Foreign Language Exam
All students in the IR Department are required to demonstrate graduate level reading proficiency in a foreign language prior to completion of the degree program. Graduate level proficiency is the ability to understand accurately newspaper and professional journal articles in the field of foreign relations, using standard reference materials.
Exam Details
The foreign language exam is for students currently registered in an MA degree program in the IR Department. The exam is administered three times each year as indicated on the Graduate Student calendar. Normally, the exam is offered each year in September, November, and March.
Students receive notification of the results of their exams by email within one month of the exam date; the exams are not returned to the students. All grades are pass/fail.
The exam may be repeated as many times as necessary. All students must pass this exam in order to graduate from the IR Department. The results of the exam(s) remain in the department and are only forwarded to the GRS Records Office when the student passes.
Skill Expectations
For the exam, students are given a text in their target language and are permitted 90 minutes to provide a translation of the text into English. In most cases, the text will be a current newspaper or academic journal article relevant to international affairs. For exams on Western European languages, such as German and French, students are normally provided with about two pages of text and should be able to translate most of the text into English. In the case of languages more distant from English, such as Chinese or Arabic, the length of the exam is shorter.
Students are not expected to be at the level of a professional translator. Rather, they are to translate the text into proper English with only minor errors. A non-native speaker of the language ought to be able to read the translation and understand the original text with no major errors.
While students are expected to translate the majority (roughly 75%) of their text into English, it is not necessary to translate the entire document (unless the document is particularly brief, in which case a student should be able to translate the entire text). It is necessary for translations to demonstrate clearly that students understood well the material they were translating. Students’ translated texts should make good sense (i.e., students’ should not simply transliterate the text word for word into English) and should enable someone who reads the translation to understand well what the foreign language text says.
Students are permitted to bring with them to the exam one dictionary, which can either be a monolingual or a foreign language/English language dictionary. No grammar books, verb conjugation guides, special terminology, phrase dictionaries or the like are permitted. Electronic dictionaries must be presented to the Graduate Programs Administrator a minimum of 48 hours before the exam for inspection.
Graduate Reading Knowledge Classes
A student may also fulfill the foreign language requirement through successful completion of any of the Graduate Reading Knowledge courses offered by the Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures (MFLL) Department. These are zero credit pass/fail classes open to any student in the Graduate of Arts and Sciences (students in a dual-degree program with the IR Department are eligible to take these classes). Currently, MFLL offers the following Graduate Reading Knowledge Classes: GRS LF 621 (French), GRS LG 621 (German), GRS LI 621 (Italian), and GRS LS 621 (Spanish). The MFLL Department offers these courses as faculty resources permit. Generally speaking, each course is offered once per year.
These courses do not add any additional tuition cost. However, a student must be paying some amount of tuition, either for classes or as a continuing student, for the semester in which the reading knowledge class is taken. Thus, Graduate Reading Knowledge classes cannot be taken during a semester in which a student is on a Leave of Absence or is for some other reason is not being assessed tuition.
Other Language Courses
Boston University offers for-credit courses in a wide range of languages. Students can take these language classes; however, language courses can never be used to fulfill the course requirements of any IR MA degree programs. Taking a for-credit language course in addition to the regular load of IR graduate courses may add to a student’s tuition bill. Information on language courses offered by Boston University can be found here and here.
Language Links Program
The Educational Resource Center at BU organizes informal language study groups for a variety of languages through its Language Links program. Language Links are open to any BU student. Information on this program can be found here.
Rosetta Stone Language Training
The Rosetta Stone series of language learning computer programs is available to BU students to use for free in the Howard Thurman Center, located in the lower level of the George Sherman Student Union (775 Commonwealth Avenue). The programs can only be used on site. Many, but not all, of the languages offered in the Rosetta Stone series are available. More information can be found here.
Non-Native English Speakers
In the case of non-native English speakers who were required to submit a TOEFL score report as part of their application for admission, knowledge of English fulfills the foreign language requirement. These students are not required to take the departmental foreign language exam.
Exam Registration
The next foreign language exam will be held on Friday, November 6.
Time: 10:00 am to 11:30 am. Location: IRC 220.