Placement
Typically, the
placement exam tests both oral-aural and writing proficiency. Arabic,
Chinese, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, and Korean in PAAL have placement
exams scheduled during Orientation. For Swahili, due to low demand,
arrangements to take the placement exam are done on a case by case basis.
Anyone new to NU with some literacy skills in any of the seven PAAL
languages is strongly encouraged to take the placement exam for that
language before meeting with the WCAS or Communication advisors (for
most students, WCAS freshman advisor) and before registering for Fall
classes. The advisor in turn will be, among other things, encouraging
new students in the college to resolve how they will satisfy its foreign
language requirement.
The NU-WCAS language
placement exams, including all seven individual PAAL language programs,
are generally designed to test a candidate's language skills compared
to certain threshold levels of proficiency that the average "absolute
beginner" classroom student of the language achieves along the
two-year path of beginner's study. Skill levels vary from language to
language, affected by such factors as the given language's writing system,
complexity of the grammar system, similarity of the target language
to the student's mother tongue, and the pedagogical tradition in that
particular language program.
This phenomenon
affects the design of the placement tests in the individual language
programs. In each program, however, the primary goal is placing the
test taker appropriately within that language program's total curriculum.
In PAAL, four year-levels of courses are available for Chinese, Hebrew,
and Japanese. Arabic and Swahili have regularly-offered third-year courses
in their curricula. Hindi and Korean have regularly-offered two-year
programs, both with "true beginner" and "accelerated"
options--the latter for "heritage students" who often have
some oral proficiency but lack literacy skills.
If one has moderate
success on the placement exam, and is placed within the two-year beginner-to-intermediate
course sequence, then the understanding is that one can join that language
program's specific curriculum, with its particular textbook or set of
textbooks and other learning resources. Therefore, again in the design
phase, the test is somewhat tailored to what is actually done in the
NU classroom at certain points in the two-year program, so that if a
student, say, places into the beginning of the second year, the message
is that that person will be able to handle the required textbook and
assignments of a particular NU second-year language course, and his
or her language skills will be compatible with those of his or her potential
classmates. Even if a test taker places out of the first two years of
classroom instruction, the language program offering the placement test
still will typically announce that (because this person may wish to
continue academic study of the language) someone who "placed out"
may begin at the third or fourth-year level if s/he wishes.
Whether one "places
out" of study of all four or six college required courses, or by
placing beyond the first quarter of first year skips one or more courses,
no credits or grade points are earned for the courses not taken.
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Placement