The field of Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language has made great strides in the past twenty years as a result of the move to communicative language teaching and the development of the ACTFL proficiency guidelines. Yet, despite this progress, there remains a broad spectrum of expectations of student progress, especially at the post-second-year level, which generally goes beyond the foreign language requirement of most universities. The third year is particularly important at programs that offer post-third year courses, where it serves as a transition away from a language-centric focus towards a content-based focus that requires students to learn content through their developing language abilities. This paper will examine the learning outcomes of students in their fifth and sixth semesters of Arabic language instruction, which equates approximately with the Intermediate-High to Advanced-Low proficiency levels. The presentation will argue for the importance of defining and codifying learning outcomes for the third year level in particular and will provide examples of student progress based on analysis of actual learner production. These outcomes represent a detailed roadmap for what curriculum designers and instructors are attempting to achieve in one Arabic language program in the US, and the presentation of them will aim to stimulate wider discussion in the field of what constitutes useful benchmarks against which Arabic language programs can compare and further refine their language instruction programs now and in the future. The learning outcomes presented in this paper cover the four primary skill sets of speaking, listening, reading, and writing, in addition to cultural awareness. The initial outcomes were derived by analyzing progress expectations as expressed in course syllabi, interviews with professors, course curriculum, and the ACTFL proficiency guidelines. Further revisions were made by comparing the outcomes to oral and written samples of student production. Finally, a survey of student perceptions of their abilities to use the language was conducted to clarify points of uncertainty and provide further supporting evidence. The results were then used to further refine the learning outcomes, providing insight into the progression of proficiency and describing the transitional progress as students gain the skills necessary to successfully participate in content courses and continue to apply their language skills in ever wider contexts.