At or near the end of their required MA coursework (and before beginning work on their MA project), students are required to take a two-part written exam. The exam is offered twice a year, once during the fall semester, and once during the spring semester.
The first segment of the exam covers the material outlined in "Terms and Concepts Covered in the Plan D Written MA Exam, Part I: General Portion of the Exam", available from the Plan D coordinator. Questions cover issues in phonetics and phonology, syntax, semantics, morphology, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and discourse analysis; students choose questions to answer from a larger set. This portion of the exam is administered in one of the departmental computer classrooms on the Friday of the first full week of instruction of the semester; it is two hours in length.
The second portion of the exam is tailored to the student's area of concentration. Students in the Linguistics track are given a take-home problem set which they have 48 hours to complete. Students in the other three tracks are given a set of questions based on "Terms and Concepts Covered in the Plan D Written MA Exam, Part II: SLA Portion of the Exam" (also available from the Plan D coordinator). They are given an additional two hours in the computer lab to complete their answers. Students who fail all or part of the exam are allowed to re-take it once in a subsequent semester. Students who have passed the written exam are ready to proceed with the MA project.
If you have completed your coursework and are ready to take the written MA exam, notify the Plan D coordinator of your intention to take it at least two months in advance of the beginning of the semester.
