Foreign language fluency – how to get lots of credits

Bears' Guide, for the last several editions, in Chapter 17 "The Credit Bank Service" says: "Fluency in Spanish will always be worth 24 semester units.”

When you ask Excelsior College how to get credit for fluency in a foreign language, they point you to the New York University exams ( http://www2.scps.nyu.edu/dyncon/acfl/gene_prof.html ) for which they offer a maximum of 16 credits.

But Dr Bear gave me a very valuable hint. He said, “It wasn't that long ago that the MLA gave 30.”

So I wrote to the official e-mail for the Excelsior College Credit Bank, [email protected] , asking if they still award credit for the MLA exams.
The first response was, “I'm not familiar with the MLA exam. Can you be more specific?” But when I explained that these were the Modern Languages Association Cooperative Foreign Language Proficiency Tests, the response was, “We would award credit for the Modern Language Association Proficiency exams. [...] The maximum amount of credit we would award is 33 semester credits (Battery A 24 semester credits and Battery B 9 semester credits). [...] On a Credit Bank transcript we do not identify upper level credit.”

Clearly, this beats any other exam hollow. Excelsior awards only 16 credits for the NYU exam, and only 12 credits for the CLEP exam, and is not familiar with FLATS (Foreign Language Achievement Tests) from Brigham Young University (but FLATS is designed to assess only 12 credits).

So where can one take the MLA exam? First of all, not from the MLA. When I phoned the MLA “English and foreign language programs” phone number given at http://www.mla.org , the man who answered first thought that I was referring to the MLAT (Modern Language Aptitude Test), which is an exam for children that has nothing to do with the MLA. When I phoned him back with more info, he said that the MLA developed these “MLA exams” 40 years ago, and sold and disowned them 20 years ago, and he wishes the people who still give them would stop calling them “MLA”.

The MLA exams are required for people who want to teach languages in Virginia public schools. They are offered at two universities in Virginia: George Mason University ( http://www.gmu.edu/departments/fld/mla.html ) and Old Dominion University ( http://www.odu.edu/al/llc/mla.html ). They are given in French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. They can be taken by non-students, are given about once a semester. George Mason University says, “The next exam date has not been determined, however, [the exams] may be offered sooner than the May (summer semester) period.” Old Dominion University expects to offer them next in May. The Virginia version of the exam consists of 5 sections: Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing, Culture and Civilization. http://www.odu.edu/al/llc/howtoprepare.html suggests study materials for the Culture and Civilization section.

The University of Utah also offers a version of the MLA exam, usually twice a month ( www.hum.utah.edu/languages/geninfo/faqs/faq3.htm ). But this version has only 3 of the 5 sections. Millersville University gives the MLA exam, but only to its own students, and is phasing it out.

My final question for the Excelsior Credit Bank was, “Do you know if these 5 sections correspond in some way to your ‘Battery A’ and ‘Battery B’?” The response: “I apologize for the delayed response since I had to meet with my supervisor before responding. Regents College stopped administering these exams in the early 80's and we did not think anyone else was administering these examinations. We believe the content is still the same but we would need to see a copy of the transcript to have it reviewed by our Academic Affairs Council before we can determine how and if we would award the credit.”

I hope this information is useful to someone.

 

VERY interesting, Mark--and surely of great interest to several posters here!~

But does this mean that only the credit bank would recognize these exams--or that Excelsior College students could get them recognized for the full potential credit as well?

--Orson

 

Orson writes:

> VERY interesting, Mark--and surely of great interest to several
> posters here!
> But does this mean that only the credit bank would recognize
> these exams--or that Excelsior College students could get them
> recognized for the full potential credit as well?

That's a very good question, Orson, and one that I am no position to answer. I hope that someone here who is an enrolled student at Excelsior College will raise the question with his academic advisor (and also the question of how many of the credits would be upper-level).

As I quoted above, Excelsior mentioned having to refer the matter to its “Academic Affairs Council”. Clearly, this is an untried procedure, and the first person to try it will be taking a risk. On the plus side, he'll be establishing a precedent for others, and vindicating the info in Bears’ Guide.

 

Old Dominion University will be offering the MLA exams May 1-5.

http://www.odu.edu/al/llc/mla.html

 

Excelsior College received Rosie's MLA results the first week in August, and said "Our test administration department is actually looking into this for us".

Today, Rosie's Academic Advisor attached the following note to her Evaluation Summary: "I just wanted to let you know that although we are still trying to determine if credit can be awarded for your MLA examination I would encourage you to make degree completion plans that do not include that credit. In other words, do not count on those credits because even if credit is awarded it may be quite some time before a decision is reached."

 

I am enrolled in the B.S. BMI (MIS degree from the business school) at Excelsior. I also happen to be a Hebrew linguist in the Air Force. My studies at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA earned me 45 hours of RA credit from DLI. In transferring to the afore mentioned degree at Excelsior, I received 32 hours in Humanities and 6 hours in Social/Science. I actually had plenty of hours in these 2 areas from other "normal" classes (I have approximately 240 RA hours, but am still pursuing my first bachelors), however, my 4.0 GPA in all my Hebrew classes provides a nice boost to my overall GPA at Excelsior.

To speak more directly to testing for language credit, if one is in the military, one should talk to their testing center about taking the Defense Language Proficiency Test. The test is scored on a scale of 0, 0+, 1, 1+, 2, 2+, 3 in both the reading and listening abilities. For scores at 2 or above, Excelsior does award some credit for being proficient in a language, however I'm not sure of the exact corrolation between credit hours and proficiency score. I would imagine that if one could demonstrate a civilian exam to be similar in nature to the DLPT, one could convince Excelsior to award similar credit.

Again, my language credit is from an RA school, but I know they do award credit based on the DLPT, and I would assume on other exams as well.

 

Does anybody knows if excelsior awards credit for the MLA Exam now???

 

how to get lots of UPPER credit from langage test?

as i have posted before :

the easier upper level credit i ever get is the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) proficency exam (http://www.actfl.org/)

i took cantonese and mandarin.

for each exam i was given the maximum of 6 upper and 6 lower credit. (total: 12 upper 12 lower).

each exam is only about usd150.

No written exam needed as it is an over the phone oral exam.

in my opinion it is cheaper and much easier than the newyork univ language exam.

the test registration website http://www.languagetesting.com

 

I called Excelsior today regarding the MLA exam and explained that I heard that Excelsior awarded a total of 33 credits for the MLA.
She verified and stated that excelsior does not award any credits for the exam.
But she also stated that if the number of credits earned were in a RA transcript they might recognize it!
I would like to know if anybody was awrded 33 credits in the past!!
Or does anybody have any additional info, 33 credits in one seating that would be fantastic!!!!!

 

[email protected]
When you ask Excelsior College how to get credit for fluency in a foreign language, they point you to the New York University exams ( http://www2.scps.nyu.edu/dyncon/acfl/gene_prof.html ) for which they offer a maximum of 16 credits.

But Dr Bear gave me a very valuable hint. He said, “It wasn't that long ago that the MLA gave 30.”

So I wrote to the official e-mail for the Excelsior College Credit Bank, [email protected] , asking if they still award credit for the MLA exams.
The first response was, “I'm not familiar with the MLA exam. Can you be more specific?” But when I explained that these were the Modern Languages Association Cooperative Foreign Language Proficiency Tests, the response was, “We would award credit for the Modern Language Association Proficiency exams. [...] The maximum amount of credit we would award is 33 semester credits (Battery A 24 semester credits and Battery B 9 semester credits). [...] On a Credit Bank transcript we do not identify upper level credit.” [email protected]

Is somebody interested in looking in to this?
The idea is to find an institution that administers the MLA exam for college credit
Pilot

 

Does excelsior accept these credits by this date???