Spanish Placement Exam at RHIT

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The Spanish Placement Exam should taken by students with previous Spanish experience in order to determine which is the best Spanish class to start with at RHIT. Bear in mind that the roman numerals designating Spanish classes at RHIT (Spanish I, Spanish II, etc.) do not correspond with the numbering systems at your high school or at other universities. Please also remember that the placement exam is not a perfect instrument; it is designed to evaluate a large number of students via computer. After receiving your test results, if you feel strongly that your placement is not appropriate for you, please schedule an appointment to discuss this with Prof. Gardner. Note that Spanish I (SPAN-L111) and Spanish IV (SPAN-L211) are offered only during the Fall term, Spanish II (SPAN-L112) and Spanish V (SPAN-L212) are generally offered only during the Winter (Spanish II was offered during Fall 2021, and will probably be offered in future Fall terms as well), and Spanish III (SPAN-L113) and Spanish VI (SPAN-L213) are only offered during the Spring.


To have a smooth enrollment process, it is crucial to bear the following in mind. While there are no set deadlines for taking the test, you must allow time to take the test; for the Spanish faculty to look at and interpret your score and to then contact you, and (in case of unusual or unexpected results) to potentially schedule and hold a meeting with you to make an adjustment in your placement (if warranted); for the Spanish faculty to forward the final placement results to the registrar's office; and for the registrar to manually enable your potential enrollment in the class through the computerized enrollment system. Bear in mind that the week of enrollment is a busy time for you, for the Spanish faculty, and especially for the registrar’s office. So all these steps are best accomplished prior to enrollment week. If you wait until the very week or your very day of enrollment to start the process it is not likely that all these steps will be accomplished prior to the time you start registering for classes. Please plan accordingly.


The exam can be taken online using any computer or device with internet access and a web browser. RHIT does not itself directly maintain the test program and may not be able to fully resolve compatibility issues with the wide variety of browsers, smart phones or other internet devices. Allow about 20 to 30 minutes to take the test, although it may last considerably less than this. Do not use any dictionaries, books, on-line resources or other assistance when taking the test. If you do, your results will be inaccurate, placing you into a Spanish class that is not appropriate for you.


You need to request a personalized link to the exam from Professor Gardner. This link will expire in seven days. The e-mail containing the link will not come from Professor Gardner, but rather from no-reply@emmersion.ai and will have the subject line: Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology has assigned you language assessments from Emmersion. If it does not show up in your inbox, you may need to look in your junk mail or spam folder to find it.


When you request the link, you must indicate if you are a native Speaker of Spanish. (For the purposes of this exam, a native speaker is defined as someone who learned Spanish as their first language or concurrently with another language and who is at least as proficient as the average person who speaks no other language but Spanish. This category is distinct from that of Heritage Speaker, which can be defined as someone who learned Spanish at home as a child, but who never fully developed as a native speaker due to the influence of a dominant language, such as English, in which they became more competent.)


[This page was last updated 9 August 2023.]