Placement Exam

READ FIRST: About the Chinese Placement Exam for Spring 2025

1. Welcome to Middlebury! If you would like to take the Chinese placement exam so that you can take a Chinese language course in the Spring 2025 semester, please first email Chair of the Chinese Department Professor Thomas Moran at moran@middlebury.edu. He will supervise your placement exam. He will help you decide what exam to take, and he will schedule the Zoom interview with you that is a required part of the placement exam. When you finish your written placement exam, email it as an attachment to Professor Moran at moran@middlebury.edu . 
2. You must take and complete the placement exam between Monday, November 11 and Monday, December 9. Professor Moran will email you with the results of your placement exam by Friday, December 20. 
3. The Chinese Placement Exam is for students who begin at Middlebury in February 2025, have studied Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin) before or have learned some Mandarin in a context other than formal study, and who hope to place into a Spring 2025 Chinese language class: either CHNS 0103 (1^st year), 0202 (2^nd year), or 0302 (3^rd year). CHNS 0475 (advanced seminar on Chinese fiction) is not open to first-year students. If you are interested in taking the Spring 2025 CHNS 0412 (Classical Chinese II) and think you are qualified for it, email both Professor Moran (moran@middlebury.edu) and  the instructor of the course, Professor Zhang (kzhang@middlebury.edu). 
4. The Chinese Department’s courses in Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin) are not open to students with native proficiency in the language.
5. Our 1^st-, 2^nd-, and 3^rd-year language classes are year-long sequences that begin in the fall semester. To join any of these classes in the spring, you must take and pass a placement exam. If you have not studied Chinese before or know that your Chinese is not advanced enough to place you out of the fall semester 101 Beginning Chinese and into a spring semester course, you will have to wait until the fall 2025 semester to start your study of Chinese at Middlebury. 
6. To do the placement exam you will need a computer and internet access. Depending on the level of the test, you may also need a printer and a scanning app such as the free Adobe Scan (you can read about this app and other scan apps here). The exam is done online and remotely. Follow the directions on the test. When done, email your completed test to Professor Moran at moran@middlebury.edu. Do this any time between Monday, November 11 and Monday, December 9. 
7. The exam is available now on the Chinese Department Canvas page.  
8. There are 3 different placement exams (each is a separate document). All are available in the Module “Placement Exam for Spring 2023 Chinese Department Mandarin Chinese Courses” on the Chinese Department Canvas Site. 
9. The three different tests are 1) the test for getting into spring 3^rd-year level (CHNS 0302); 2) the test for getting into spring 2^nd-year level (CHNS 0202); and 3) the test for getting into spring 1^st-year level (CHNS 0103). 
10. If a test is available in both a Simplified Characters version and a Traditional Characters version, you may decide which one to take. Take only one. 
11. If you aren’t sure what your level is, look at all three tests and then download and take the placement exam that seems to be appropriate for your level. If you start a test and it seems too hard or too easy, put it aside, and instead do the test for the next higher or next lower level as appropriate. 
12. Don’t stress. The placement exam is just one tool we use to make our best estimate of where you should start your study of the Chinese language. We want to place  you at the level that gives you the greatest opportunity for success. We may discover in the first week that your placement is not ideal and if that happens we will move you up or down a level as appropriate.