italian language course: Languages up certificate requirements

By Nathalie Lagerfeld
Princetonian Staff Writer

New requirements for certificates in French and Italian and Spanish and Portuguese have left some students dissatisfied, as sophomores in the A.B. program register their concentrations and certificates this week.

To earn a certificate in Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures, students must now take four rather than three 300-level classes and write a paper entirely in the target language as part of their independent work. Previously, only the abstract of the paper was required to be in the target language.

"When you start in [Spanish] 101, which is what I did, you pretty much need to take a Spanish course every semester" to fulfill the new requirements for a Spanish certificate, Wilson School major Stephanie Margulies '08 said. "They make it pretty hard for you."

The certificate in French and Italian Languages and Cultures now also requires a fourth class, but this can be at the 200-level instead of the 300-level. There were no changes to independent work requirement for the certificate.

Both departments said the changes are intended to encourage certificate students to study their target languages more thoroughly.

"We decided to revise the requirements in order to be able to give more importance to the 200-level, which many students, especially in French, tend to skip," department representative Volker Schroder said in an email. He also said many professors and even some students felt that unprepared students were "rushing into the 300-level because it alone 'counts' for the certificate."

One student who took ITA 307: Advanced Language and Style in the fall semester agreed that a lack of preparation was a problem. She said many of her fellow classmates had only taken one accelerated 200-level class, to the detriment of classroom discussions.

"The other students were great literature students, it's just that a lot of them couldn't speak Italian very well," said the student, who had taken Italian for a full two years previously. She was granted anonymity because she did not want to be quoted criticizing her classmates.

Spanish and Portuguese department representative Pedro Meira Monteiro said professors worried that requiring only three courses allowed students with prior Spanish experience to earn a certificate without spending enough time in the department.

"Basically, we want to push hard, so we can be sure that the students who get a certificate are really proficient in the language," he said.

Margulies, however, said that because she only began studying Spanish at Princeton, the new requirements are more an impediment than an encouragement. "I had planned out the next two years with the idea of taking three classes," she said. Scheduling a fourth Spanish class will be difficult, Marguiles added, because she is majoring in the Wilson School, which "has a lot of requirements to fulfill."

Margulies spoke with Monteiro about finding an alternative to a fourth class, but to no avail. He said she was the only student who had talked to him about the new requirements.

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