Advice for Graduate Students

If you can't find the answers to your questions here or on the rest of our site, please contact the graduate coordinator, Dr.Ratree Wayland.

1. What kinds of exams do I have to take besides those given in classes?
   • M.A. Comprehensive Exams: These are taken no later than the semester following completion of the phonology, morphology, and syntax core courses. A specially appointed committee of linguistics professors prepare these exams.
   • M.A. Defense: Both the thesis and non-thesis students must pass an oral defense of their thesis or final paper. The format is determined by your chair.
   • Ph.D. Qualifying Exams: These written and oral exams are prepared by your Ph.D. Committee. They choose the topics which they think you should be well-versed in as an appropriate foundation for your dissertation research.
   • Ph.D. Dissertation Defense: This oral exam is based on the ideas you have presented in your thesis. You will defend yourself before your committee and invited guests.
2. What is the difference between an M.A. and a Ph.D. besides additional course work?
   
   The M.A. is the foundation degree for the study of linguistics. At the University of Florida it may be combined with professional training in teaching English as a second or foreign language. An M.A. with a TESL Certificate is the standard degree for English Language Teaching throughout the world. For many of our M.A. students, that is their interest in our program.
   
   As a foundation degree, it also acts as the cornerstone for the research you will carry out as a Ph.D. student. At the Ph.D. level you have a director and a committee to teach you how to be an independent researcher. Whereas the M.A., with its more closely controlled curriculum tends to prepare people to be teachers, the Ph.D. is much more flexible and prepares people to be researchers. That is why it is so important to establish a Ph.D. supervisory committee soon after you have been admitted to the Ph.D. program.
3. How do I set up a committee to advise me and guide me through my studies?
   
   The graduate school requires that you set up your M.A. or Ph.D. supervisory committee by the end of your second semester of enrollment. For a non-thesis M.A. you need only a chair. A thesis M.A. requires a chair and one committee member. The Ph.D. requires a chair and three additional committee members, including a member from outside the Linguistics Program.
   
   The best way to establish a committee is to select a chair and then work with the chair to identify who else should be on the committee. To identify a possible chair, look through the faculty listing and identify the professors whose research interest coincide with yours. Also look through the recent M.A. and Ph.D. dissertations to see which professor have chaired research that you find interesting. If you can, take a class from that professor to see if your personalities mesh well. Attend the Departmental Linguistic Seminars when the professor you are interested in is giving a presentation or listen to the types of comments that professor gives in the discussion after these presentation. Perhaps you can meet with the professor to discuss your common research interests during office hours. If you are having trouble finding someone you can work with, consult with the graduate coordinator.
   
   You are not stuck with your committee once it is set up. Any time up to the semester you finish, you can make changes.
4. How do I decide whether to do a thesis or non-thesis M.A.?
   
   Whether you decide on a thesis or non-thesis M.A. depends on your future plans. We recommend the thesis option if:
   • you are working on the TESL Certificate. The M.A. with thesis tends to be the standard teaching degree for universities around the world. If you do a non-thesis M.A., you may be limiting your employment opportunities.
   • you are interested in continuing on in a Ph.D. program. At the University of Florida we require that anyone applying for the Ph.D. program who has a non-thesis M.A. in linguistics to submit a substantial scholarly paper to the Graduate Studies Committee before being admitted to candidacy.
     
     The non-thesis option should only be selected in consultation with the chair of your supervisory committee.
5. How do I choose a topic for my M.A. thesis or Ph.D. dissertation?
   
   Look through the titles of the M.A. thesis and Ph.D. dissertations since 1990. As you can see, at the M.A. level, the thesis not much more than an interesting problem that might be condensed into an interesting article. It might be descriptive research on some point of grammar. It might be the extension of a paper you wrote for a class. In fact, think of papers you prepared for classes as test runs for an M.A. thesis topic.
   
   A Ph.D. is more like a book. Your M.A. research might serve as an exploratory study for your Ph.D. research. Be sure to choose a topic you like and are willing to live with for the first few you years of your academic life, since you will be hired as the "expert" in whatever you studied. Your committee is especially important as you select your Ph.D. topic. You will want to spend many hours with them deciding how to select and focus your research topic.
6. How do I plan my graduate program to make me employable when I am done?
   
   This is a problem for Ph.D. students since M.A. students if they don't continue for the Ph.D., usually find jobs as TESL instructors or teach in community colleges or high schools. Most Ph.D.'s look for jobs in colleges or universities. This takes some long term planning.
   
   Long before you think about finishing your degree, take a look at the job announcements in the Chronicle of High Education, in the MLA Job List, on the job board in the Linguistics Office, or on the Internet. Note the kinds of jobs that are available and interesting to you. Tailor your program to prepare yourself for those kinds of jobs.
   
   What kinds of departments are offering jobs you are interested in? English? Foreign Languages? Speech? Anthropology? Linguistics? What secondary skills can you offer the department in addition to your specialty? For example, if what you like doing fits into an English department, can you teach History of the English Language? Discourse analysis? Modern English Structure? Developmental English?
   
   Think of your job preparation as more than taking the right courses. Get work experience that might be interesting to a prospective employer. Perhaps teaching specialty classes, doing research in phonetics labs, creating internet websites, administering ESL programs, developing teaching materials.
   
   Get something into publication. Develop one of your class papers or some of your research into a convention presentation. Use the convention as a time to make contacts with other researchers, even the "famous" researchers whose work you have been reading in your classes. Then rewrite your presentation for publication. Ph.D. students with interesting experience, contacts, and publications move to the front of the employment line.
7. I am nearly finished with my M.A. How do I switch to the Ph.D. program?
   
   You are not automatically admitted to the Ph.D. program when you finish your M.A. They are two separate programs. As you get near the end of your M.A., you must apply for admission to the Ph.D. program in the same way as someone applying from outside the program. Take a look at the Graduate Application link. Since you are already enrolled in the university, you only need to follow the linguistics checklist. Do not reapply to the Office of Admissions.
   
   You do not need to resubmit any test scores. Also, you only need to submit a UF transcript since the others are already in your file. The statement of purpose, the letters of recommendation from three members of our graduate faculty, and the writing sample are especially important. Select them carefully.
8. How do I find a job when I am done?
   
   See the answer to question 6. Finding a job starts when you begin the program. The actual search begins in the last year before you expect to finish. Do not wait until you have the degree in hand. For jobs in higher education that begin in August, the positions are usually advertised in the fall and filled in the winter/spring of the previous year. If you don't have a job by spring, don't despair. Because of quirks of funding, jobs open up right up to the last minute. Keep an eye on the job board in Linguistics and on academic job sites on the Internet.
   
   Work with your committee and the graduate coordinator during your job search. They often have good contacts you can work with. Their advice on interviewing and putting together an employment packet should be invaluable.
9. Why do I have to take all three core courses (syntax, phonology, and morphology)? I am really interested in being an ESL teacher and these courses don't seem to apply to my interests.
   
   Good question since many of our M.A. students are working on the TESL Certificate. The TESL Certificate is part of a professional training program that is independent of any degree. It may be combined with an M.A. or Ph.D. in any graduate program at the University of Florida. It may even be taken as a post-baccalaureate student. Of the 33 who earned the TESL Certificate between 1997 and 1999, 19 were linguistics majors, 10 education majors, and 4 were English or foreign language majors.
   
   Those who combine the TESL Certificate with an M.A. in linguistics have an interest in second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, or language analysis. Basic to each of these interests is an in-depth understanding of syntactic phonological, and morphological processes. If you look at the various M.A. thesis' that our students have written since 1990, you will see how these core courses have reflected the TESL related topics they researched.
   
   We assume, too, that many of you will want to continue on for a Ph.D. We do not offer a program in educational linguistics, however, we do offer one in language analysis. These core courses are the foundation for any research you might carry out. Take a look at the topics of the Ph.D. dissertations since 1990 to see how our students have found applications for linguistics theory.
   
   If you decide that language analysis is not your interest, we suggest that you change to a different graduate program that more closely follows your interests. You may still continue your studies for the TESL Certificate.
10. It seems that the regulations are always changing, or at least I keep hearing conflicting advice. How do I find out for sure what I am supposed to do?
    
    In the age of the Internet, you can always contact the graduate coordinator through email for information on procedures established by the Linguistics Program. Do not rely on rumors you hear from other students. Of course, the graduate school has final say in all matters. I would suggest that from time to time you take a look at the graduate school site. New regulations and support services designed to make your education more fruitful are listed there.

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