French for Reading Knowledge Exam
Certify that you have met your UW-Madison graduate program requirement for reading knowledge of French by taking this exam. This exam can be taken between 8:00 am and 10:45 am or between 12:30 and 3:15 pm weekdays.
Register online, by phone at 608-262-2451, or in person at 139 Pyle Center at least seven days in advance of your desired exam date.
Once you have registered and paid for the exam, please contact the exam proctor Rose Wood at rwood@dcs.wisc.edu or 608-262-7389 to schedule your exam. You will take your exam on the 6th floor of the Lowell Center, located at 610 Langdon St., Madison. Rose Wood's office is at 630 Lowell Center.
When you take the exam you are given one hour to read and translate approximately one page of French prose. The text selected will be generally compatible with your graduate degree program. You are permitted to use a French-English dictionary which you must provide, and one additional dictionary to aid in writing English - such as non-native English speakers may desire to use. Handwritten notes about French grammar written in one's dictionary are permissible, but additional materials are not. You will write your translation in a blue book which the proctor provides for you. You are given one hour from the time of first seeing the text to handing in your translation.
Your reading ability is measured by the percentage of the text which you translate accurately and coherently. Your translation will be rated with one of these three results:
- Advanced (mastery of tense, idiom, vocabulary)
- Adequate (use of language as research tool)
- Inadequate (cannot translate basic meanings of the text)
For the exact requirements you need to fulfill, please contact your academic department. Each UW-Madison graduate program determines its own standards for reading knowledge requirements. After you have taken the exam, please contact the exam proctor Rose Wood (see above) to receive your results. If (and only if) you pass your department's requirements, we will automatically notify your department of your exam result. If you must re-take the exam, you will need to register and pay for a new exam.
You may view a sample exam (using a text that would be appropriate for an English Department graduate student).
We recommend that you practice the skill of writing timed translations in advance. Feel free to use the above sample exam, as well as working through self-timed translations of additional scholarly articles in French from your own field of research. Memorial Library has a vast collection of French-language scholarly publications, and the Web is also a source of such texts.
Contact information
If this Web page does not answer all of your questions about UW–Madison's French for Reading Knowledge Exam, feel free to contact us.
