Depending on the combination of languages, students may also need to register in an Independent Study to complete the Senior Seminar requirement. Students interested in linguistics should take LING 301 no later than their junior year.
Placement Information
Students who have previously studied a language offered at Occidental should take the placement exam for that language as early as possible.Sample 4-Year Plans
Group Language with Spanish (starting at SPAN 101) and Linguistics
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Group Language with Japanese (starting at JAPN 202) and French (starting at FREN 101)
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Curricular Notes
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For Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Russian, students must take the 202-level course plus four additional courses numbered above 202.
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For Chinese, only one course can be taught in English
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For Japanese, only one course can be taught in English.
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For Linguistics, students must take LING 301 and a second linguistics course; one semester of a language that is categorically different from the language with which they satisfied the Core Language requirement; and two additional courses with a language focus. See Catalog for full details.
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For Spanish, students must take SPAN 202 or SPAN 211 plus four additional courses numbered 300 and above. Two of these courses must be in either literature or linguistics. One course must be numbered 340 or above. Only one course may be taken in English.
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For Russian, two of the required courses can be in related areas such as history, art history, language learning/linguistics.
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Group Language majors must take one methods or theory course in addition to the courses taken for their two group areas: LING 301, SPAN 490, GERM 370, JAPN 273, CHIN 273.
Honors in the Major
Transfer Credit Policies
The Group Language policy on transfer credit conforms to College policy. For all the languages listed for the major, only two of the five courses may be taken outside the Occidental language departments. All courses taken outside of the Occidental language departments, including those taken on study abroad programs, must be approved in advance by the appropriate language department. For languages within Group Language in which 201 or 202 are offered, students who earn a score of 4 on an AP Language examination will earn four units of credit and be placed into 201 in that language while those who earn a score of 5 will earn four units of credit and be placed in to 202 in that language. Students are not placed in language courses based on IB or A-level examinations. Students should reference the Transfer Credit section for more details.