Proficiency
Two colleges of
Northwestern University, the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and
the School of Communication (formerly Speech), ask their students to
acquire and demonstrate oral and literacy skills in a language other
than English. The language must be regularly offered at NU through the
two-year level, and it must have a literary tradition, i.e., it must
be an academic language itself somewhere in the world. (Demonstrating
oral proficiency is not required for ancient languages like Latin and
Classical Greek. On the other hand, if a modern language doesn't have
a written tradition, e.g. American Sign Language, then proficiency in
it will not satisfy the WCAS requirement.)
For WCAS, this language
proficiency is considered the equivalent of two years' study of one
language--one may not do a year of Chinese I and a year of Arabic I--and
have the two years count in satisfaction of the WCAS language requirement--with
a minimal final passing grade in the last quarter of C- (1.7 grade points).
For Communication, it is only the Department of Radio, Television, and
Film which has a language proficiency requirement, and for that department,
the proficiency requirement is the equivalent of four quarters of minimally
successful classroom study of a single language.
Individual coordinators of instruction in the seven PAAL languages determine
whether and at what score a College Board Advanced Placement (AP) test
administered at the secondary-school level in their language constitutes
satisfaction of the WCAS or Communication/RTVF language proficiency
requirement. The same is true for determining the crediting, placement,
and satisfaction of college foreign language requirements by way of
transfer credit from another institution of higher learning, even including
study abroad affiliates of NU.
If students have
a background of formal study of a foreign language before they come
to WCAS, they may not repeat the study of it at the level they have
already achieved. That is, if for example someone who has a high school
transcript saying s/he studied Japanese for three years, then that person
cannot enroll in first-quarter, first-year Japanese at NU without taking
a placement test. Most likely, the test will reveal that first quarter
Japanese I would represent a repetition of what the student already
knows, and that s/he should start at a higher level. For languages that
are less commonly offered in US high schools, it is less likely that
someone will seek to repeat learning language skills that have been
acquired already. In any case, the student with some skills in one of
the seven languages offered in PAAL prior to study at NU should seek
a placement test to find the most appropriate
level within that language program's course offerings. Often the results
of the placement exam will indicate that the test-taker has a proficiency
level higher than that achieved by the minimally adequate in the two-year
classroom experience. In these cases, the coordinator of instruction
for that language informs the Registrar that the test-taker has "placed
out of" the language requirement in question.
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Proficiency