What Foreign Language Majors Do:  Your Skills, Your Knowledge,Your Experiences, and Quality Assurance by the Time of Graduation

Dear Foreign Language Majors:

  As foreign language majors at VCU, you are developing skills, increasing your knowledge base, and participating in many experiences each semester that prepare you for graduate school, professional school, or a wide range of career opportunities. As of 2003:

1. Foreign language majors will participate in an assessment process that guarantees the quality of their major. 

2. Majors will measure their language proficiency and their cultural competence on a nationally recognized scale.

3. Faculty mentors will advise majors in developing a portfolio that demonstrates what they can do, much like the portfolio a painter or a poet assembles in the arts.  Mentors are not necessarily the advisors who schedule courses with majors. Students will have a choice in selecting a mentor.  A portfolio will include such items as (a) samples of written and oral work in several language classes, (b) results of language proficiency tests, (c) documentation of educational experiences abroad, (d) documentation of any service learning opportunities, and (e) evidence of internships or paid experiences using foreign language skills.  The list is not exhaustive and will be individualized.

4. As majors develop their portfolios, they will demonstrate their ability to use language in the context of the Five C’s that form the national standards for foreign language learning in the twenty-first century: communication, cultures, connections, communities, and comparisons.

5. Majors will be expected to follow an assessment timetable that is outlined at the end of the first monthly assessment newsletter, which is attached to today’s e-mail message and/or posted at the Department of Foreign Languages Web site at http://www.has.vcu.edu/for/.)

Open the attached newsletter, which expands on all five areas listed above and that form the organizing principles of the undergraduate experience in foreign languages. The newsletter will help you learn more about the high quality education you are receiving and the quality assurances that faculty are providing, not only to you as students but also to your future graduate programs and your future employers.

Sincerely,

The Department of Foreign Languages Assessment Committee
(Drs. Brown, Cummins, Dvorak, Godwin-Jones, Marechal, Munoz, Murphy-Judy, Peischl)