The USC Proficiency-Based Program in Foreign Language Instruction: Methods and Their Effects on Achievement and Motivation

Abstract

The University of Southern California (USC) has broken with tradition by rejecting the more common unit or semester-based language requirement and adopting one which stresses the acquisition of reading and oral proficiency in a second language.' The evolution from a semesterto a proficiency-based requirement began in 1978 when the administration of USC charged a committee of foreign language educators with the task of creating a new language requirement which would be satisfied only through satisfactory demonstration of communication skills in a foreign language. This mandate led to the implementation in Fall 1982 of the USC Skill Level Requirement which specifies that students will have completed their foreign language requirement only when they have attained at least a minimum level of oral and reading proficiency in a foreign language as demonstrated by performance on a specific proficiency examination. The Foreign Language Executive Committee (FLEX) of USC has attempted to set realistic proficiency levels which can be attained by at least seventy percent of the students after two hundred hours of exposure to the target language. The position of this committee is that minimum proficiency will have been attained when a student can use the target language in a realistic situation, both in conversation and in reading.2 Skill development is measured by performance on a test administered at the end of two hundred hours (three semesters) of study. Since passing this exam is the stated long-range goal of the language programs, teachers have begun to teach toward this exam rather than to concentrate instruction on grammatical manipulations, and thus toward the acquisition of reading and oral proficiency. Gone are the simple days of rote pattern practice and fill-in-the-blank tests of structural accuracy. Instead, instructors have turned to class activities which promote conversation and reading skill development and to tests that evaluate the students' ability to employ these skills in realistic situations. Teachers need to use new materials and activities that allow for the development of structural and lexical accuracy as well as communication ability. At the elementary level of study, activities are chosen which require the use of basic survival and social interaction skills; at the intermediate level the students expand their abilities to include self-expression through discussions of personal