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Language Study
As a necessary part of the preparation for the MIA degree, every student (including those in the combined programs) must demonstrate oral and written proficiency in a language appropriate to the student’s area of concentration, preferably before beginning the second year of the program. Students who are also certificate candidates in a regional institute fulfill the program’s language requirement by completing the institute’s language requirement. The language requirement may be satisfied in three ways:
- By taking a proficiency examination
- By earning the grade of B (3.0) or better during residence at SIPA in a language course that is at the level of at least the second half of the intermediate year
- By being a native speaker of a language other than English (for international students only)
Proficiency examinations, which include both written and oral components, are given in a variety of languages in the autumn and spring of each year.
The school grants credit toward the MIA degree for intermediate and higher level language courses taken at Columbia. Under no circumstances will credit be given for the study of any language at the elementary level. Language courses must be taken while in residence at the school; no advanced standing (transfer) credit will be given for any language courses.
For any student whose language preparation is inadequate, it is recommended that he or she spend the summer in language study. Courses in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian are given in the Summer Session, as well as courses in the Romance languages and German. It is advisable for the student of the “difficult” languages to begin language study well before entering the School. In the autumn and spring terms, the School of General Studies and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences offer courses in more than forty modern languages; many of them given in the afternoon and evening. See the bulletins of these schools for details.
Modern Foreign Languages Offered at Columbia
Arabic |
Georgian |
Korean |
Spanish |
Ukrainian |
Armenian |
German |
Nepali |
Swahili |
Urdu |
Bengali |
Greek |
Polish |
Swedish |
Uyghur |
Chinese |
Hebrew |
Portuguese |
Tagalog |
Uzbek |
Czech |
Hindi |
Pulaar |
Tajik |
Vietnamese |
Dutch |
Hungarian |
Punjabi |
Tamil |
Wolof |
Farsi |
Indonesian |
Romanian |
Tibetan |
Yiddish |
Finnish |
Italian |
Russian |
Turkish |
Zulu |
French |
Japanese |
Serbo-Croatian |
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The Language Resource Center
The Language Resource Center serves as the University’s language laboratory, and also provides the Columbia community with a music listening room, video viewing facilities, and a multimedia Macintosh computer lab. The Center’s holdings include a video collection of over 1,000 titles of both English language and foreign films, theater and music performances, documentaries, and language instruction videos; a music collection consisting of over 400 titles in cassette and CD formats; and instructional tapes in forty-one languages. The Language Resource Center is also the home for some of the less commonly taught languages offered at Columbia. Offerings vary from semester to semester, but in the recent past, courses have included Bengali, Punjabi, Tagalog and Tamil. The Language Resource Center also organizes noncredit language maintenance conversation groups (for three or more students) in Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish. These conversation groups are primarily designed for professional school students, who already have some background in the target language, but who wish to maintain or enhance speaking skills. For further information on the center’s programs and materials, visit its Web site at www.columbia.edu/cu/lrc or call 212-854-3211.