General Guidelines
- Departments offering a certificate must designate a certificate adviser, ordinarily the DUS, who advises students and certifies completion of the certificate.
- Students must take four (4) courses beyond L4 in the target language*, at least two (2) of which must be Yale courses designated as L5;
- Courses must be taken for a grade (no Credit/D/Fail);
- Grades must be B or above;
- At the discretion of the certificate adviser, students may substitute credit-bearing academic study abroad taught in the target language*; no more than 2 non-Yale credits can count;
- At the discretion of the certificate adviser, one non-L5 Yale course conducted in the target language* and at the appropriate advanced level may be counted. Qualifying non-L5 courses might include independent study (may be taken as Pass/Fail), graduate seminars, or advanced seminars;
- At the discretion of the certificate adviser, programs may allow one “language across the curriculum” (LxC) course, which ordinarily is an advanced seminar with an additional weekly discussion section in the target language”. To find which courses are LxC courses, search for courses in Course Search, and look for a mention under Course Description that says “This course counts as language across the curriculum (LxC)”;
- Participating departments have discretion in designating specific courses or types of courses in the target language* that are required to complete the certificate;
- At the discretion of the certificate adviser, intensive language courses may be counted as two courses.
- Departments that decide to offer a certificate or that subsequently decide to make substantial changes to their requirements must submit a proposal to the Language Study Committee demonstrating that they have a sufficient number of advanced courses to support offering a certificate.
The Certificate of Advanced Language Study carries a transcript notation.
*Does not apply to classical and premodern languages.