Vietnamese proficiency and placement exams are offered for registered students at UW. Students with no previous exposure to Vietnamese are able to register for VIET 101: Elementary Vietnamese via MyPlan or MyUW at any time. For full information, please see this page.

The Asian Languages & Literature department does not offer placement or proficiency exams to students outside of UW (e.g., high school students seeking admission, prospective students, extension students,etc.), nor does it offer testing in languages or dialects not currently taught in the department. UW Students looking to take a proficiency test for a language or dialect not taught by the Asian Languages & Literature department should contact the UW Language Learning Center (LLC).

International Baccalaureate (IB) and Advanced Placement (AP) exams in Vietnamese are not currently counted among subjects with applicability towards UW graduation requirements, so cannot be used for placement. For more information, please see the IB Policy Overview page and AP Policy Overview page on the UW Office of Admissions site.

Students who would like to continue their study of Vietnamese and who want to determine which class level would be most appropriate for them should start by emailing Prof. Bich-Ngoc Turner via turnerbn@uw.edu.

Please note: a placement interview cannot substitute for the proficiency exam, and students cannot use a placement interview to meet any university graduation requirements.

Students with an existing background in Vietnamese who are not planning on taking classes in Vietnamese at UW and want to have the one-year world language proficiency requirement of the College of Arts & Sciences marked as cleared must take the Vietnamese Proficiency Examthrough the AVANT platform.

Students can learn more and register for the test here. When registering for the AVANT proficiency test in Vietnamese, students should use their UW.edu email address and be sure to include their student ID number to facilitate timely reporting of results to the registrar’s office.

There is no fee for placement assessments, but the Vietnamese proficiency test is taken online and has a fee. For full details on proficiency test fees, please see this page. Unfortunately, there are no exam fee waivers for financial hardship available at this point in time.

The Vietnamese placement assessment is based on all four primary language skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. Assessment for listening and speaking skills is through an oral interview with faculty. Writing is assessed by short written responses in Vietnamese while taking the placement survey. The proficiency exam in Vietnamese is offered online by AVANT, and will cover all four primary language skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Questions are based on real-world, everyday situations. AVANT measures a test taker’s language ability according to Benchmark Levels that are based on ACTFL national standards. Once students have registered and paid for their chosen proficiency test, AVANT will send further instructions regarding proctoring and students can then schedule the date and time for their test. Students are responsible for ensuring their systems are compatible with the AVANT exam and proctoring systems.

If you have any questions on testing administration, or need technical assistance with proctoring, please contact Avant Assessment Support at support@avantassessment.com. 

Please note: the AVANT proctoring system is not currently compatible with Chromebooks. Access to computer workstations is available through the UW Library system when campus is open, and students can also borrow laptops for home use through the UW Student Technology loan service.

For proficiency tests conducted through AVANT, yes. Sample tests are available here, a user guide is available here, and students can find a technology guide for remote testing here. For further details on placement assessments, students should contact the faculty member associated with the level they are planning to test in.

For proficiency exams, please see this page for the Asian Languages & Literature department’s policies on exam reporting. If you are taking the Vietnamese proficiency test for the purpose of fulfilling any requirement other than the College of Arts & Sciences one-year foreign language requirement (for example, proficiency requirements for degrees in the Jackson School of International Studies or the Foster School’s Certificate of International Studies in Business), you must email the language coordinator jameel7@uw.edu by the deadline listed in the page linked above indicating where you need the scores sent.

For further details on placement testing, students should contact the faculty member associated with the level they are planning to test in.

There is no current limit for the number of times a student can take placement or proficiency tests in Vietnamese. However, we recommend students try to give themselves at least 4 weeks between tests to allow sufficient time to study in a way that will see scores improve in a meaningful way.

For placement tests, once the interview is over the instructor will be able to determine your level of knowledge in Vietnamese and place you into the correct course. Feedback on specific elements of assessment performance will be given at the discretion of the instructor. For proficiency assessments conducted through Avant, the department does not have the ability to give individual test score breakdowns to students.

Test results are valid for one year.

No. These exams are purely to either place students into the correct class or to fulfil graduation requirements for language proficiency. First-year (elementary) or second-year (intermediate) foreign-language credit is not granted either by examination or by course completion in a student’s native language. “Native language” is defined as the language, or one of the languages, spoken in the student’s home during the first six years of their life and in which they received instruction through the seventh grade.

Students who misrepresent the extent of their background so as to gain entrance to a course at the elementary or intermediate level may be dropped from the rolls of that course.