Foreign Language Proficiency Exam

[cookderosa]

Actually Hindi, Punjabi could be a great asset since India is the second most populous country on earth and may beat out China population wise in the future. It may be even more important later. As far as arabic....there aren't enough people who can speak the language here in the states and in this day and age a very valuable skill. One of my friends is in the Army at the language school in Monterey and currently studying Arabic. From what he's told me- a lot of people fail the course.

A badly needed skill that I think is unwise of you to just write off.

Another friend of mine took Chinese through the Army language school as well. No degree and makes a great living working in Hong Kong.

Did I mention she beat out people with degrees for her current position? That's right - she came armed with no degree and just the ability to speak Chinese.

I guess those people that employ her didn't care about her lack of psych and sociology 101. In this global economy being bilingual/trilingual etc. will become more important. I would think you who mentioned speaking 3 languages would at least understand that.

And I'm not just talking about taking in for a few years and passing all the requirements. We all know plenty of people who are college educated took a foreign language, passed and unable to handle a basic conversation. Passing is much different than proficiency. Just like all those people who took psych 101 and sociology 101. Passing those courses makes no one an expert in the way people think/interact with others. Trust me. I work at a health care facility with an abundance of social workers/ Counselors with degrees majoring in psychology. I can also say having a degree in the subject isn't a guarantee that they know either. It just got their foot in the door.

A good friend of mine works Human resources. They could care less about what's on the transcript. How many human resource managers actually do that anyways? I doubt many do. All they want to know is proof one has the degree. I don't think they are going to really care about all the courses one took to obtain it.

Langauges, especially those that the USA puts on the list (what's it called....."highly needed" or something? I'll look it up) are worth a lot more than a PSYCH101 CLEP exam.
It doesn't matter if you are a native speaker, because the exam is in English.
We do let our native speakers take an English test/class (English Comp!) but we test them in English of English. In this case, the exam is in English of Hindi, etc.