Gap years, Self-teaching Languages, and Language exams

[haltheincandescent]

Hi all,

So, there were a few reasons that I needed to take a gap year, and while some time off to breathe before jumping into a PhD has certainly been nice, I'm also finding myself with a lot more free time than I'm used to (after 24 credit hour semesters and a senior thesis, the very concept of "free time" seems a bit unintelligible). Some of this great, and I'm discovering that time to run and naps are pretty cool, but I'm also feeling a bit unproductive with regards to my studies now that I'm just going to work, and then coming home to work on applications and like, catching up on Netflix, etc. I also know that this is going to be even more strange once applications are all sent off. So, I've been trying to come up with productive reading plans and such, which has been going pretty well (I mean, can one ever really read enough to be prepared for grad work?), but I also thought this might be a good chance to really dig in on a second foreign language, and get my German up to a level where I can pass both language exams at the beginning of next year and get that out of the way. 

As I was trying to figure out what exact level of competency I need to work toward, I found this from Harvard (a series of past exams as a sample): http://english.fas.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Past-German-Exams.pdf. Elsewhere on they site, they say that you have to pass a "two hour translation exam, with a dictionary."  I know the exact terms of this sort of exam are probably different for different departments/programs, but I was wondering if anyone might be able to give me insight into how good of a "practice" the link above is. More specifically: do you get two hours to just translate something with a word-count similar to just *one* of those passages? or do you have multiple passages on each exam? With where I'm at now, I think I could do one of them in two hours, but I feel like that's really pretty slow. Clearly, I still have plenty of time, and am going to keep working at it, so I have to reference the dictionary less, which'll hopefully speed things up, but if where I am now is actually very nearly good enough, I might start splitting time with another language, or something else.

Any insight would be appreciated! (I'd also take any reading list recommendations for new Lit. PhDs. My main area is the 20th/21st century American novel, with a particular focus in postmodern/spatial theory, so anything in that area would be welcome; but I'm also trying to cover some "classics" of theory/crit/philosophy that never came up in my undergrad classes--I've recently been spending time with the likes of Aristotle, Marx, and Auerbach. I've read fairly widely, but I'd love to hear if anyone has any particular "must-reads" that I can make sure not to overlook. When there's finally a list of "everything" to choose from, outside the bounds of course syllabuses, some guidance would actually be nice.)

[rising_star]

 

Any insight would be appreciated! (I'd also take any reading list recommendations for new Lit. PhDs. My main area is the 20th/21st century American novel, with a particular focus in postmodern/spatial theory, so anything in that area would be welcome; but I'm also trying to cover some "classics" of theory/crit/philosophy that never came up in my undergrad classes--I've recently been spending time with the likes of Aristotle, Marx, and Auerbach. I've read fairly widely, but I'd love to hear if anyone has any particular "must-reads" that I can make sure not to overlook. When there's finally a list of "everything" to choose from, outside the bounds of course syllabuses, some guidance would actually be nice.)

What aspects of spatial theory are you interested in? I generally recommend people read Doreen Massey's For Space and the reader on Foucault, space, and power, as initial forays into spatial theory. If you look at the reading lists for geographic theory courses at the graduate level, you'll find some good recommendations for texts on spatial theory. 

[haltheincandescent]

What aspects of spatial theory are you interested in? I generally recommend people read Doreen Massey's For Space and the reader on Foucault, space, and power, as initial forays into spatial theory. If you look at the reading lists for geographic theory courses at the graduate level, you'll find some good recommendations for texts on spatial theory. 

This might sound a bit vague--and for the purposes of my applications, I have a more well defined project in mind--but for the time I have to read this year I'm trying to stay general so I can get a breadth of reading in. So, it's kind of a combination of a really general interest in the relationship between critical theory & human geography (so coming from David Harvey), and more specifically how this tradition relates to literary theory, with its own understandings about spatiality/spatial form (so Frank, Mitchell, etc.). I've read a bit of Foucault's work in the area--"Of Other Spaces" especially--and then various chapters/articles from Soja, Lefebvre, de Certeau, the Situationists, Bachelard, Jameson, Moretti, etc., etc. I definitely already have step one cut out for me in going back and reading some of the chapters in those books that I skimmed when not relevant to my thesis research, but, I definitely want(ed) to see what others might suggest--and, good thing, because your suggestions are very helpful: I seem to have managed to overlook Massey--which, with even a quick search seems to be a pretty conspicuous gap--so thank you! This is exactly what I needed: making sure there's nothing big I'm missing. 

[rising_star]

When you say "coming from David Harvey", you mean from what he wrote in the second half of Social Justice and the City and after? Because the first half of that book is very different than the second half. If you like Lefebvre, then you should probably also check out Andy Merrifield's work, which includes a book on Lefebvre. All of the books suggested here (intro to geographic thought at the graduate level) are good, as is the Human Geography reader which was first published a few years ago. For intersections with literary theory, check out the new journal Literary Geographies. 

[Horb]

Hi! I took and passed my German translation exam for my uni (2 hour exam, about 1 page of single spaced text, with a dictionary). I had a major in German and failed my first translation exam. I soon realized that being able to read fluently doesn't mean you can translate easily. As a result, I had to actually work on not panicking during the test (I'm a bad test-taker) and strategies for translation. My uni gives you a passage related to your general field (like a critical passage on literature. I got shakespeare and fitzgerald). 

Hopes this helps! Feel free to PM me with questions.

[haltheincandescent]

Hi! I took and passed my German translation exam for my uni (2 hour exam, about 1 page of single spaced text, with a dictionary). I had a major in German and failed my first translation exam. I soon realized that being able to read fluently doesn't mean you can translate easily. As a result, I had to actually work on not panicking during the test (I'm a bad test-taker) and strategies for translation. My uni gives you a passage related to your general field (like a critical passage on literature. I got shakespeare and fitzgerald). 

Hopes this helps! Feel free to PM me with questions.

This is very helpful, thanks! I think this kind of supports my current path - trying to go about working on reading in a very 'practically' minded way, pretty much going straight to the big names in German lit (Kafka, Mann, Goethe, etc., etc.) as well as criticism in German, after a limited time spent on basic grammar, and then just practicing translating pieces of it. Trying to teach myself to translate rather than read, maybe. I guess we'll see how this pans out in a year or so! - but until then, having a sense that it might be around 1 page will definitely help with strategizing a plan of study. Thanks again!

[Horb]

I cannot stress how unnecessary (for these tests) reading German literature is. They won't give you (in my experience) a passage from Faust to translate. They'll give you a news article or in my case, a blog post about shakespeare. The most helpful thing I did was just studying grammar and making sure to mark all the verbs and note their tenses. It made translating so much quicker than if I had just went line by line without marking passive voice, for example. But as you have tons of time to prepare, why not do some fun reading?