The Master’s Final Examination

1. Before the Thanksgiving break of the student’s third semester, candidates for the MA will designate a three-person exam committee consisting of 3 members of the French faculty (of which 1 is designated chair). 
2. The candidate will provide the committee with a bibliography listing all readings (and other relevant materials) covered in the students coursework to date.
3. Before the end of that semester the committee will provide the student with three exam questions.
4. At the beginning of the final semester the committee chair will schedule the candidate's oral exam. The oral exam will last one hour and will be scheduled on a date sometime in the second half of the candidate's final semester in accordance with the Graduate School's deadlines related to the rewarding of degrees.
5. The candidate will send the exam committee via email written responses to the exam questions at least one week prior to the scheduled oral exam. Written responses should be submitted as a PDF file. They should be typed and not exceed 5 double-spaced pages (1-inch margins, 12 pt font). Written responses can be in English or French.
6. During the one-hour exam, committee members will choose two of the three exam questions as topics of discussion for the exam. The candidate will be evaluated based on the quality both of the written answers and the discussion of the committee's questions at the time of the exam.
7. The student must complete at least one of the two parts of the exam (the written part or the oral part) in French.  The student may choose to complete both parts in French.

The Master’s Committee is appointed by the Graduate School upon recommendation by the DGS. Students ask faculty members to serve on their Committees and name one as Chair (the committee Chair must be a Full or Associate Professor). Students then inform the DGS of their choices. The Master’s Committee is normally designated in the semester preceding the term when the student proposes to take the Master’s Final Examination. The Committee reviews the student’s course work, advises the candidate on preparation for the examination (which may include taking additional courses), and ultimately designs, administers, and evaluates the final written examination.The student must submit to the committee by early March a list of course works studied, since the committee bases its questions on this list.

Scheduling the Master’s Final Examination

Questions for the MA Final Examination will not be distributed to the candidate until the following criteria have been met:

1. A cumulative 3.0 GPA on graduate course work taken at or transferred to the University of Kentucky.
2. Completion of all work in courses in which the student has received an Incomplete.
3. Fulfillment of the Second Foreign Language Requirement, concurrent enrollment in a course that will lead to completion of the requirement (may include the course 011 “for Reading Knowledge” in another language dept.), or a written agreement to enroll in such a course the very next semester. The requirement may also be met by work that offers a reading knowledge of another language done previously at other universities.
4. Successful completion of a minimum of ten graduate-level courses in French, including FR 553 (Teaching of French). Other courses may satisfy this requirement with approval of the Director of Graduate Studies.

The Chair of the Master’s Committee schedules the date of the Master’s Final Examination in consultation with the candidate and the other members of the Committee.

French Read​ing Proficiency Exam for Graduate Students

Graduate students wishing to complete the language requirement by taking the French reading proficiency exam should contact Jeorg Sauer (jeorg.sauer@uky.edu) or Jeffrey Peters (jnp@uky.edu) to schedule the exam. Students are allowed to use a dictionary and have two hours to complete the exam with a B or better to satisfy the requirement.