Faculty of Oriental Studies



Faculty of Oriental Studies

Setting conventions for the MPhil Final Examination in Oriental Studies, 2017

MODERN SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES

The formal procedures determining the conduct of examinations are established and enforced by the University Proctors. These conventions are a guide to the examiners and candidates but the regulations set out in the Examination Regulations have precedence. The examiners are nominated by the Nominating Committee in the Faculty and those nominations are submitted for approval by the Vice-Chancellor and the Proctors.

1. The Examination Schools website () gives information on the provisional start date of the examination. The date, time and location of individual papers will be published not less than 5 weeks before the start of the first examination. For the order of papers in the examination itself, please refer to the Examination timetable. Academic dress must be worn for all parts of the examination including the viva if applicable.

In order to maintain the anonymity of the examination, candidates are instructed to write their candidate number, not their names or Bodleian card number, on their scripts and submitted works. Candidate numbers can be obtained from the Student Self-Service.

2. All submitted works should be typed or word- processed in double spacing and should conform to the standards of academic presentation prescribed in the "Guidelines for writers of Theses". All submitted works (thesis, take-home essays etc.) have to be securely held together (not paper clips) with a cover sheet stating the degree, paper title, term and year of submission, your candidate number and word count. Theses have to be securely bound. Two copies of the works must be submitted to the Examination Schools unless otherwise stated. A declaration form, in a sealed envelope, should be included with the two copies of the submitted works in a larger envelope.  The larger envelope should have your candidate number at the front and addressed to Chair of Examiners, (name of degree), Examination Schools, High Street.  The Chairman of Examinations in Oriental Studies would like to advise candidates to obtain a signed receipt from the Clerk of Exam Schools for their submitted work (e.g. if you are submitting a thesis or take-home essays). Remember to write your candidate number and not your name on all submitted work.

3. As well as two hard copies of the thesis, candidates must also submit a copy of their thesis on a CD or memory stick in PDF format.

4. When submission of written work is required, the penalty posed in case of late submission without the prior permission of the Proctors will range from outright failure of the submitted work (i.e. where it is considered that the extra time has given unfair advantage to the candidate and thus may be equated with cheating) to a percentage reduction in the mark awarded, as deemed appropriate by the examiners. Please refer to the Examination Convention.

5. Candidates should note that if they have any complaints or queries concerning the examination process, including results, these should be directed in the first instance to their colleges and not to the examiners or any member of the teaching staff.

6. Candidates may be examined by viva voce (oral examination) and so candidates should be prepared to travel to Oxford up until the final examiners’ meeting (7 July 2017).

All candidates for the Final Examination must offer:

• one Core Language paper

• three papers from the Optional Courses listed below.

• one thesis of not more than 20,000 words

The use of a dictionary is not permitted in any of the examinations.

Each of these five elements of the Final Examination is equally weighted, so each paper is worth 20% of the final mark. The pass mark for the paper is 50%. Candidates must pass all five elements in order to pass the examination as a whole.

1. CORE LANGUAGE PAPERS

Hindi:

This three-hour paper consists of three parts, all of which must be attempted.

Part 1: Seen translation from Hindi. Candidates will be required to translate two seen passages of Hindi into English (25% each).

Part 2: Unseen translation from Hindi. (25%). Candidates will be required to translate an unseen passage of Hindi into English.

Part 3: Composition in Hindi (25%). Candidates will be required to write an essay in Hindi commenting on a text or comparing a pair of texts. The essay should be 400-500 words.

The use of a dictionary is not permitted.

Literary Hindi and Urdu:

This three-hour paper consists of four parts, all of which must be attempted.

Part 1: Translation from Hindi (25%). Candidates will be required to translate a seen passage of Hindi into English.

Part 2: Translation from Urdu (25%). Candidates will be required to translate a seen passage of Urdu into English.

Part 3: Composition in Urdu (20%). Candidates will be required to prepare an Urdu resumé of an unseen Hindi text in 200-250 words.

Part 4: Composition in Hindi (30%). Candidates will be required to write an essay in Hindi commenting on a text or comparing a pair of texts. The essay should be 300-400 words.

The use of a dictionary is not permitted.

Persian:

This will be a three-hour paper. Four questions will be set.

Q1. Reading comprehension. Candidates will be required to demonstrate their understanding of a passage of Persian by answering questions on it in English (20% of the marks).

Q2. Two passages will be set for translation from English into Persian (30% of the marks).

Q3.Three titles will be set for an essay in Persian (250 words). Candidates should select one title (20% of the marks).

Q4. Candidates should answer section B. Two passages will be set for translation from Persian into English (30% marks).

2. OPTIONAL COURSES

i) Early Hindi Texts

This paper consists of four passages for translation from Hindi into English. Three of these will be selected from the Hindi texts taught during the course. The fourth will be a passage of unseen Hindi. Two of the passages will be accompanied by questions on the grammar and on the literary context. Each of the four passages will account for 25% of the final mark.

(ii) Brajbhasha and Old Hindi Texts

This paper consists of four passages for translation from Hindi into English. Three of these will be selected from the Hindi texts taught during the course.  The fourth will be a passage of unseen Hindi. Two of the passages will be accompanied by questions on the grammar and on the literary context. Each of the four passages will account for 25% of the final mark.

(iii) Modern Hindi Texts

This three-hour paper consists of four parts, three text passages and a Hindi composition. Each of the passages will contain no more than 20 lines in Hindi. One of these will be a seen Hindi text to be translated into English (20%). The second will be an unseen passage, and a Hindi synopsis of it in 100 to 150 words is to be prepared (25%). The third one will be a passage of unseen Hindi to be translated into English (25%). The composition should be an essay in Hindi commenting on the text and author. It should be between 400 and 500 words (30%). 

(iv) Urdu Literary Texts

The assessment will be based on a three hour written examination at the end of Trinity Term.  The paper will consist of four passages for translation from Urdu into English. Three of these will be selected from the texts taught during the course.  The fourth will be a passage of unseen Urdu for translation into English. One of the three seen passages will be accompanied by a question on the grammar and the literary context to be answered in Urdu. Your answer should be 300-400 words in length. 

The translation of the four passages will each account for 20% of marks. The answer on the grammar and literary context will account for 20% of marks.

(v) The Social Anthropology of a Selected Region: South Asia (From MPhil in Social Anthropology, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology)

The assessment will be based on a three hour written examination at the end of Trinity term. Students must answer three questions out of about 9 questions set for the paper. For marking purposes, all answers are equally weighted (33.3% per answer).

(vi) Societies and Economies in India, c. 1600-1800

The assessment will be based on a three hour written examination at the end of Trinity term. Students must answer three questions out of about 10 questions set for the paper. For marking purposes, all answers are equally weighted (33.3% per answer)

(vii) Material and Visual Culture of South Asia.

The assessment will be based on a three hour written examination at the end of Trinity term. Students must answer three questions out of about 10 questions set for the paper. For marking purposes, all answers are equally weighted (33.3% per answer)

(viii) Islamic History in South Asia.

The assessment will be based on a three hour written examination at the end of Trinity term. Students must answer three questions out of about 10 questions set for the paper. For marking purposes, all answers are equally weighted (33.3% per answer)

(ix) The History and Politics of South Asia (from MPhil in Development Studies, Department of International Development)

The assessment will be based on a three hour written examination at the end of Trinity term. Students must answer three questions out of about 10 questions set for the paper. For marking purposes, all answers are equally weighted (33.3% per answer).

(x) Gender and Society in India, c. 1800 to the present

The assessment will be based on a three hour written examination at the end of Trinity term. Students must answer three questions out of about 10 questions set for the paper. For marking purposes, all answers are equally weighted (33.3% per answer).

(xi) Approaches to the History of Hinduism in India

The assessment will be based on a three hour written examination at the end of Trinity term. Students must answer three questions out of about 10 questions set for the paper. For marking purposes, all answers are equally weighted (33.3% per answer).

3. THESES

The thesis should be not more than 20,000 words, including footnotes but excluding bibliography, on a topic selected by the candidate in consultation with his or her supervisor, and approved by the Faculty Board at its second meeting in the Michaelmas Term preceding the term in which the candidate proposed to take the final examination. Supervision will not normally be given beyond the eighth week of the Hilary Term preceding the Final Examinations.

Referencing and presentation of theses

Two typewritten copies of the thesis must be delivered to the Examination School not later than noon on Friday of the second week of the Trinity Full Term in which the examination is to be taken. The pages of each copy must be securely tied together. For submission instructions, please refer to paragraphs 3-5 above.

The thesis must be clearly typed, with double spacing in the main text, and footnotes and bibliography single spaced. Footnotes should be consecutively numbered, and presented either at the foot of the page, or at the end of the main body of the thesis. Candidates may follow the standard humanities mode of referencing works, with full bibliographic information given with the first reference, and author and short title thereafter; or the Harvard system of citation may be used. A full bibliography of primary and secondary materials consulted should be given at the end of the thesis.

In listing primary materials, candidates should include the name of the archives, location, including the town and, if necessary, the country and the major series used. In case of materials in a private collection, the name and location of the collection should be mentioned.

Diacritical marks may be used in articles on pre-modern history. Italicised words can have diacritics as required. For Arabo-Persian vocabulary, please follow F. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary. For Dravidian languages, the Madras University Tamil Lexicon, or some standard equivalent, may be used. For other languages, the system used should be clearly specified early in the paper. Where diacritical marks are not used, the word should be spelt phonetically, e.g., bhut and not bhoot (unless in a quotation, where the original spelling should be used).  

Chair of Examiners: Professor Jan Joosten

Examiners: Professor Polly O’Hanlon; Professor Imre Bangha; Professor Francesca Orsini (SOAS); Dr David Washbrook (Cambridge)

Candidates must not under any circumstances contact examiners directly

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download