Department Resources

It is important that you consult with your advisor or a faculty member within your major to verify the specific requirements for your degree.

If you have not yet chosen a major and are still unsure of your degree program, follow the guidelines for the Bachelor of Arts degree. Refer to the list of academic departments within the College of Arts and Sciences.

Please refer to the appropriate catalog as posted on the Registrar’s website to find the requirement for your specific degree program.

These degree programs have a language requirement:

• B.A. (Bachelor of Arts)
• B.M. (Bachelor of Music)
• B.S.W. (Bachelor of Social Work)
• B.S.B.A. (Bachelor of Science in Business Administration)
• B.S.A. (Bachelor of Science in Accounting)
• B.S. in Engineering (VIEP-German and VIEP-French students only)

These degree programs include language course(s) as an option to fulfill the Cultural Diversity requirement.

• B.S. (Bachelor of Science)
• B.S.F.A. (Bachelor of Science in Fine Arts)
• B.S.P.E. (Bachelor of Science in Physical Education)
• B.S. in Engineering (all degrees)

These degree programs do not have a language requirement. You may of course take a Valpo language course for elective credit.

• B.M.Ed. (Bachelor of Music Education)
• B.S.Ed. (Bachelor of Science Education)
• B.S.N. (Bachelor of Science in Nursing)

1. Students who have earned college credit for high-school courses in a Dual Credit program may transfer that credit to Valparaiso University.  The credits will generally count as foreign-language credit.  At the 203 or 204 level, these courses will generally count toward the General Education Foreign Language requirement at Valparaiso University.  Students should consult the General Catalog to determine their particular General Education requirements.
2. Students must request that the college transcript be forwarded to Valparaiso University for analysis and transfer of credit.
3. As is the case for all transfer credit, no retroactive credit will be granted, even if the course transferred in is at the 203 level or above.
4. Any student who is considering continued study of a foreign language should take the Valparaiso University placement exam, whether or not the student plans to transfer in Dual Credit in that language.  This allows them to determine with greater accuracy the appropriate level in which to enroll.  (No credit is granted based on a student’s score on the placement exam.)

1. The evaluator must be a native or near-native speaker of the language, capable of verifying language fluency at an advanced level.
2. Normally the evaluator will be connected with a college or university, or will be a professional who is familiar with university-level work and understands the philosophy behind university language requirements.
3. The evaluator will not be a member of the candidate’s family.
4. Oral and written fluency must be verified. Please see below for details on what need to be evaluated.
5. When the evaluator has completed the oral conversation and read the candidate’s writing sample he or she should write a simple letter to the Chair of the Department of World Languages and Cultures to confirm the candidate’s language proficiency. This may be a simple confirmation of native proficiency, based on the evidence collected. Or, if there are significant weaknesses in the candidate’s performance (e.g. inability to use a wide range of vocabulary; to speak about past, future, or conditional situations; to use correct grammar that indicates only partial knowledge of the language), that should be noted in the letter.

Procedures for Evaluating Language Level

a. Oral fluency
The evaluator should conduct a session of at least 15 minutes in which the person verifying fluency engages the candidate in conversation. (See below for conversation prompts.) The candidate should show that he or she is able to use the language with native facility in terms of richness, variety, and appropriateness of vocabulary as well ability to use complex language structures including, for instance, question forms; a variety of tenses (past, present, future); hypotheticals (“if I won a million dollars, I would…”); imperatives or command forms; narrative structures (ability to tell a brief story about something that happened); linking words such as “because,” “despite this,” “next,” and so forth. The candidate should be able to express fairly sophisticated ideas related to both concrete topics (e.g. “what I like to do in the summer”) and more abstract topics (e.g. “why it’s important to learn a foreign language”).

b. Written fluency
The candidate should write, unassisted by a dictionary or a person, a composition of about one page in which he or she demonstrates fluency in the written language, on the topic indicated below. In the composition, the candidate should show that he or she has a broad vocabulary that goes writing about beyond simple everyday items, and that he or she is able to use complex language structures such as those outlined in part (a) above. Spelling should be correct and language use should show no major grammatical errors. The writing sample should show mastery of structures that are appropriate for the written medium; sentences should be complete and have varied grammatical structures (i.e. not simply repeat the same structure in each sentence). The nature of the ideas expressed is less important than a demonstration that the candidate uses the written language with ease and correctness at a native level.

c. Conversation prompts (expressed in the language being evaluated)
The evaluator may use several or all of these questions to elicit a conversation of the length required.

–Why did you choose to study at Valparaiso University?
–In what circumstances did you learn this language? How did that affect your learning of English? With whom do you speak this language, and when? Have you traveled to the country (countries) where this language is spoken, and what have you done while there?
–What are you majoring in, and what relation does that major have to the career that you hope to have?
–If you won the lottery, what would you do with the proceeds?
–Tell me a story about a class you took (in high school or college) that was a particularly good or bad experience. What happened? What made it good or bad? What have you learned as a result?
–What do you think is the most important news story today? Why is it important? How does it affect you?

d. Writing prompt
Have the candidate write about one double-spaced page on the following prompt. The candidate may not use a dictionary or spell-check program or ask for guidance from any person.

Write about how you learned your non-English language—when, where, from whom. Do you think that your different languages link you to different cultures? If so, in what ways? If not, why not? Then tell about how you think knowing several languages will be useful to you in the future, professionally and personally.

Students who submit results of Advanced Placement examinations are eligible to receive credit in accordance with the following table. AP examinations must be taken before enrollment as a full-time student at Valparaiso University. For more information, contact the Admission Office.

General Guidelines

• An internship is an unpaid work experience that may take place during the academic year or in the summer, for which the student receives academic credit. A World Language internship (available for French, German, Spanish, Chinese, or Japanese) provides the student with an introduction to work in some area of business, government, or social agency that involves significant use of the appropriate language by the intern. This may involve translating to or from the target language, interpretation to or from the language, or other kinds of work. An internship which does not involve the intern in significant use of the appropriate world language may not be used for World Language Internship credit. In such cases, the student may seek internship credit in a different academic department.
• Academic credit granted for internships will vary, but is normally awarded according to the following ratio: 40 hours of work to one hour of academic credit. (Travel time to and from the job site is not included in the number of work hours.) The student must register for course 486, Internship. Internships of two or more credits are preferred for summer internships.
• A student’s participation in an internship must be approved by the World Language Department Chair and Supervising Faculty member before the student registers for internship credit.
• A detailed internship description, approved by the on-site supervisor, must be submitted to the Supervising Faculty member prior to the student beginning the internship. This also applies in the case of summer internships.
• In the case of a summer internship, the student must have enrolled in course 486 before June 1, and have paid for the course prior to beginning the internship. The daily journal and final paper must be submitted to the Supervising Faculty member at least one week prior to the end of Summer Session II.
• Students may be paid a salary or scholarship stipend but it is understood that most internships are non-paying. Students cannot use full-time jobs during the academic year as internships.
• If the internship experience is abroad, normally the Valparaiso University Director at the overseas study site will serve as monitor of the internship.
• Normally, the student pursuing the internship will be a departmental major (or minor in the case of Chinese or Japanese). The student will normally have completed at least six courses in the relevant language at the 204 level and above. For Chinese and Japanese, students will normally have completed JAPN or CHIN 204 or the equivalent.

Evaluation

• At the end of the internship the on-site supervisor will submit a written evaluation to the Supervising Faculty member rating the student on criteria ranging from work quality to student attitude.
• The student will keep a daily work journal in the target language*, consisting of entries summarizing what work activities he or she performed each work day. Interns may also wish to record brief reactions to or assessments of the work and their performance.
• The student will also write a final internship report in the target language*, describing and evaluating the internship experience. The paper should be from 6 to 8 pages (8 to 10 if the internship is for 3 or 4 academic credits), typed and double-spaced. In it, the intern must discuss the following subjects:
  • Employment site
    • Description of the institution where intern worked: its activities and place in the field
    • Description of the department where intern worked: its structure and role within the institution
  • Intern’s responsibilities
    • Outline of specific functions and work objectives
    • Work method
    • Specific skills required
  • Analysis of intern’s personal experience
    • Description of skills and experience acquired.
    • Description of any specific work-related vocabulary or idioms acquired in the target language.
    • Cultural competence acquired during the internship, description of distinctive features of work culture in the environment of the target language/culture.
    • Compare and contrast work experiences in students` native culture and target culture.
    • Relationship of work experience to insights gained in previous coursework
    • Personal challenges faced and resolved
  • Relationship of internship to intern’s professional goals and vocation.

The paper and the journal must be handed in to the Supervising Faculty member by the first day of final examinations of the semester in which the internship is performed.

*For Japanese and Chinese, written work should be done in the target language as much as possible.

Rationale

Language-acquisition courses in the modern languages at Valparaiso University always include significant oral/aural components and significant written components. In daily classwork, students are required to interact with their professor and with each other in the target language at an appropriate level of proficiency. Generally, all production modalities—interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational—are included in each course. Students advance their speaking and aural comprehension skills mainly through daily classroom interaction, but also through recorded exercises and activities. Students are regularly evaluated on their oral production (speaking) skills and their aural comprehension (listening) skills in a variety of ways: 1) periodic evaluation of speaking in class; 2) inclusion of speaking and aural comprehension in testing (quizzes, unit/chapter exams, and final exams); and/or 3) inclusion of oral production and aural comprehension elements in graded homework and out-of-class activities. Writing assignments vary in length and complexity according to course level, but demand that students produce original pieces in the target language (not translated from English).

While we recognize that online language courses can have value, they often do not provide the quantity or quality of oral interactions needed for students to develop oral and aural skills. In face-to-face classroom interactions, students must interact with a variety of speaking partners, learn to interpret the coordination of body language and spoken language, and learn to negotiate breakdowns of communication in appropriate ways, in addition to learning skills of language production and comprehension. Other online courses do not have adequate teaching or assessing of students’ ability to produce written work in the target language.

Additionally, the impossibility of guaranteeing academic honesty in a completely online setting has particular pitfalls for foreign-language courses because of the easy recourse to online translation programs or even native speakers to do work in place of the student.

Because our courses require that students progress appropriately in all four skills, including speaking and aural comprehension as well as written proficiency, students requesting to transfer in credits in online courses in a foreign language must provide a syllabus or other verifiable written evidence that the course includes significant portions of both oral/aural and written work, and that their level of proficiency is tested in appropriate ways.
Policy

Thus, to be accepted for transfer credit, a language-acquisition course in a modern language must:

• require that students participate in activities that demand significant and regular work in oral production and aural comprehension;
• require that these activities include frequent and significant oral interaction, both synchronous and face-to-face with the instructor and with fellow students, for a minimum of 100 minutes per week over a 14-week semester (face-to-face can involve a program such as Skype);
• include regular and significant opportunities for spontaneous oral production, not just recording of the reading of pre-written material;
• assess oral production and aural comprehension through regular evaluation of these skills;
• include grading of the skills of oral production and aural comprehension—either explicitly in discrete grading situations such as tests or embedded within a variety of graded assignments—as a significant portion of the course grade; and
• include explicit instructions for proctoring of exams or other methods for ensuring academic honesty.

To be accepted for transfer, online and computer-assisted foreign-language courses must have a significant writing component. A program such as Rosetta Stone that does not require multiple writing assignments of lengths and complexities appropriate to the level will not be accepted. Within the course, writing projects must be regularly assigned and must be graded. Their length will vary according to the course level, but at any level students should have assignments that require them to write paragraph-length and, at upper levels, longer pieces in the target language. Instructor feedback will allow students to progress in their writing skills. Particularly for online and computer-assisted courses, systems must be in place to prevent cheating in the production of written pieces.

Normally, the catalog description of an online course will not be sufficient for the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures to determine the above; additional documentation will usually be required.

If it cannot be documented that online foreign-language courses contain these elements, they will not be accepted as substitutions for Valparaiso University foreign-language courses.

Policy on Transfer Credit for Modern Foreign Language Courses Taken Online
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
Valparaiso University
October 2012

Click here to download the pdf.

The Cultural Center downstairs offers programming space open to the Valparaiso University community. Space options include:

General Purpose Room:

• 21 Tables
• 52 Chairs

Can be partitioned into two smaller spaces.

Library:

• Large conference table
• 16 tall-backed chairs

Lobby:

• Fireplace
• 4 large chairs
• Baby grand piano

Space in the German Cultural Center can be reserved by Valpo affiliated departments. Please schedule your event as far in advance as possible. Reservations can be made with the Student Building Manager at 219.548.1569.

https://www.leadwithlanguages.org/busted-myths-and-misconceptions-about-language-learning/

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/translator/business/faq