Please come back next semester to find out about the activities planned for fall 2008.
The Placement Examination in Spanish is an online, multiple-choice format exam that you may take at your convenience, even before your arrival on campus (see link below). It consists of questions on vocabulary, grammar and reading comprehension. There is no oral or listening part to the exam. Since it is an adaptive test, the length varies from one individual to another, with an average time of 20 minutes.
At the exam welcome screen (see link below) you must provide all the information requested. Your score and placement recommendation will be notified to you and to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese immediately upon completion of the exam. We recommend that you print your results as well.
After receipt of the report, you may register in the designated course during Orientation or the add/drop period. The online placement test is for diagnostic purposes only and will be supplemented by your instructor's evaluation during the first week of classes, at which time he or she may recommend a change in registration. Under no circumstances may you register for a level lower or higher than the one to which you are assigned without the explicit permission of the Director of the Language Programs.
If your score in the online test qualifies you for exemption from the language requirement at Columbia, you will be required to take a written version of the placement examination during Orientation (for entering students) or during the semester (for continuing students). This written exam will be offered every year on the Thursday before the beginning of classes in the fall semester from 10:00 a.m.- 2:00 p.m. in Room 352 of the International Affairs Building (the Language Resource Center Computer Lab). You do not need to make an appointment to sit for this exam.
You may take this exam only once. Should you have any questions about your placement, please contact the Director of the Language Programs.
The exam must represent your own work. When taking it you will be bound by Columbia University's Code of Academic Integrity, and must refrain from any activity constitutive of academic dishonesty as defined therein.
To take the placement exam please go to:
Address: http://webcape.byuhtrsc.org/?acct=columbia
password: roaree1 [ends with the number one]
Prospective Majors and Concentrators in Hispanic Studies and Portuguese Studies can find information here about the department and its academic programs. They may also contact the Director of Undergraduate Studies for more information. If you wish to declare a major or a concentration in Hispanic Studies or a concentration in Portuguese Studies you must complete a Columbia College Major/Concentration Declaration Form, and have it signed by the DUS. The deadline for declaring a major or concentration in Columbia College was March 6, 2008. The deadline for the School of General Studies was March 31, 2008. Use this Declaration Form for the School of General Studies.
The Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Columbia University, located in the Casa Hispánica at 612 West 116th Street in New York, has long enjoyed an international reputation as a center for Hispanic and Lusophone studies. In addition to providing students with a commanding linguistic preparation in Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan, the department offers a flexible and varied undergraduate program that enables them to study the cultural manifestations of the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds in a variety of cultural contexts: the Iberian Peninsula, Latin America, the former colonies of Portugal, and the United States.
The aim of the department's graduate program is to train students to become first-rate scholars and teachers who are theoretically sophisticated and attuned to the issues, polemics, and approaches that define the profession currently as a field of intellectual endeavor.
The department also hosts the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University. Founded in 1920 as the Instituto de las Españas, the Hispanic Institute's central aim is to sponsor and disseminate research on Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian culture. The Institute has also published since 1934 the Revista Hispánica Moderna, a distinguished journal in the field of Hispanic criticism and theory.