About the Language Placement Exam
The Department of Languages and Literatures offers placement exams for French, German and Spanish. If you have studied one of these languages in high school or speak it at home, you should take the Language Placement Exam before enrolling in a language course at OSU.
You can earn up to six credit hours retroactively for the levels you skip if you get a B or higher in the class you take. If you place high enough, you may be able to earn a minor with as few as two classes. The exam is free, but you can only take it once per language. Additional information can be found here.
Please note that native speakers of a language are not permitted to earn retroactive credit through the Language Placement Exam. For the purposes of the exam, a “native speaker” is defined as someone whose high school level instruction was conducted primarily in that language.
Be aware that the Language Placement Exam is not a CLEP test. If you are interested in taking a CLEP test, please contact University Assessment and Testing.
When you are ready to take the exam, follow these steps:
- Click the registration form below and fill out the required information. You will need to log in with your OSU email address and password.
- Once the information is submitted, you will be directed to the testing site, where you must create an account and log in to proceed.
- After logging in, choose which language exam you would like to take.
- When you have completed the exam, you will receive a results page with a course recommendation. You may wish to save this information for later, but the results will also be shared with your advisor.
If you need assistance or have any further questions about the language placement exam, please contact Nick Howland.