Foreign Service Institute (FSI)

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) administers a series of oral proficiency language assessment examinations to test the oral language proficiency of prospective U.S. Department of State employees who will be stationed abroad. Persons who have been employed by the U.S. government and have served in the foreign service often can present records of language proficiency as assessed by FSI. Although many languages are assessed by the FSI, only the Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish examinations have been evaluated in terms of college credit recommendations. For more information, visit www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/.