In order to select topics for any exam you need to approach us in class, the office hours or contact us via E-mail.

Oral exams:

• Registration opens 12 weeks before Klips exam date
• Registration closes 6 weeks before Klips exam date
• De-registration possible until 2 weeks before Klips exam date
• Exams phase I: To-be-announced
• Exam phase II: to-be-announced

Written exams:

• Winter term: deadline 15th of March
• Summer term: deadline 15th of September
• Registration opens 12 weeks before KLIPS exam date
• Registration closes 6 weeks before KLIPS exam date
• De-registration possible until 2 weeks before KLIPS exam date
• Grading takes 8-12 weeks

As of WS 24/25 oral exams for BA students are concerned with the class content and ONE focus area within this context. MA students need to prepare TWO separate topics. Suggest your exam topics to Prof. Dr. Bongartz during class/office hour via E-Mail: ls-bongartz(at)uni-koeln(dot)de. You may ask advice on your reading list if you book an office hour. You may use the readings and materials from our class on your reading list (max. 50%). You may hand in one introductory and one expert question per topic which you would like to address during the exam.

Note that the generic date given on KLIPS is not the date of the actual examination. The reading lists are due ca. 4 weeks before the exam. Reading lists are to be prepared in APA format. The list for each topic must contain 1 monograph and 6 (recent! Not older than 20 years!) scientific articles/studies per topic. You select an exam area that the monograph is concerned with and use the articles to establish a focus for the exam (i.e. area: morphology, focus: compounding).

Possible exam topics: 

Prof. Bongartz generally welcomes exam topic from the fields of:

• Core linguistics
• Applied linguistics
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics

Both topics in MA exams should derive from the class context, yet be sufficiently distinct to form separate exam areas. If preferred, students can derive just one topic from the class and select one core area as their second topic. Core areas are:

• Syntax
• Morphology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Semantics

Students interested in submitting an argumentative essay based on our class readings as their written exam thesis will have to contact Prof. Dr. Bongartz during office hours (Thursday's - 9AM). Please write an E-Mail to ls-bongartz(at)uni-koeln(dot)de to make an appointment. Upon request, Prof. Dr. Bongartz can take a look at your bibliography, outline, research questions and thesis statement.

Please consult our style sheet for formal questions about writing term papers. For all other open questions, the style sheet of the English Seminar applies. We have prepared a cover page for you to use in your written works. Make sure to fill in all relevant information specific to your paper and add it as your first page, followed by the body of the paper as one document. Please note that written papers of any form will only be accepted if the corresponding cover page is available. Term papers received after the aforementioned deadline will not be corrected. Deadlines will not be extended. In case you need to have your term paper corrected earlier, make sure to hand in your paper by mid-end of February (WiSe) and by mid-end August (SoSe). Any request made after this deadline will not be considered, and you will not be given an earlier evaluation.

Independent studies

Prof. Bongartz only supervises the work of students who have contributed to at least one of her seminars and ideally have taken a previous MAP with her. Students preparing to write their final thesis with Prof. Bongartz take precedence. Before registering on KLIPS, suggest your topic during the office hours and only sign up with specific agreement.

Final thesis

Supervision and topcis for any final thesis (Bachelor's, Master's, Master's and State) must be agreed upon with Prof. Dr. Bongartz during her office hours. All written thesis with Prof. Dr. Bongartz must have a clear content-related relationship to English linguistics. Simply writing the work in English without reference to an English linguistic topic is not enough. Likewise, topics of general linguistics without reference to the English language are not possible.