Proficiency, Placement, and FAQs

You should write one email addressed to BOTH Dr. Anne Thinglum and Dr. Tatevik Gevorgyan with questions regarding placement.

See the Spanish Proficiency and Placement Exam menu. 

You should contact the Director of Portuguese Studies, Professor Michael J. Ferreira, by phone at (202) 687-6134 or reach out to Professor Jessica Rodrigues.

You can make an appointment for the native-speaker interview by writing one email addressed to BOTH Dr. Anne Thinglum and Dr. Tatevik Gevorgyan

Spanish majors should speak with the Director of Undergraduate Studies, Dr. Alejandro Yarza

Spanish majors and minors should contact Dr. Monica Simorangkir

You should contact Prof. Elena Herburger by email here or (202) 687-6134.

You should contact Dr. Alfonso Morales-Front for students interested in the Linguistics Program and Dr. Tania Gentic for students interested in the Literature & Culture Program.

You should discuss your concerns with your instructor, who will consult the coordinator of your current course. If the concern remains unresolved, you can contact the coordinator directly. Please consult the table below or click here to contact the appropriate assistant language program director.

You can join La Hora del Café during the semester to practice conversing with other students, graduate students, and professors in a relaxed setting with cookies and coffee.

Please view the Testing menu

• Dr. Michael J. Ferreira – Department Chair
• Dr. Alfonso Morales-Front – Director of Graduate Studies Linguistics
• Dr. Tania Gentic – Director of Graduate Studies Literature & Culture
• Dr. Alejandro Yarza – Director of Undergraduate Studies
• Dr. Michael J. Ferreira – Director of Portuguese Studies
• Dr. Monica Simorangkir – Study Abroad Advisor

• Please contact the Academic Resource Center for information on free tutoring for intro and intermediate levels.
• Please see our private tutoring list flyer here. The Department of Spanish and Portuguese keeps a list of PhD Students/tutors but is not responsible for their performance.

1. When?  The Spanish Proficiency Exam is offered every Spring and Fall semester, about 3 weeks before the last week of classes.

2. How?  When the dates are posted, you will be able to fill out a Google Calendar Appointment form to reserve a slot for your exam.

If you reserve more than one slot, your appointment will be canceled. To change the time and day of your slot, cancel your original appointment and select a new appointment from the slots still available. Expect a message from the program administrators with instructions and relevant information once the registration period has ended. Students who do not arrive 20 minutes before their scheduled exam time, or who do not show up at all, will have to pay a $25 fee when they register for the second time. If you wish to cancel an exam time, please do so at least 10 days in advance. Visit the Testing menu for more information about the exam.

3. Who? The Spanish proficiency exams are administered ONLY to graduate and undergraduate students in the School of Foreign Service.

4. What? The exam consists of a 20-minute interview with two exam administrators.
It is divided into three parts:

• Warm-up. During this short period, the examiners try their best to make the examinee comfortable by asking him/her questions on the here-and-now
• Nucleus (15 minutes). The examinee summarizes the content of the article that s/he has read just before the exam, thus demonstrating reading comprehension skills. The examinee should demonstrate the ability to situate the news within a historical perspective and draw parallels with similar issues in other countries, including, but not exclusively, the US. At the end of this section, the examinee should be able to state his/her position on the issue and state the reasons behind that position. Please note dictionaries are not allowed at any time. Also, the text and any notes will be turned in before the interview.
• Closing: the examiners may use this brief period to prompt, prod, and push examiners to perform some of the required performance in the 2 above. The examiner should, throughout the exam but especially at this point, show command of pragmatics (politeness, turn-taking).
• Newspaper articles are taken from major Spanish & Latin American newspapers and deal with current issues in the Spanish-speaking areas which have, oftentimes, been discussed in the Advanced courses (SPAN 2001, SPAN 2002, SPAN 2011) and SPAN 2161.

• Students who plan to go abroad in one of the two summer programs for which the Spanish & Portuguese Department is responsible will take the exam at the end of the abroad program. The two programs that offer exams are Quito and Barcelona; they offer exams to SFS students the evening before the last day of classes for the program.
• Students who spend at least one semester abroad in a direct matriculation program do not need to take the exam.
• Students who are currently registered in any of the four sections of SPAN 2161: Transatlantic Visions Capstone previously called (Oral review) will take the exam on the day assigned by the registrar’s office for the final exam. Two faculty members will administer the exam.
• SPAN 2161 prepares the students for the Proficiency Exam which will complete their language requirement for graduation. Students may first attempt to take the Proficiency Exam after completion of (Advanced Spanish: Transatlantic II) or (Intensive Advanced Spanish: Transatlantic) with a grade of B+ or higher in BOTH (Advanced I and Advanced II or Intensive Advanced Spanish). Students in Advanced II need their instructor’s WRITTEN permission confirming that on average, at the time of exam registration, the student’s grade in Advanced II or Intensive Advanced is at least a B+. Students who fail the exam must pay the $25 fee and complete SPAN 2161 or another advanced course before retaking it. This means that students must plan well ahead and attempt to pass the exam two semesters before graduation at the latest.
• Students who take the Department of Spanish and Portuguese’s Spanish Language Placement Exam and are placed into SPAN-3000 or above may take the oral proficiency exam at any point. Students who are placed into SPAN-2161 and who do not meet any of the above-mentioned criteria are advised to matriculate into SPAN-2161 before taking the proficiency exam.
• Students are allowed to take the exam only twice. See School of Foreign Service policies for more details.

• Reading Comprehension/Comprehension: The examinee understands the content of a newspaper or magazine article on current events and shows the ability to: 1) summarize a given text cohesively and coherently without prompting, 2) produce a statement summarizing his/her own view of the event, and 3) answer follow up questions, showing both the ability to comprehend and prior knowledge on general encyclopedic points related to the content of the article.
• Grammar: The examinee shows the ability to both narrate and describe events producing paragraph-length discourse in all major time frames (past, present, and future). S/he may have problems regarding the use of ser/estar, subjunctive, and preterit/imperfect contrasts but they should not interfere with comprehension. The reference point for ‘comprehension’ is the native speaker monolingual not used exchanges with non-native speakers.
• Vocabulary/ Professional Vocabulary: Vocabulary may be primarily generic when dealing with personal topics, but the examinee shows command of a professional, specialized lexicon when dealing with topics of interest (such as US and international economy, politics, and/or societal issues). Circumlocution and rephrasing are to be expected.
• Speech: Speech has to be clear and not lead to confusion. Pronunciation, lexicon, grammar, and paragraph structure should not be so faulty as to prevent comprehension by native speakers unaccustomed to interacting with non-native speakers. Discourse may still reflect the oral paragraph structure of the examinee’s language rather than that of the target language.
• Knowledge of Subject Matter: The examinee has to show knowledge of the geography, customs, socioeconomic and sociopolitical structures as well as the history of Latin America and Spain. S/he also has to be aware of and knowledgeable about the past and present status of the relationship between those countries and the United States as well as current issues of importance in the Spanish-speaking world.
•  How to prepare for the Exam? To prepare for the expected level of linguistic accuracy and fluency as well as to accumulate the necessary encyclopedic and current knowledge on socio-economic matters related to Latin America and Spain, we strongly encourage enrolling in an SFS language course: 101, 102, or 161, according to your placement and following the guidelines outlined above. For students who meet those guidelines, please click here for more information about the exam.