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. Students taking the test should bear in mind that the roman numerals designating Spanish classes at RHIT (Spanish I, Spanish II, etc.) do not correspond in any direct way with the numbering of courses that may have been used in their high school or at other universities. It should also be remembered that the placement exam is not a perfect instrument. It is designed to evaluate a large number of students (during fall orientation about seventy-five students are routinely tested) in a short period of time. If, after receiving your initial placement, you feel that it is not the most appropriate placement for you, you should schedule an appointment to discuss this with Prof. Gardner or Prof. García. Note that Spanish I (SP111) and Spanish IV (SP211) are offered only during the Fall term, Spanish II (SP112) and Spanish V (SP212) only during the Winter, and Spanish III (SP113) and Spanish VI (SP213) only during the Spring.

The exam is offered 4 times per year: during orientation week, and preceding the enrollment periods for the Winter, Spring, and Fall terms. It is very important that the following deadlines be observed since the registrar's office must be notified of all placement results well in advance of the enrollment period in order to clear the students who have taken the exam for enrollment at the level they have tested into, and because time must be allowed for the potential adjustment of placement results for those students who wish to seek such an adjustment.

For Academic year 2011-2012 the following deadlines apply:

To know your placement in order to potentially enroll for this quarter...	You must take the placement exam and submit your score to Professor Gardner by this deadline:	You will be given your placement result by this date:
Fall 2011	Saturday, 27 August 2011, 4:00pm (or later by permission.)	Sunday, 28 August 2011, 5pm (exams from the orientation placement exam are generally posted and sent to student advisors, not sent to the individual student)
Winter 2011-2012	Monday, 26 September 2011, 5pm	Monday, 3 October 2011, 5pm
Spring 2012	Monday, 19 December 2011, 5pm	Monday, 9 January 2012, 5pm
Fall 2012	Monday, 16 April 2012, 5pm	Monday, 23 April 2012, 5pm

At times other than the New Student Orientation, the computerized Spanish Placement Exam may be taken on the desktop computer located in A-203 of Moench Hall. This is not a web-based program and is not configured for use on other computers. Allow about 20 to 30 minutes for the test. You must take the test without using any dictionaries, grammar references or other resources.

If the computer has been turned on but is asleep you will need to wake it up by wiggling the mouse or pressing any key on the keyboard. If it is not turned on you will need to do so. Note that there are on-off switches both on the computer tower and the monitor and having either of them in the off position will mean that you will be unable to see anything on the screen. Once the computer is running you must log on by pressing ctrl-alt-delete and entering your user name and password.

Once you have logged on,

• go to Start > All Programs >S-Cape > Spanish Computer Adaptive Placement Exam

The program should start up, although it may take a bit longer than you are used to. (There may be two windows open for a moment; the unneeded back window will close automatically in a second or two.) Follow the directions on screen.

• Be sure to enter your first and last name correctly.
• When it asks for your Student ID, you can put in your phone number or any number at all just to keep the program happy.
• You will be asked a few questions about your language learning background.
• After a sample question, the test will begin. Do not use a dictionary or any other resources to answer the questions. Some of the questions may seem too difficult and others too easy. Some test takers may be given a few more questions than others. This is normal.
• At the conclusion of the test you will see a screen asking you to contact the test administrator. Click OK. Your score will be displayed. Make a note of it.
• Your score may be zero, even if you got some questions right. If your score is zero, and you feel like you were guessing at all or nearly all of the questions, you should accept your score as a zero. If, on the other hand, you are pretty sure that you got numerous questions right and you did not feel that you were guessing at a high number of questions then you should take the test again. (You may come back and take it at a different time if you wish.) Make a note of both scores. It is possible that the second score will be zero as well.

Either visit with or send e-mail to Professor Gardner with the following information:

• Name
• Placement test score as indicated by the computer at the end of the test
• Date you took the placement test
• Campus mailbox (if you have one yet)
• E-mail address (not needed if you send the answers to these questions by e-mail)
• Year of study of Spanish in high school or elsewhere
• How long since you last took Spanish? 
• Are you a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, fifth-year senior, or other?
• A brief description of any outside the classroom experience you may have with Spanish, such as study abroad, use at home with your family, etc.
• Are you a native speaker of Spanish? (For the purposes of this exam, a native speaker is either (1) someone who learned Spanish as their first language, or (2) a person who is as proficient as a native inhabitant of that language's base country, or as proficient as the average person who speaks no other language but that language.)
• Are you a heritage speaker of Spanish? (A heritage speaker is defined as someone who grew up in a household where one or more family members spoke Spanish frequently or exclusively, who understands and/or speaks Spanish based wholly or in part on having lived in this linguistic environment, and/or who may be to an extent bilingual as a result of living in this linguistic environment.)

Problems? Questions? Program not working as described? Send comments to Professor Gardner.
Last update: 19 November 2009.