Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft

Is an internship required?

Bachelor students of the International Studies in Computational Linguistics (ISCL) at the Department of Linguistics (SfS) are required to take part in a software internship as part of their course program. This offers the possibility of aquiring insight into a company and gaining practical experience. 

When

The internship is usually taken either during the (long summer) semester break between the fourth and fifth semester or on one or two days a week during the fifth semester. This depends especially on the company and their requirements. If a student wants to do his/her internship in another country or another place far from Tübingen, then it makes sense to do an internship contiguously. 

Another possibility is to take the only seminar scheduled for the fifth semester already in the fourth semester. This offers more time for an internship during the fifth semester. But this option is only recommended to students who are confident that they will make the additional seminar workload in the fourth semester. 

Students should apply for an internship early enough! At least half a year before they plan to do the internship. 

Duration

The internship should span at least 190 hours of programming. It might be even longer if there are other tasks than programming involved. This could be a couple of consecutive weeks, such as six weeks in a row, or a few days a week during the entire semester. 

Constraints

The internship should span at least 190 hours of programming. The programming could be in Java or another programming language the student already knows or is interested in learning. There is no prescribed set of programming languages, but HTML, e.g., is not sufficient. 

Ideally, the company is working in the field of computational linguistics or at least the internship task is in this field. But also tasks that have nothing to do with computational linguistics are valid. 

Where

Generally, the software internship can be taken at any company of the student's choice (also in a foreign country), as long as it has been approved beforehand. Ideally, the company is working in the field of computational linguistics, but also companies (and tasks) that have nothing to do with computational linguistics are accepted. 

The Fachschaft maintains a list of companies that frequently offer internships for computational linguists.

You can also find internship offers in the "Praxisportal" of the Faculty of Humanities. 

Report and Presentation

Interns are required to submit a full report describing their work and present their topic afterwards. The report needs to be submitted to the internship advisor (see below). It should be written in English and should not exceed 10 pages. The presentation will typically be 15 minutes plus 5 minutes for questions. Both report and presentation required in order to have the internship for the ISCL BA course program recognized.

The following list of example internship reports gives an impression of what such a report could look like:

 

Internship Advisor

If you have further questions concerning the internship that are not yet answered or to submit your internship report, please contact the internship advisor: Çagri Çöltekin