Foreign Language exams Graduate students in mathematics can take exams in French and German with me. For Russian you need to contact Professor Nikolaev, inik@math.uiuc.edu.
The exam tests whether you are able to understand a piece of mathematics in the foreign language that you might need to understand for your research. For further information see the official rules.
The format of the exams is as follows: I will give you a page or two of mathematics in the foreign language for you to read for about 15 minutes with the help of a dictionary; you can make notes if you wish. Then you translate verbally the text to me. I will try to find a text on a subject of interest to you.
I would suggest that you try before taking the exam to read some standard text books in an area you are interested in. Good examples are papers by J-P. Serre or N. Bourbaki in French, or survey article in the journal of the Deutsche Mathematiker Verein in German. Suggestions for good texts are welcome!
Maarten Bergvelt Department of mathematics University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana-Champaign, IL 61801 Office:Illini Hall 333 tel: 217-333-6326, email:bergv@math.uiuc.edu
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