When students participate in a Formal International Exchange Program, their courses will be evaluated for possible credit at SFU. The following guidelines assist Linguistics students as they plan and submit documentation about an exchange.
Planning Your Courses
1. All correspondence about exchange course evaluations must occur through the SFU International office using the appropriate official forms. Students should not contact the Department of Linguistics directly.
2. Before the exchange, students submit a Study Plan form to obtain preliminary information about courses. Those preliminary evaluations are NOT a guarantee of exchange credit. Final evaluations are based on complete information and an assessment of previous evaluations of similar courses.
3. Students should only submit Study Plan course evaluation requests for courses that will directly contribute to their program of study and their scholarly interests. Students should NOT request evaluations of all or most of the courses offered by another institution. Extensive lists of courses to be evaluated will substantially delay processing.
4. Students should be aware that courses at other institutions are often NOT evaluated as directly equivalent to specific SFU courses (i.e. not as assigned credit, such as LING 322-3). Different universities sub-divide content in different ways and may teach material at varying levels of depth and critical analysis. The most frequent evaluations are as unassigned credit at a particular level (e.g., LING 1XX-3, LING 3XX-3). In most cases, therefore, exchange courses only count toward general lower or upper division elective requirements in Linguistics programs.
5. Students should be aware that courses without official prerequisite courses are normally evaluated as lower division credit. Courses with official prerequisite courses may be evaluated as lower or upper division credit, depending on the course content.
Submitting Documentation
1. If the information submitted is incomplete, accurate assessments are not possible and evaluations may be delayed or prevented.
2. For each course evaluation request (for the Study Plan and post-exchange evaluation), students must submit a complete, official syllabus (in 12 point font) that includes the following:
- (a) complete bibliographic information (author name(s), year of publication [not year of printing], title(s) of book [and edition number, if relevant] or article+journal, publisher) for all textbooks and reading materials for the course, including the contents of custom courseware packages;
- (b) a listing of all official prerequisite courses (if any), including course numbers, titles, and credits;
- (c) a clear explanation of the assignments and examinations and their values (for post-exchange evaluation, a copy of the examinations and detailed assignment specifications would assist in accurate assessment);
- (d) the total number of classroom hours (3 credit courses at SFU require 39 hours); and
- (e) a specification of the criteria by which the quality of academic writing is assessed (for example, is the equivalent of LPI level 5 expected in all assignments and is LPI level 4 required to pass any assignment [SFU criteria, LPI information]; if the official syllabus does not have this information, students should ask their instructor for it while they are abroad).