Professor Michael Stubbs
Englische Sprachwissenschaft
Universität Trier

Dear students,

Please read these notes before you submit a term paper or test for one of my seminars.

ALL STUDENTS

1. ASSESSMENT, TESTS, SCHEINE, etc
SUBMISSION DATES
2. HAUSARBEITEN: GETTING GOOD MARKS
3. PRESENTATION / ACADEMIC ENGLISH
4. QUOTING OTHER PEOPLE'S WORK
PLAGIARISM: A WARNING

MAINLY HAUPTSTUDIUM

5. HAUPTSEMINARE: ORAL (AND WRITTEN) REPORTS

1. ASSESSMENT, TESTS, SCHEINE, etc

The terminology for different types of Schein is different in different Prüfungsordnungen ... Some Ordnungen distinguish two types, some distinguish three, the terms differ, etc ... (no comment ...). However, the basic distinctions are:

BENOTETER SCHEIN (MA) / QUALIFIZIERTER LEISTUNGSNACHWEIS (LA)

ÜBUNG or PROSEMINAR. Preparation/reading for each week, regular attendance, active participation, a pass in an interim test, and a pass in a Hausarbeit or final test (of around 8 to 10 pages, plus references).

(These are usually take-home tests: you get the test in advance, do it at home, and hand it in by a date given.)

HAUPTSEMINAR. Preparation/reading for each week, regular attendance, active participation, plus an oral presentation and a Hausarbeit (of around 20 pages, 6,000 words, plus references).

TEILNAHMESCHEIN (MA) / ERFOLGREICHE TEILNAHME (LA)

ÜBUNG or PROSEMINAR. Preparation/reading for each week, regular attendance, active participation, plus a pass in an interim test.

HAUPTSEMINAR. Preparation/reading for each week, regular attendance, active participation, plus an oral presentation (depending on student numbers) or a short written report.

TEILNAHME AN WEITEREN LEHRVERANSTALTUNGEN (LA)

Preparation/reading for each week, regular attendance, active participation, plus other work agreed as appropriate for individual seminars.

SUBMISSION DATES

The final test / Hausarbeit / written report must be handed in by

15 March (for the winter semester)
15 September (for the summer semester)

No extensions are possible without a serious reason (usually medical). I have to return a record of student numbers, numbers of Scheine issued, etc, to the Dekanat.

The work must be typed or word-processed.
Please do NOT use a fancy plastic cover! Just a staple or paper-clip.

2. HAUSARBEITEN: GETTING GOOD MARKS

HOW MUCH WORK? Students often ask "how much work they have to do" for a term paper (Hausarbeit, Abschlußtest) ... Well, that's rather up to you ...

If your essay does little more than summarize some relevant work, with one or two examples, it will probably get a "4".
If it relates this to main topics in the seminar, and gives more systematic examples, it will probably get a "3".
If it gives a critical account of different approaches, shows evidence of independent thinking, and/or provides an analysis of your own data, ... etc it will probably get a "2".
If, in addition, it is particularly clear and well written, and/or contains some of your own original ideas, ... it will probably get a "1".

CONTENT. High marks will be given for tests and essays which

ANSWER THE QUESTION
have a clear STRUCTURE: a beginning, a middle and an end
have a clear ARGUMENT: express your point of view
contain precise LINGUISTIC EXAMPLES: with analysis
contain evidence of READING.

3. PRESENTATION / ACADEMIC ENGLISH

In reading tests, term papers, etc over the past few semesters, my experience is that the following are common spelling mistakes, interference errors, etc. If your work contains any of the following errors, I will automatically deduct one point (for each error). (I'm not quite sure whether this is a joke or not ...)

don't use the abbreviations don't, can't, etc in formal written academic English
cannot is one word
auxiliary has only one l
pronUnciation but pronOUnce
occur, occuRRing, occuRRence
exemplarisch = illustrative; exemplary = hervorragend!
You may think that a section of your paper is exemplary: I may find it merely illustrative ...
herausfinden = to find, to discover (NOT to find out)
(Labov found that social class correlated with grammatical features. Labov found out who had eaten his chocolate biscuits.)
Books have chapters; articles and term papers have sections.
NUMBERS are written as follows in English:
100,000 = one hundred thousand
5.67 = five point six seven
(ie comma and full-stop are used in opposite ways in English and German).
PUNCTUATION in English and German are very different: if you don't know how, then please find out!
HYPHENATION is also very different: switch off this option if you are using a German-language word-processor!!
QUOTE MARKS. In English they must be raised thus: 'xyz' or "xyz". If your word processor produces initial lowered quote marks, then: change Language to English; or type them in twice and delete the first one; or type in the ANSI characters direct with Alt-0147 and 0148 (you probably have to switch on Num-Lock). English does not use <<xyz>> or anything similar.

EIN EXKURS

One of the most difficult problems centres around the terms science and Wissenschaft. They are NOT equivalent, and CANNOT be used as translations of each other. Similarly, scientific is NOT a translation of wissenschaftlich.

science = die Naturwissenschaften (ie physics, chemistry, biology, etc)
a scientist = ein(e) Naturwissenschaftlicher(in).
Wissenschaftler haben herausgefunden, dass ...
= Researchers have discovered that ...
or Linguists have discovered that ...

The term social sciences is used (for sociology, economics, etc, and possibly psychology).

But there are no direct translations of terms such as die Geisteswissenschaften or Literaturwissenschaft.

die Geisteswissenschaften = the humanities or the arts.
Literaturwissenschaft = literary studies or literary theory.
FB2 Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft = Faculty of Language and Literature.

The term Linguistic Science is hardly used in English. Just Linguistics.

In other words, Wissenschaft has a much wider meaning than science. The term scholarship might sometimes be used, but this has different connotations of "knowledge, wisdom and reading books", and seems to exclude research, experiments, etc.

In the sense of the Prüfungsordnungen, eine wissenschaftliche Arbeit = an undergraduate dissertation.
wissenschaftlich can often be translated as academic (an academic article).

All of the above is purely terminological: calling a piece of work wissenschaftlich is often just a matter of claiming that it has prestige, which it may or may not deserve. The real question is what is meant: often the best term might be systematic (to study a problem in a methodical, rigorous and systematic way). (The underlying question is whether there are fundamental differences between the methods appropriate for studying the social and the natural world, but that is too big a topic for here.)

LINGUISTIC EXAMPLES

Essays in linguistics usually require examples of words, sentences, meanings and so on. Use this simple system:

Underline or italicize examples. Put "meanings" in double quotes.

Eg: The German sentence Sie müssen nicht gehen does not mean "You must not go", but "You don't have to go".

If you have a series of examples, number them, eg:

(1) Sie müssen nicht gehen
(2) Er will intelligent sein

Then you can easily refer back to the numbered examples:

(1) means "you don't have to go", whereas (2) means "he claims to be intelligent" ... etc.

4. QUOTING OTHER PEOPLE'S WORK

Hausarbeiten MUST contain evidence of what you have read. They MUST therefore contain accurate references to this work.

If you quote phrases or sentences from books or articles, these parts MUST be in quote marks, with full references:

eg. As Chomsky (1965: 3) says, "exact quote here".

If you copy the content of what someone else has said - and merely change a few words here and there - this does NOT make it your own work. If you want to quote someone else's argument in your own words, then you might say:

eg. As Chomsky (1965: 3) argues, ... .

PLAGIARISM: A WARNING

Plagiarism is the unfair or unacknowledged use of other people's work.

To quote or use work without acknowledgement is a SERIOUS OFFENCE.
An essay which contains plagiarism AUTOMATICALLY FAILS.

The statement in undergraduate dissertations applies equally to Hausarbeiten:

"Hiermit versichere ich, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbstständig verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Hilfsmittel benutzt habe. Stellen, die wörtlich oder dem Sinne nach anderen Werken entnommen sind, sind in jedem einzelnen Fall unter Angabe der Quelle der Entlehnung kenntlich gemacht. Dies gilt auch für Zeichnungen, bildliche Darstellungen, Skizzen und dergleichen."

This applies to books, articles and world-wide-web documents.

It is tempting to down-load documents from the Web and to insert them, modified or unmodified, into essays. DO NOT DO THIS. You will be found out. If your examiner suspects that you have done this, he or she just has to type a few phrases into a search-engine, and will probably find the plagiarized passages within a few minutes!

If you are in doubt about any of this, come and ask me.

REFERENCES / BIBLIOGRAPHIES

All Hausarbeiten, final tests, handouts, written reports, etc must contain accurate references.

REFERENCES must be ABSOLUTELY ACCURATE and ABSOLUTELY CONSISTENT. Readers must be able to find an article or book in a library, and possibly also a quote in the article or book. A small inaccuracy may make a reference unfindable.

See the separate document on this.

5. HAUPTSEMINARE: ORAL (AND WRITTEN) REPORTS

Presentation: 30 minutes maximum.
Handout: two pages maximum; circulated the week before the presentation.

NOT long summaries of what you have read.
NOT written essays read aloud.

Your HANDOUT will contain:

a list of KEYWORDS: probably just four or five
a brief explanation of the most important CONCEPTS
the outline of your ARGUMENT
notes on how concepts and argument RELATE to the SEMINAR
EXAMPLES and DATA
QUESTIONS or PROBLEMS or ACTIVITIES for discussion
accurate REFERENCES to the main relevant work.

You must express things IN YOUR OWN WORDS.
If you can't, then you haven't understood it.

You must try to express things AS SIMPLY AS POSSIBLE.
You must try to express things AS BRIEFLY AS POSSIBLE.

"I apologise for writing such a long letter, but I didn't have time to write a short one." (Winston Churchill.)

But the key phrase is AS x AS POSSIBLE. Some ideas are complex, and cannot be reduced to a few lines.

CHECKLIST:
before your presentation, check

how LONG your presentation will be
that have you SELECTED points RELEVANT to the seminar

And remember:

you are trying to EXPLAIN something (TEACH something).

Sometimes there are too many students in a Hauptseminar for each student to give an oral presentation. For students requiring a Teilnahmeschein, an alternative to an oral report is a short written report on one of the sessions/topics:

2 pages, 300 to 500 words; an accurate account (Protokoll) of the presentation and discussion in one session; plus a critical assessment of the session (points that were well made, points that remain unclear, etc); plus references.

Anglistik, Universität Trier, D-54286 Trier, Germany.
Last up-dated November 2001.

Professor Michael Stubbs Englische Sprachwissenschaft Universität Trier