<p>Because my daughter is involved in mission work in Brazil, she would like to learn Portuguese in high school rather than continue with the Spanish she has so far. The college she is interested says that they would accept for credit her work in Portuguese is she could pass a Portuguese language proficiency exam consistent with a level 201 course. This college does not offer this proficiency exam. Where would she need to go to take this sort of exam?</p>
<p>She may need to go to a different college to take it. I’m not sure what state you’re in, but I would imagine that has a lot to do with it. Any school in an area with a large Portuguese or Brazilian population would be your best bet. If you’re in CA (like me) you can find Portuguese classes and degrees in Portuguese, but I’m not sure about other parts of the country.</p>
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<p>Some colleges and universities with substantial enrollments and ongoing “investment” in Portuguese include Tulane (New Orleans) and Vanderbilt and Brown. Boston and Los Angeles and parts of New York/New Jersey are areas of the country where there are large Brazilian populations and so probably administer language examinations to verify proficiency. You could contact the Spanish and Portuguese Depts. at UCLA, UMass Boston, UMass Dartmouth, Rutgers. Depends on what part of the country you’re in.</p>
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<p>Thanks for the info. I will have to do some looking around. We are in Iowa. Also, does anyone know which language software might be a good choice, especially if she is planning to take a proficiency exam?</p>
<p>Both the University of Iowa and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities offer courses in Portuguese. I know for a fact the University of Minnesota administers a language proficiency exam in Portuguese; I’d imagine Iowa does, too. I have no idea whether they’d arrange to let your D take their exam, however. Here’s the link for Minnesota:</p>
<p>[FAQs</a> About the Second Language Requirement](<a href=“Academic Advising”>http://class.umn.edu/degree_requirements/FAQs_About_the_Second_Language_Requirement.html)</p>
<p>There’s a substantial and growing population of Brazilians and to some extent other Portuguese speakers in the Twin Cities.</p>
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<p>I am confused. Is the notion that the OP’s daughter’s college does not offer Portugese, but is willing to give a student college credit for Portugese provided she can pass someone else’s first-semester second-year exam? Who determines what is an acceptable exam? Who monitors and grades it? Who decides what “passing” is? If the credit-granting college does not see and grade the actual exam, who certifies all of this to it? And for what kind of compensation?</p>
<p>I don’t think you can simply call up a university and say “Will someone give me a second-year-level exam in Portugese, grade it, and tell my college that (if) I passed?” If I took the call, my answer would be, “Sure! Provided you are eligible to register in the course, if you register for it and pay the tuition and fees, we will be happy to test you on the material, to put the results on your transcript, and to send it to whomever you wish. You may want to check with the instructor as to whether he is willing to give you a passing grade whether or not you come to class, though.”</p>
<p>In my (limited) experience, widely available language software matches up very poorly with university language instruction. The former tend to empahsize practical conversational skills to the exclusion of all else, and the latter are much more systematic and grammar-centric. Of course, at a high level they both get to the same place, but at the end-of-first-course level they may barely be in the same universe.</p>
<p>Rosetta Stone Language software offers Portugese. However, I am not sure how it lines up with college courses and proficiency exams.</p>
<p>What year of high school and how many years of Spanish does your daughter already have? How long are her mission trips to Brazil? If she only goes for 1 or 2 weeks here and there, I’d stick with the Spanish through high school. Spanish is a great background for learning Portuguese. Once in college, she can take Portuguese and/or study abroad in Brazil (some study abroad programs in Brazil have only a pre-req of several semesters of college Spanish). My daughter had 4 years of high school Spanish as a background, never had the opportunity to study Portuguese in the US, but was proficient in Portuguese within 2 months of immersion in Brazil and truly fluent by the end of one year (fluent enough to be hired as a Portuguese TA at college and to be hired as a translator/interpreter for some visiting Brazilian professionals). Rosetta Stone is fairly expensive and not likely to give one enough background to test out of a Portuguese class and get credit. U of Wisconsin (at least a few years ago) has an on-line Portuguese class that would give UW credit that could potentially be transferred. BYU is also apparently big on Portuguese because of all their mission trips. Middlebury offers Portuguese in their summer language institute.</p>
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<p>A 201 level course would be either intermediate or advanced. It would take more than two years of high school to achieve that level of proficiency. It might be a good idea to check the course description. How much vocabulary? what could students be expected to know by the end of the course?
As for college credit: many universities do allow students to demonstrate proficiency in a language that they do not offer if the students can line up a college examiner at another institution. Obviously, whether or not to make up an exam for the purpose is entirely at the discretion of the professor.</p>
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<p>Thanks everyone for the thoughtful responses! You’ve given me and my daughter much to think about. For those asking, DD has had 2 years of Spanish, and her college of choice does not offer Portuguese. She will be homeschooling for her last 2 years of high school. We’ve been doing lots of reading up on homeschool and self-study language programs, and have read frequently about how many are not really geared towards a proficiency exam. So, even if she decides to finish her four years of Spanish at home, we need to choose carefully.</p>
<p>But if she’s continuing with Spanish, she can take the SAT subject test, or even better, one of the AP exams (Spanish Lang or Spanish Lit). Most colleges that my son looked at accepted a certain minimum score on one of these standardized tests as proof of “proficiency” in a foreign language (equivalent to a college-level intermediate course) if he wanted to waive the foreign language requirement there.</p>
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<p>javadroid,</p>
<p>Two companies that provide proficiency testing in many languages are ALTA and Berlitz. </p>
<p>[ALTA</a> Language Testing - Spanish Language Tests - English Language Tests - ALTA Tests Over 80 Languages](<a href=“http://www.altalang.com/language-testing/]ALTA”>Language Proficiency Testing Services | Alta Language Services)</p>
<p>[Berlitz</a> Proficiency Interviews and Custom Testing | Berlitz Language Learning and Cultural Training](<a href=“http://www.berlitz.us/Programs-Services/Government-Military/Language-Assessment-Testing/Berlitz-Proficiency-Interview/139/]Berlitz”>http://www.berlitz.us/Programs-Services/Government-Military/Language-Assessment-Testing/Berlitz-Proficiency-Interview/139/)</p>
<p>I teach at Berlitz, and we were discussing this issue just this morning with a student who will need a proficiency test for her job. The Berlitz exams are written to conform with the Common European Framework (CEF), and the results can be converted to FSA/GSA standards for government employees. </p>
<p>The College Board CLEP exam program doesn’t offer an exam for Portuguese, but it does offer one for Spanish [CLEP:</a> Exam Descriptions](<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>Exam Topics – CLEP | College Board) This is available year-round at multiple locations, costs about the same as the AP exam, and is only about two hours long. Depending on the exam results, some college/universities will award up to two years of credits.</p>