Editorial: Pitt should require foreign language test

Many of us, having allowed our high school Spanish or French skills to atrophy, will graduate… Many of us, having allowed our high school Spanish or French skills to atrophy, will graduate knowing only a few basic phrases in another language. With any luck, however, subsequent Pitt students will exit college with enhanced — not diminished — speaking abilities.

Beginning next year, incoming freshmen that haven’t earned at least a B in three high school second-language courses will have to enroll in a language class at the University, The Pitt News reported Tuesday. This is an improvement from previous years, when a C minimum in the same number  of classes exempted students from this requirement.

However, although we applaud Pitt administrators’ increased stringency, we don’t think they’ve gone far enough. High school transcripts, as any college student knows, are an unreliable indicator of competence. In our experience, many classes at that level are poorly instructed, or, at the very least, too lenient. Furthermore, earning B’s in a well-funded private school is hardly the same as earning them in a poorer educational environment.

What we propose Pitt mandate instead is a language-proficiency test similar to those administered by the State Department (AP exams could act as substitutes). If examinees score lower than a certain percentile, the University should require them to enroll in a language class — just as, if a student scores less than a 28 on Pitt’s math placement test, they’re required to enroll in a quantitative reasoning class. We’re confident that this will serve as a more rigorous, more objective measure of fluency.

We’re well aware of how much of a time commitment a language class can be, especially for students with full courseloads — most introductory language courses are five credits and meet five days a week. But bilingualism is invaluable for all college graduates, even if they don’t plan to live abroad. As residents of one of the most diverse nations in the world, Americans are continually exposed to other cultures and, by extension, other dialects.

Even if we lived in a linguistically homogeneous bubble, language expertise is nonetheless integral to a liberal arts education — not to mention the 21st-century business world. Countless professions rely on translators to interact with overseas companies; even in the arts, knowledge of a foreign language is an important asset.

Ideally, of course, Americans should begin learning French, Spanish, etc., when they’re still in elementary school — multiple studies have found that the longer one waits, the harder it is to become bilingual. But until that educational overhaul is realized, we’ll be satisfied when Pitt holds students to a more demanding linguistic standard.