Group Considers Easing Language Requirements

The Faculty is presently considering recommendations for radical changes in the language requirement.

Aimed at easing existing rules, the program presented by the Committee on Educational Policy would kill the Proficiency Test and Grant course credit for high grades on entrance exams.

The proposals will be voted on at the Faculty's February meeting.

Proficiency, Test Attacked

Denouncing the Proficiency Test as "inoperative and impracticable," the group calls for the compete abolition of the present system and the substitution of three separate ways of meeting the requirement.

Under the plan, students could show a reading knowledge of some foreign language in the following ways:

1-By a score of 560 in the College Entrance Exam or the College's Placement Test taken by all entering students.

2-By passing secondary school courses in one language for two or more years, and then a College course in the same language.

3-By passing two College courses in one foreign language. (This recommendation is intended for those who have not passed secondary school language courses.)

Full Credit for Some

The Committee suggests that with the Class of 1957, freshmen who have a College Board grade of 650 to 699 receives half course credit in the language examined. Freshmen who have a grade above 700 receive a full course credit.

Any students whose active language is not English would not have to meet the language requirement.

Anticipatory credit in placement of College Board exams, the Committee maintains, will "lend strong encouragement to better and more intensive language instruction in the schools."

The Committee believes that about 22 per cent of the entering classes will get either half or full course credit on exams.

"The amount of college work in a language for those not exempted on admission is adjusted to the school preparation of the students," the group states. There is "impressive evidence that a student of average ability can acquired proficiency in a language in three years." the Committee concludes.