COMPLETION OF THE PH. D. PROGRAM
Successful completion of the Ph. D. degree in German requires (1) passing 18 quarter courses (6 core seminars and 12 electives) at the minimum grade standard set by The Graduate School for remaining in good standing; (2) satisfying the Foreign Language Reading Requirement; (3) passing a Qualifying Exam by the beginning of a student's fourth year of study; (4) obtaining approval of a dissertation prospectus; and (5) submission of a dissertation approved according to the rules of The Graduate School. Steps 2 - 4 are described in more detail below.
KNOWLEDGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGESThe Department of German strives to provide their doctoral students with the best training and broadest practical experience possible in teaching and research. Knowledge of Foreign Languages is an part of both. In order to handle the demands of language teaching and research, doctoral students are required to demonstrate:
- Native or near-native fluency in English;
- Advanced proficiency in German language (oral and written); and
- Advanced Reading proficiency in Literature in German and one additional foreign language relevant to their field of research.
All students enrolled in the German Ph.D. program are expected to gain at least two years (six quarters) of undergraduate teaching experience in German before receiving their degree. In order to be effective in the classroom, we require those students, who are not native speakers of German, to demonstrate Advanced German Language Proficiency by the end of their first year in the Ph.D. program . Only students who have demonstrated Advanced German Language Proficiency by that time are permitted to continue course work for the Ph.D.
During their first quarter of graduate studies, students are asked to take the following three components of the German Language Proficiency Exam:
- An on-line Placement Exam
- An individual Oral Exam
- An individual Written Exam
Individual exams can be scheduled by contacting the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the department of German. Students who do not pass all three parts of the German Language Proficiency Exam in the first attempt, will have until the end of their first year to retake the exam(s). Students should consult with the Director of Undergraduate Studies in order to help them formalize a plan for language study that might include taking appropriate language classes in the department or intensive language study abroad.
Advanced German Language Proficiency is defined as follows (for more information visit the ACTFL Web Page )
Speaking: Speakers at this level are able to handle with ease and confidence a large number of communicative tasks. They participate actively in most informal and some formal exchanges on a variety of concrete topics relating to work, school, home, and leisure activities, as well as to events of current, public, and personal interest or individual relevance. Speakers at this level can narrate and describe in all major time frames. Some groping for words may still be evident.
Writing: Writers at this level are able to meet a range of work and or academic writing needs with good organization and cohesiveness. They can write simple social correspondence, take notes, write cohesive summaries and resumes, as well as narratives and descriptions of a factual nature. Writers at this level can narrate and describe with detail in all major time frames. There is good control of the most frequently used target language syntactic structures.
Reading: Readers at this level can read somewhat longer prose of several paragraphs in length, particularly if presented with a clear underlying structure. The prose is predominantly in familiar sentence patterns. Texts at this level include descriptions and narrations such as simple short stories, news items, bibliographical information, social notices, personal correspondence, business letters, and simple technical material written for the general reader.
Listening: Listeners at this level will understand main ideas and most details of connected discourse on a variety of topics. These texts frequently involve description and narration in different time frames or aspects, such as present, non-past, habitual, or imperfective. Texts may include interviews, short lectures on familiar topics, and news items and reports primarily dealing with factual information.
Departmental Foreign Literature Reading RequirementThe Department of German considers experience with texts written in a foreign language an extraordinary benefit in deepening one's awareness of language as the medium of literature and thought. Therefore, the department requires all of its doctoral students to demonstrate advanced reading comprehension in literature in at least two foreign languages (referred to as the Foreign Literature Reading Requirement ) in addition to having native or near-native fluency in English.
In order to complete the Foreign Literature Reading Requirement , students will have to show that they can read and restate into English scholarly materials in German and in one additional language relevant to their field of specialization. Completion of the Foreign Literature Reading Requirement is a prerequisite for admission to candidacy for the degree.
Advanced Reading Comprehension in a foreign language can be demonstrated in the following ways:
- By passing the Advanced Reading Comprehension Exam administered by the Department of German.
- By earning a grade of B+ or higher in an advanced undergraduate or graduate course (300-level or above) at Northwestern. The course must require readings in the language being tested but may be conducted in English. Such a course should be taken as a fourth course, unless it is an appropriate 400-level graduate seminar. The course cannot be an independent study and it must be pre-approved by the Director of Graduate Studies. The course must be taken in the first three years of study.
- By proving that the student has taken appropriate advanced course work in the language being tested at another institution. Students should submit copies of appropriate transcripts to the Director of Graduate Studies. The Director of Graduate Studies may wave verification or examination for native or near-native speakers.
Guidelines for the Advanced Reading Comprehension Exam
The goal of the Advanced Reading Comprehension Exam is to test students' abilities to read, comprehend, and restate in written English foreign literary works and scholarly sources relevant to their field of studies. For the exam, students will receive two passages of 500 to 700 words each (one literary work, one scholarly work). They will have 90 minutes to translate the foreign texts into English as closely as possible. While an exact translation and specialized vocabulary is not of primary concern, the translation must be substantially complete and must reflect the meaning of the foreign passages accurately and gracefully. Bi-lingual dictionaries in book-form may be used during the exam.
The Advanced Reading Comprehension Exam is normally set and read by a member of the Department of German and a member of the appropriate foreign language department. The exam can be scheduled any time during the year upon prior consultation with the Director of Graduate Studies. Students are expected to complete the Foreign Literature Reading Requirement no later than the spring of their third year. As mentioned above, completion of the Foreign Literature Reading Requirement is a prerequisite for admission to candidacy for the degree.QUALIFYING EXAM
The examination is principally concerned with literary works. In consultation with their advisors, students develop three independent lists of works, some of which can be drawn from the PhD Reading List. The three lists should, as a whole, include representatives of all major genres (drama, prose, poetry), and they should include literary works from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries (both pre- and post-war). Students generally develop three kinds of list: one devoted to a particular genre, another to a particular period, and a third that concerns a particular author, including his or her influences. The idea that animates the drafting of the three lists is the following: each list should be the basis for a middle- or upper-level class on the relevant topic, a class, moreover, that introduces advanced undergraduates to some of the major works in modern German literature.
Students generally work with committees composed of three professors; usually, each professor helps develop a single list, although occasionally the entire committee helps with all three. Once a student is confident that he or she is fully in command of the lists, the members of his or her committee pose three written questions, and the student is given two weeks to write out ten- to twelve-page "position papers" about each of the questions. (There is no need for bibliographical material.) An oral examination (lasting around two hours) will take place within a week of the submission of the papers. The examiners will notify the student whether he or she has passed no later than five days after the examination.
The qualifying exam must be passed before the beginning of the fall of the student's fourth year.
If the student fails one of the three components of the exam, he or she can retake that component within 30 days. If the student fails more than one component, then he or she will not be allowed to retake the examination. In order to continue in the program, students must pass all three components.
DISSERTATION PROSPECTUS
The dissertation prospectus should be conceived in the form of a grant proposal. It is composed of the following five sections:
- An abstract of the project, comprehensible to an audience of broadly educated humanists.
- A general description of the dissertation, which defines the topic under discussion, provides an account of the basic questions to which it will respond, and locates the project in the critical literature on the topic.
- Specification of the methodologies that will be used or developed in the course of researching and writing the dissertation.
- Articulation of the dissertation into its various chapters, each of which is briefly described.
- Bibliography of both primary and secondary sources.
The usual length is 10-15 pages (not including bibliography).
The prospectus should be completed by the end of the fall of the student's fourth year.
