In a time when L2 instructor-student contact hours/minutes seem to steadily decrease at institutions across the country, it is essential to maximize the time students have for face-to-face interaction to ensure that they are given the opportunity to actively engage with one another at higher levels of cognition. 

Following a curricular redesign, qualitative data was gathered, as evidence of learning, over the course of 1 1/2 years to assess transcultural proficiency. At the same, an independent online testing company that uses ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines in their assessment was hired to measure the test takers' language ability. Students in their first-year of language study showed higher levels of linguistic and transcultural proficiency than their second-year counterparts. A control group of students that went through the entire first-year sequence in the new curriculum and started their first course in the second-year of language study also placed higher than their third-year counterparts.

Will K. Reyes-Cubides, MIT