General information about the language courses
Placement test
In order to ensure homogeneous groups, there is an obligatory placement test, for French, Spanisch, English and Italian. This test must be taken before enrolling for a course in the LLI, and it can be taken at any time online on the website of the LLI. The test is free of charge. If you have previous knowledge in any of the other offered languages, please contact the office of the LLI.
In what order can the courses be taken?
Roman numerals (I-IV) indicate the course level. They must be taken in order, and it is not possible to take courses of different levels at the same time.
Capital letters (A-C) indicate courses that can be taken in any order. Small letters (as in I a, I b, I c and II a, II b and II c) indicates parallel language courses of the same level that are offered in order to cater for a large demand.
What must I do to complete a course in the LLI successfully?
Conditions for receiving course credit
1. Regular and active participation
In order to successfully complete a language course in the LLI, you must attend 75% of the classes. Arriving late or leaving before the end of a class counts as absence, and even if you are excused, this still counts as absence.
All the participants in a course must be actively involved because the grade for spoken language is a significant component (up to 50%) of the overall grade.
2. A passing grade in the final written examination
You can pass the course as a whole only if you achieve a grade of at least 4.0 (the lowest passing grade in the German grading scheme) in the final written examination. This examination is usually in the last session of the course. Taking a make-up examination is only possible if you have submitted a doctor’s certificate.
Credit points
Students who want to receive credit points for their studies must not only fulfill the above conditions but must also do additional work (give a short presentation, write an essay in the target language – this can be in German in beginners’ courses – or pass a mid-term written examination). These students must inform the instructor at the beginning of the course that they want to receive credit points so that she or he can arrange appropriate tasks in good time. Normally, 3 credit points can be earned in a language course offered by the LLI. Students are advised to check with the Examinations Office for their faculty that credit points earned in the course they have chosen will be accepted.
Written work
The content of written work submitted by students must represent their own ideas, i.e. it must not simply be copied from other sources. The reason is not only that plagiarism makes it impossible to assess a student’s ability but also that someone who plagiarizes infringes copyright and thereby commits an offense. Passages in written work that are taken from other sources, giving their content or copied word-for-word, must always be acknowledged by naming the source (this includes Internet sources). If it is established that a piece of written work is not the student’s own work, the consequence is that she or he automatically fails and must repeat the whole course.
Information and guidelines on written work in an academic context can be found (among other places) on the website of the University Library in Düsseldorf via this link:
