I know that three years of a single high school language is required to graduate at U of I. I took three languages in high school, each for two years (couldn’t get room in my schedule senior year). Having been over a year since I’ve been exposed to them, would I be placed into a basic, first semester language since I didn’t fill the requirement? Or the third semester right away? Also does anybody know the relative difficulty of German, Italian, or Chinese at UIUC? I’m in College of Engineering by the way.
You’ll have to take a placement test to determine where you’ll start. If you plan to continue one of the languages that you have already taken courses in, then you should try to review as much of it as you can to avoid placing too low.
I have heard any language at UIUC is really difficult and it’s important to get it out of the way in high school. They told us a lot of students actually take the language requirement at Parkland because it’s much easier. You should however, confirm that you have to take any language, because I am not sure it has to be 3 years of the same language.
As others have said, you have to take a placement test before you come here (I didn’t do so well on mine and got placed in the most basic French class). I took French in high school, and decided to take it at UIUC since I figured it would be easier. As for the difficulty, French here isn’t difficult for me since I have a background in it and I remember most of it so I breeze through the assignments, tests etc. but it does move at an extremely fast pace. I would imagine it would be pretty challenging if you are learning a new language that you didn’t learn in high school.
What if one is coming in with 4 college semesters of Spanish completed? According to Transferology, my classes will transfer there as the fourth semester requirement in my major. But will I still have to take a placement test? I can’t seem to find any clear mention of it on the admissions site.
For most majors, UIUC requires 4 semesters of a single foreign language in college to graduate but that requirement is deemed met if you have completed the fourth high school year of a language in high school, I.e., each high school year of a language is considered the equivalent of one college semester. For engineering and some others, the requirement is three college semesters and the equivalent is completing the third high school year of a language. If you do not have the high school equivalent for your major, or you intend to take a language in college even if you have completed the high school equivalent in a language, you must take the language placement test. If you have completed the high school equivalent for your major and do not intend to take any language at UIUC, you need not take the placement test. If, like the OP, you have more than one language in high school but not enough years to avoid taking language at UIUC, you can choose which language you intend to take at UIUC and take its placement or you can just take more than one placement test.
The test will determine where you begin at the college level in the language. That could be starting at the basic course level at UIUC or at the third semester level or possibly even fourth semester level, or, as happens to many who had two years of high school language, you begin at a freshman course level that is really in between the basic first semester course and the third semester course, in which you do two college semesters in one in that you do basically what would have been two years of high school language in one semester.