Graduate Student Foreign Language Reading Examinations
The Graduate Student Foreign Language Reading Examinations are given four times a year. The University Registrar's web site lists the dates of the exams and the registration deadlines at http://registrar.uchicago.edu/courses/regschedule.shtml and gives a description of the registration procedure at http://registrar.uchicago.edu/policies/flre.shtml. If you wish to cancel your registration for a language examination, contact your area Dean of Students. The deadline for cancellation is Friday of the third week of the quarter.
Approximately 1-2 weeks before each exam, the Office of the University Registrar will send each student registered for a language exam an e-mail indicating the date, time, and location of the exam. The results of each student’s exam will be sent to their Deans of Students approximately four weeks after each exam. Students may obtain their grades from their Deans of Students or view their results on cMore at the end of the academic quarter.
One general examination in each language is offered every quarter. Each exam is two hours in length and consists entirely of passages to be translated accurately into idiomatic English. Students are allowed to use a vocabulary dictionary of the language during the exam but cannot use one that includes grammar rules. Pocket size paperback dictionaries are generally insufficient.
The total length of the passages for translation can range from about 450-750 words on the exam. Passages are drawn from several different fields but avoid the specialized interests and technical language of any one discipline in particular.
Most exams are based on a perfect score of 100 points. The minimum score for a High Pass (P*) is 75 points, the minimum score for a Pass (P) is 70 points and anything less than 70 points is a Fail (F).
The best preparation for the exam, in addition to a thorough command of the grammar and syntax, is to practice translating previous exams as well as journal articles and monographs in the discipline. It is always better to read several paragraphs or a page from a number of different sources than to work on one lengthy article or book. This will insure familiarity with a greater variety of styles of writing and sets of vocabulary.
PDF versions of previous exams are available at http://csl.uchicago.edu/languageexams/index.shtml. Any questions concerning the Graduate Student Foreign Language Reading Examinations should be addressed to Rita Vazquez in the Office of the University Registrar at rvazquez1@uchicago.edu or 773-702-7452.
