The college requires all graduating students to attain proficiency in a foreign language equivalent to three semesters of college-level study. Students may be granted exemption from this requirement by either (1) successfully completing three years of high school study in one foreign language, (2) passing the New York State Regents Comprehensive Foreign Language Exam at Level 3, or (3) passing a foreign language proficiency exam approved by the Dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities.
From the Fall of 1984 to the Spring of 2007, a span of 23 academic years, more than 2,700 students successfully passed a foreign language proficiency exam in any one of 66 known languages, including American Sign Language. Topping the list of languages are Chinese (Cantonese or Mandarin) with 640 exemptions, Spanish with 379 and Hindi with 280.
Total counts of foreign language proficiency exams: 1984-2007. (Click graphic to open full-sized in a new window.)
Given the complexity and rigor of proficiency exams, it is reasonable to assume that a passing score is indicative of native or near-native proficiency. Using data from these exams, we wish to examine the linguistic make-up of our student body, how it has changed over the years and whether these changes have reflected the demographics of the borough of Queens.
Unfortunately, the results are inconclusive for several reasons. First, the informal guidelines for testing that were in place prior to 2007 did not provide a standard baseline for evaluation. As a result, some speakers of foreign languages were likely unaccounted for in earlier years. Additionally, the relatively small number of exemptions granted for many languages in a given year, especially in the early years of data collection, provide little information to extend to the larger population.
For example, exemptions for Chinese were very rare until the 1992-93 academic year, when one faculty member began administering all Chinese proficiency examinations. In the previous eight years there were a total of 23 exemptions for Chinese. Since 1992, there has been a fairly constant amount of exemptions year after year with moderate fluctuation, averaging 40 per year. Yet the Chinese population in Queens County has more than quadrupled since 19801.
Spanish has shown the greatest and most consistent increase in exemptions since results have been recorded. The first year of significance was also 1992-93, in which 15 exemptions were granted. In the 10 years following, the number of exemptions remained fairly constant with some fluctuation, averaging about 20 per year. In the past four years, the yearly average has increased to about 36, peaking at 47 in 2005-06. This trend is very consistent with the increase in the Hispanic population of Queens County, which, in 2006, was 61 percent larger than in 19901.
Likewise, the trend in the amount of Korean exemptions reasonably follows that of the growing Korean population in the borough. In six-year increments, exemptions increased from an average of six per year from 1990 to 1996, to an average of 10 from 1996 to 2002, and finally to an average of 12 since the fall of 2003. In the borough of Queens, the Korean population increased by about 24 percent from 1990 to 2000 and by another five percent from 2000 to 20061.
Several languages spoken primarily in Southern Asia have been prevalent. Hindi, spoken in India and Nepal, has shown great fluctuation with little change over the years despite a substantial increase in the Asian Indian population of Queens. Exemptions of Urdu and Bengali have steadily increased, accounting for 130 and 117 total exemptions, respectively. Hebrew and Persian (Farsi) have remained fairly constant, with 124 and 118 exemptions, respectively.
With the exception of Spanish, languages of European countries have been much less represented in the total number of exemptions since 1984. The four most common—Russian with 108, French with 70, Greek with 61 and Polish with 58—exhibit varying trends with great fluctuation. Exemptions in other European languages, such as German and Italian, are rare. There are even fewer exemptions granted in languages of African countries but, when combined, those total 66 since 1984 and exhibit a constant trend. Again, the very small number of exemptions in any given year makes it difficult to extrapolate and compare the trends observed in these languages to the greater population.
As previously noted, students may also be granted exemption from the foreign language graduation requirement upon matriculation either by completing three years of high school study in a single foreign language or by passing the Level 3 Foreign Language portion of the Regents exam. These students are not required to take the aforementioned proficiency exam and thus are not included in the data previously presented. Instead, they are represented in data provided by the Office of Admissions from the six most recent academic years, from 2002-03 to 2007-08.
Spanish by far represents the most of these exemptions with 3,895 and has been increasing every year. Other languages exhibit fairly consistent long-term trends despite large occasional fluctuations. Hebrew represents the second-most exempted language with 642, followed by French with 547, Italian with 477, Chinese with 350 and Modern Greek with 113.
Unlike with proficiency exams, it is much more difficult to assume a level of proficiency based on high school coursework or Regents exams. High school students with no prior experience in a foreign language may very well take the same courses as heritage speakers. Unfortunately our data on these matriculated exemptions does not take this into account and therefore, like some of the data obtained from proficiency exams, may not be representative of the larger population.
The results of this analysis leave much to be considered. Declining enrollment in foreign language courses has been observed over the period represented by our data. Going further back over the course of the college’s history, we have seen prevalent changes in immigration patterns throughout the borough of Queens and in particular in neighborhoods surrounding the college. Areas where immigrants of Germany, Italy and Ireland resided a half-century ago are now occupied by more recent immigrants of Asian and Latin American countries. In the same time, the college has also seen increasing enrollments of first-generation students, recently being named America’s Hottest School for First-Generation Students by Newsweek magazine.
- United States Census Bureau