Objectives for Students Pursuing a Major in French, German, or Spanish
SPEAKING: Ability to initiate, sustain, and close a conversation on everyday topics with a number of strategies appropriate to a variety of situations. Despite errors in grammar and word selection there is emerging evidence of connected discourse. Most native speakers should have no difficulty understanding students at this level, even though words and sentences may need to be repeated.
LISTENING: Ability to understand main ideas and most details of connected discourse on a wide variety of topics. Understanding may still be uneven when students are confronted with unfamiliar topics.
READING: Ability to comprehend the main ideas of texts and to scan for factual information in more complicated texts, such as short stories, news reports, personal and business correspondence. An emerging awareness of the aesthetic properties of language and literary styles permits comprehension of a wider range of texts written primarily for native speakers of the language.
WRITING: Ability to write routine social and business correspondence as well as lengthy, coherent compositions on a variety of familiar topics and areas of personal interest. Despite occasional errors in grammar and word selection, student writing samples should be understood by most native speakers, even those unfamiliar with the writing of non-natives.