Placement guidelines for French

 THE FRENCH ORIENTATION AND PLACEMENT ARE ONLINE ONLY.

Your French placement assessment result remains valid for the entirety of your time at UCSC.

If you have had any previous study of French, you will need to take a written placement assessment to determine which class best suits your skill level. Please contact Renée Cailloux to schedule an appointment.Once your placement has been determined, the result will be sent to the Department of Languages and Applied Linguistics, and you should be able to enroll in 3-4 business days (not including holidays and weekends).

Please note: if you have had ANY previous study of French, DO NOT enroll in French 1 without having taken the mandatory placement assessment first. You will not be allowed to stay in this beginning level course if your level of French is too advanced for the material. Failure to take the placement assessment may result in your having to wait a quarter to enroll in the appropriate level, given that many classes will already be full at the beginning of the quarter.

To give you a general idea of where you might be placed, here is a brief description of the basic grammar you should know before entering each level:

• • French 1: None; no previous study of French
  • French 2: Present tense of regular -er verbs and of avoir and etre; adjective form and placement, possessive adjectives, question formation
  • French 3: Present, passé composé, and imparfait of common verbs; reflexive verbs; object pronouns
  • French 4-6: Exposure to all basic grammar + future, conditional, and subjunctive 

ORIENTATION: To learn more about the French program at UCSC, please take a few minutes to learn more about each of our instructors, in the following short videos: 

Bryan Donaldson
Renée Cailloux  
Vincent Minquoy
Carine Rohmer 

Please view our French Schedule for more information.

We look forward to welcoming you to a French class at UCSC soon!