International Students - Curricular Requirements

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Required Course

International students enrolled at Saint Mary’s College are required to take courses or labs developed to assist them in their assimilation to the U.S. academic rigor and greater U.S. culture. The required course is SMS 015 , a course designed to give students a working platform on which to compare their native culture to U.S. culture.

SMS 015 - American Culture and Civilization

Additional Courses

The SMS Labs help support the following courses, as well as other first-year courses that have significant writing requirements and would give non-native English speakers a better chance of succeeding in all of their courses.

Note

Students will gain:

greater fluency in written English.
understanding of course expectations at Saint Mary’s regarding writing.
increased proficiency in English grammar and vocabulary.
better understanding of the stages of assembling an essay (including thesis formation, overall essay organization, paragraph development, and effective sentence construction) through focused work on each stage.
better writing habits gained through practice in assessing writing assignments across the disciplines, setting writing schedules, brainstorming and drafting techniques, and revising essays.