language exams

My wife, Rosie, is trying to get a Bachelor's degree. We expect
that she will get 24 credits for fluency in Spanish (from the New
York University exam through the Excelsior Credit Bank).

Based on her knowledge of Spanish, she could pass an Italian or
Portuguese exam provided it were multiple-choice. I know the
military have such exams (the Defense Language Proficiency Test
or DLPT), but is there anything for civilians?

She has the ability to do simultaneous interpretation between
English and Spanish (i.e., she can translate the previous
sentence while hearing the current one). Any ideas on how she
could claim credit for that?

-- Mark Israel

 

I was thinking that perhaps your university might grant credit for the Sat II Italian reading only test.

It would be pretty hard to score more than 24 hours in Spanish, but someone else might know an alternate route.

Ben

 

One poss...

Perhaps your (or her) school offers credit for FLATS?--foreign language assessments...--which many universities use to assess compentence in foreign language for their grad schools. (It's developed bu BYU.)

--Orson

 

FLATS

Orson, many thanks for telling me about the Foreign Language Achievement Tests (FLATS) offered by BYU. The Web page is inaccessible, but I found Google's cache of it (http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:yUN07d0IOqwC:humanities.byu.edu/HRC/FLATS.html). They answered the phone, confirmed that their exams are indeed multiple-choice, and have mailed me the application forms.

One problem, though: neither Excelsior nor Charter Oak seems to accept FLATS. (The FLATS Web page says: "Students are responsible to make sure that their institution will allow them to purchase that institution's credit from the results of a language exam administered by BYU. BYU does not grant credit to non-BYU students.")

Any idea where one can bank these credits?

 

Foreign Service Institute and Defense Language Institute

Hello, I am not sure if civilians would be allowed to test for language in these Institutes. I would check both out. I found these listings on page 99 of the TESC catalog. Spanish and French are mentioned in the listing. Hille

 

Unfortunately, no...

My understanding is that Excelsior does not accept SAT II exams;
does anyplace?

--Orson

 

Excelsior will accept Ohio University course credit by exam. But unfortunately, Spanish, French, and German exhausts their list!

Alternatively, they state in their literature that if the univerity offers it in their regular catalog, they will try to make it available to independent study students. Whether this would entail a multiple choice exam for Italian or Portuguese? I'd first ask the department before applying though OU independent study...

In the meantime, order up the OU Independent Study catalog; my one attempt to gain credit via this route failed: they said no one was teaching (or else offerred to make available what they tought) it!

Good luck!

--Orson

 

Excelsior has not definitively said that they won't accept the FLATS. But it's not on their standard list of exams. They said one would have to enroll and then have an academic advisor make the determination.

Rosie has completed Credit Review there, but is leaning toward not enrolling there because of how unhelpful they've been.

She may get her degree from the Open University of British Columbia -- who won't tell us anything about their policies for accepting credits, but who we think may be more likely to accept exam scores if credit has already been awarded for them elsewhere.

I suppose Rosie could take the FLATS exams and then try to deposit the results in the Excelsior Credit Bank and see what happens.