EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES

Head of Department: Jerome L. Packard

Correspondence and Admission Information: Director of Graduate Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, 2090-A Foreign Languages Building, 707 South Mathews Avenue, Rm. 2090-A, Urbana, IL 61801; (217) 244-1432; E-mail: ealc@uiuc.edu

URL: www.ealc.uiuc.edu

Graduate Degree ProgramS

The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures offers academic programs in the languages and the humanistic cultures of China, Japan, and Korea, and of the East Asian region, leading to the Master of Arts in Asian Studies and the Doctor of Philosophy in East Asian Languages and Cultures.

Admission

Applicants to the graduate program must submit an application for admission, full transcripts of all undergraduate and graduate work completed, Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores (verbal, quantitative, and analytical), and three letters of reference completed by teachers, advisers, or recent employers. Applicants are expected to have a strong background in at least one East Asian language; normally, this means a minimum of two years of formal study. Students whose native language is not English must take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and must score at least 610 on the paper-based TOEFL (253 on the computer-based test) to be eligible for admission with full standing. Admission is possible only for the fall semester.

Graduate Teaching Experience

Although teaching is not a general Graduate College requirement, experience in teaching is considered an important part of the graduate experience in this program. Therefore, applicants are request ed to include information on teaching background as part of the application, and students can normally be expected to teach at least one semester as part of their graduate experience.

Master of Arts

Candidates must complete eight units of graduate-level courses, including EALC 400-Proseminar in East Asian Languages and Cultures, two 400-level courses in the major field including at least one research seminar, and at least two other courses at the 400 level in East Asian studies or related courses that satisfy distribution requirements. Candidates must also demonstrate a knowledge of one East Asian language at the fourth-year level by satisfactory completion of appropriate (300-level) coursework or examination and passage of a written examination covering material studied while in residence. No thesis is required.

Doctor of Philosophy

Applicants to the Ph.D. program normally must hold a master's degree in Eas t Asian studies or a related discipline with an East Asian concentration. Candidates for the Ph.D. may specialize in culture (e.g., religion, literature, history), language acquisition, or language pedagogy, with a major concentration in China, Japan, or Korea.

The Ph.D. requires a total of 24 units, or 16 units if the student has earned a masters degree in EALC at the University of Illinois or its equivalent at a comparable institution. The 16 required units include: EALC 400-Proseminar in East Asian Languages and Cultures; six additional units at the 400 level, two of which must be research seminars; and nine additional graduate units, any number of which may be dissertation research (EALC 499) units. This yields a total of 16 graduate level units, which must be completed with a minimum GPA of 3.5. At least four of the units, outside of EALC 499, must be in the major field, defined by culture and discipline (e.g., Chinese history, Japanese literature, Korean language pedagogy).

The above requirements also include two courses on a second East Asian culture and two courses in a second discipline, as well as fulfillment of the language requirement. The Ph.D. language requirement involves mastery of one East Asian language (reading and oral-aural) and a basic reading ability in a second East Asian language. The requirement for the second language may be fulfilled either by passing the appropriate third-year (200-level) course in the language, or by examination. In addition, Ph.D. students whose primary focus is Japan are required to take one year of classical Japanese, and those whose primary focus is China are required to take one year of classical Chinese. Language courses at the 300 and 400 level carry graduate credit and may be counted toward degree requirements, as long as they are not also used to fulfill the language requirement.

Other general requirements are: a formal review of progress, including an evaluation of research capability, at the end of the f irst year in the program; a written and oral preliminary examination in the major and two minor fields (after completion of coursework); presentation of a dissertation proposal (often as part of the preliminary exam); and completion and defense of the dissertation.

financial aid

The Department makes every effort to assist graduate students in securing financial aid. Financial aid packages usually combine some form of fellowships with teaching or research assistantships in a manner that allows for both teaching experience and timely completion of the degree. In recent years, the vast majority of EALC graduate students have received some form of financial support. Financial aid for graduate students in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures may include: University Fellowships, Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships, University Dissertation Completion Fellowships, Minority Academic Partnership Plan (MAPP) Fellowships, teaching assistantships, and research as sistantships. All awards of financial aid are made following competitive application.