School of Foreign Service Language Proficiency Requirement
(Policy Revised and effective for Fall 2007) As a requirement for graduation, all students must fulfill the
Fulfillment of the language proficiency requirement appears on the GU transcript and serves as a credential after graduation.
There are four ways that a student can fulfill the language proficiency requirement. These options are listed below.
Option 1. A student can demonstrate that he/she is a native-speaker.
Option 2. A student may take the proficiency exam. A student may only request this examination when he/she has taken one course beyond Advanced II or Third Level II in the language, or received permission from the language department for an exception.
Option 3. A student can take the proficiency exam on-site at the end of one of the Georgetown-Approved, summer intensive language programs that offer the SFS Proficiency exam.
Option 4. Students who successfully complete the equivalent of one semester of a Georgetown-Approved, direct matriculation study abroad program will automatically pass the proficiency requirement. Successfully complete means that a student has taken a full-time course load and passed each course as defined by the Office of International Programs Academic Policy. Direct matriculation means that a student was directly enrolled in courses offered by a partner university on a Georgetown-Approved program. These courses were conducted in a language other than English and were the same courses offered to degree candidates at that university. Some sites where students take university courses designed for international students will still be considered sufficient as long as the courses were conducted in a language other than English, and the curriculum remained comparable to that of degree candidates at the university.
A list of acceptable programs is available online on the BSFS website. See below. Only programs on this list are eligible to fulfill the language proficiency requirement.
Read Dean Andretta`s August 24, 2007 E-mail Announcement explaining the changes to SFS language proficiency requirement.
- Language Proficency Transcript Notation
- List of Approved GU Study Abroad Programs that satisfy Language Proficiency
- Deciding When to Take the Proficiency Exam
- Preparing for the Proficiency Exam
- Scheduling the Proficiency Exam
- Format of the Proficiency Exam
- Proficiency Exam Evaluation
- Certifying Proficiency in Languages not Taught at Georgetown
- Native Speaker Status
- Proficiency in Multiple Languages