Placement guidelines for Spanish
Spanish as a Second Language
In order for students to determine their entering level of Spanish, a placement assessment is offered on-line. All students must take the on-line placement assessment prior to enrollment--even if you've never previously studied Spanish. If you want to enroll in Spanish 1, you will first need to complete the placement assessment.
The exam measures the level of the student's grammatical knowledge of the language. The major portion of each section has a multiple option format, but there are other testing sections as well, such as paragraphs to fill in and questions to answer in writing.
The time the placement assessment takes each student to complete depends on his or her level of ability in the language. The exam can be self-administered at any time, and you have three days to complete it.
The exam indicates the probable level where you will place, but you will not be able to register in a course until after the results are forwarded by a faculty member to the Department of Languages and Applied Linguistics--this generally takes 3-4 days (excluding weekends and holidays). In case you think you have been wrongly placed, either too low or too high a level, please email spanish_placement@ucsc.edu for clarification.
Clicking here will open the placement assessment page in a new window. You will need to provide your Name, Student Identification # and email address. Please enter this information carefully. If you need to log back into the test, this information will be required and must be entered as exactly it was entered the first time.
Spanish for Heritage Speakers
If you were raised in a Spanish speaking environment, have lived in a Spanish speaking country for an extended period of time (more than three years), and speak the language with some members of your family and friends, please take a few minutes to read the information about our special track of courses titled SPHS (Spanish for heritage speakers).
Information on SpHS courses
Placement questionnaire
