sample writing for M.A Linguistics program

[Enas]

Dear All,

I have to submit a sample writing with the online application on the 17th of December. The fact is that I don't have a sample writing in the field of linguistics and I'm writing one right now but still I'm writing the abstract to my paper. How can I manage this? what should I do? Have u faced similar situation and how could you pass it?

Thanks for you all.

[moody]

If your paper is not finished by the 17th, you should submit a piece of writing (like a term paper) from some other area. Ideally this piece of writing should be from a field that is at least somewhat related (for linguistics, maybe psychology, philosophy, anthropology, or perhaps literature). Regardless, you should submit something that shows your best quality work.

[Guest Gnome Chomsky]

It's too late now, but I just want to add my experiences from linguistics undergrad. I didn't go to the most highly regarded university for linguistics, and almost none of the classes required substantial term papers. By the time I had completed all 15 (or so) required classes for the linguistics major, the most writing I had done was short essays for weekly homework assignments. Luckily, the final summer at my university I took a class required for graduation, which was a research writing class. The professor made us all write a 15-20 page paper related to our major. So, I was finally able to write that linguistics research paper. The only problem was the professor was not a linguistics professor, so I had to go to other sources to get fact checks. When I asked a linguistics professor why none of the classes required papers, she said (off the record) because a majority of linguistics students (especially grad students, since many of the classes were grad/undergrad hybrid) were not native English speakers and, quite frankly, wrote papers that were excruciating to read. It was a bit discouraging. I took 5-6 philosophy classes for a philosophy minor and wrote more research papers than I'd like to remember.