twenty-three out of thirty programs approved by my institution require four semesters or more—whether new trends will lead to more study abroad in English is a different matter). On the other hand, adoption of the model will probably affect major yields, since it is often at the threshold of intermediate proficiency, when students realize what they can already do in the target language, that they decide to major (in my own department, conscientious revision of the language program tripled the number of concentrators within five years). The issue is not just the danger to enrollment-depleted programs; producing more linguistically competent graduates entails the conjoined mechanisms of getting a large population to intermediate proficiency through a core requirement and channeling more students into higher-proficiency levels. Moreover, in departments with post-requirement prerequisites to upper-level courses (a mandatory third-year or bridge level), reincorporating students who formerly placed out may require staffing additional bridge sections, necessitating stronger financial support from their institutions. This might be a welcome development if colleges were not already forcing language departments to rely excessively on adjuncts. Most important, under the limited-exemption exposure model, sustained or increased enrollments will disguise the fact that many more students will be graduating without reaching minimum proficiency levels presently (or formerly) attained. In effect, holding proficient students to the language requirement makes it theoretically possible to excuse beginners with no desire to learn a second language from doing so, without decreasing overall enrollments. In this way, a commitment to universal college-level language study is not necessarily a commitment to producing graduates with actual knowledge of a second language as part of the liberal arts mission. What the exposure model ultimately affords that the proficiency model did not is fewer semesters of language study.

Final Considerations

It was in 1965 that the US Higher Education Act first called on institutions of higher education to make “systematic efforts” to educate “citizens knowledgeable about world regions, foreign languages, and international affairs” (USC Title VI, Sec. 601). At the 2010 Foreign Language Summit, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan still observed that “just 18 percent of Americans report speaking a language other than English” compared to Europe’s fifty-three percent, and warned that “schools, colleges, and universities must include producing bilingual students as a central part of their mission” (Duncan 2010, emphasis added). After fifty years of failure to deliver, it can be safely asserted that the biggest reason why American college graduates do not effectively learn languages is that universities have not pledged themselves to providing pedagogically sound instruction. Colleges wanting to signify a commitment to language education must address the issue holistically and begin by carefully planning and funding excellent language departments rather than, in the words of Francisco Marmolejo (2010), “continuing to act as portrayed in a wise Spanish saying: Hacemos como que les enseñamos y ellos hacen como que aprenden.” Instead, as ACE’s report notes, requirements are being abolished, and Russell A. Berman (2011) observes that “around the country, language programs have been eliminated, cut back, or threatened with reduction”—easy to do when most language faculty remain outside the tenure track. Not surprisingly, the MLA’s 2015 report on foreign language enrollments in US higher education registered a decrease of 6.7% in “aggregated … enrollments in all languages” since 2009 (Goldberg, Looney, and Lusin 2015: 2).

Learning objectives must indeed be institution-specific, and departments may find, after diligent self-study, that they have so improved language teaching that a present-day third semester is equivalent to yesteryear’s fourth. Some colleges may decide that novice-range proficiency levels are appropriate for their student populations. Some may want to increase emphasis on study abroad, being careful not to just outsource language instruction, as not only is “in-country immersion … most effective where the learner is at higher levels” (Jackson and Kaplan 1999: 77), but “the nature of today’s study abroad also makes the gains that students and other stakeholders typically expect equally unlikely” (Watzinger-Tharp 2014: 135). No requirement model, beginning with the proficiency model as it has generally been practiced, is the universal panacea, and even colleges with open curricula can be successful in producing significant cohorts of linguistically competent graduates. Reexamining core requirements is meaningless without reference to research in SLA-TS/FL or an honest look into what is and is not effective in language education. Changes should be made on the basis of the likelihood that they will lead to explicit level-specific desired outcomes, and it is crucial to realize that language requirements alone are insufficient to produce graduates with foreign language expertise and knowledge. Requirements should generally be strengthened rather than diluted, but growth in language majors should be emphasized as well. New majors stressing language acquisition may be explored. Making second language proficiency part of non-language majors should also be revisited. More importantly, languages need to come out of the strict realm of language departments through creative Languages Across the Curriculum initiatives that link foreign language to English instruction, capitalize on plurilingual faculty and transnational research collaborations across campus, and build internationally-focused interdisciplinary programs with strong language components (Kecht and von Hammerstein 2000). Above all, there should be an earnest search for creative educational reform that aims to implement internationalization/globalization goals without detracting from multilingualism/multiculturalism objectives.

It is ultimately in SLA-TS/FL that groundbreaking initiatives in language education reform are taking place. Sadly, those in charge of college-wide curricular revision (administrations, curriculum committees, faculty senates) are failing to regard language instructors as consultants, rather than dismissing them as concerned primarily with keeping their enrollments and a somehow privileged status vis-à-vis departments servicing one- or two-course distribution requirements. In many university curricular reviews, no SLA-TS/FL experts participate in general education committees formulating new language requirements, or in internationalization commissions articulating goals for expanding global knowledge. Ultimately, it is up to language instructors to be adamant about being part of curricular reform and to bring up issues and ideas in nonspecialist language intelligible to the academic community outside the field—as difficult as their frequent lack of the security and academic freedom provided by tenure can make this. It is indispensable to inform administrators, interdepartmental task forces, and voting faculty bodies about what language requirements can and cannot achieve, how they came into being, the probable consequences of changes to them, and the ways in which they can be both strengthened and supplemented. Only thoughtful attention to second language teaching and learning can address calls for internationalized higher education to deliver graduates with translingual competence, and not just transcultural competence in English.