Course work: 30 credits
- All 30 credits must be graduate coursework, as defined by the graduate school guidelines.
- 18 credits out of the 30 credits need to be taken from the department. The following three courses should be included in the 18 credits:
EA 434 Introduction to Japanese Linguistics
EA 623 Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language
EA 775 Studies in Japanese Linguistics (repeatable)
You may consider taking courses on Japanese literature/culture to satisfy this portion of requirements.
- If you do not have sufficient linguistics background, you are encouraged to take Linguistics 301 Introduction to Linguistics during your first semester.
- If you had not satisfied the prerequisites for the MA program (the equivalent of our undergraduate major degree, which includes 4 years of Japanese in our program) prior to your enrollment, you need to satisfy this requirement by taking appropriate level of language courses.
- You may consider taking courses on linguistics, applied linguistics, language acquisition or language education offered in Linguistics, English (Language and Linguistics), Curriculum and Instruction, French and Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese, and so on to fulfill the requirements.
- Consult the faculty every semester regarding the registration of courses in the following semester. You may discuss your plans with any one of the three Japanese linguistics faculty, but please consult the designated graduate advisor, the role of which will be rotated among the faculty.
- Most students take four semesters to complete the course work necessary for the MA degree, and officially earn the degree in the following summer (an exception to this schedule may be considered on a case-by-case basis).
MA Exams:
- In-class exams on Japanese Pedagogy and Japanese Linguistics and an MA project presentation based on a research project or a pedagogy-oriented project (e.g. material development).
- You should consult the faculty regarding the reading list of the MA exams sometime during the fall semester of Year 2. We recommend that you form a study group to prepare for the exams.
- By the beginning of the Spring semester of Year 2, you should identify the topic of your MA project and ask a faculty member to be the main advisor for the project. We recommend that you consider revising/expanding one of the papers you wrote for courses during the first three semesters for this MA project requirement, rather than starting a different project during the last semester.
- If you had not attained the Japanese language proficiency required for the MA degree prior to your enrollment in our MA program, it may take more than 2 years to complete your course work. By the end of the course work, you need to exhibit advanced proficiency in Japanese.
- The exams and the MA project presentation must be completed between the exam week of the Spring semester (mid-May) and the end of the Summer Degree Window Period (mid-June). Specific dates of the exams and presentation should be determined in consultation with the advisor by April 1st at the latest.
- Each in-class exam takes approximately 4 hours. The MA project presentation should be delivered in 20 minutes, followed by Q&A.
(Updated on September 10, 2017)