They are internationally recognized tools to ascertain a student's proficiency in the German language. Until 1992-93 the Zertifikat Deutsch als Femdsprache was a three hour examination. That year it was completely restructured and it now includes a three hour and thirty minute written part and a fifteen-minute individual oral exam for each student. This represents a rise in the department's expectations of its students' linguistic proficiency over past years. We now suggest that all 3rd-year students take this test.
Participation is exclusively voluntary.
Five students passed with equivalent grades of one A, three Bs, and one C. It needs to be stressed that we instituted this focus on 3rd-year students more or less as an experiment to help us find even more accurate measures of what exactly our students learn in the two and a half years past the language requirement level of three semesters. In 1994-95, the department added the Goethe Institut's Pruefung Wirtschaftsdeutsch, which specifically tests business German and is taken by those students who participate in our Business German courses. All of them passed. The test is divided into a written and an oral part and both parts are scored separately. In 1996-97, the faculty asked all graduating seniors to take the Goethe Institut's Zentrale Mittelstufenpruefung, widely considered the best available measure of advanced proficiency in German.