Placement in Spanish

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Spanish as a Second Language

In order for students to determine their entering level of Spanish, a placement exam is offered on-line. All students must take the on-line placement exam prior to enrollment--even if you've never previously studied Spanish. If you want to enroll in Spanish 1 or Spanish 1T, you will first need to complete the placement exam.

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 exam 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 Language Program--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 exam 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 Spanish Speakers