Frequently Asked Questions

If your Abitur certificate cannot provide proof of your knowledge in a required foreign language, the following regulations apply:

• For learning one or more classical languages, you get up to 2 additional semesters per language.
• For learning one or more modern languages, you get up to a total of 2 additional semesters.
• The Registrar's Office (Prüfungsamt) is responsible for recognising any extension of your regular number of semesters or of any other deadlines.

The following faculty members are able to perform official recognitions of prior credits, e.g. for classes taken in other departments or at other universities:

• American Studies, Literary and Cultural Studies: Dr. Carsten Schinko
• English Studies, Literary and Cultural Studies: Dr. Ellen Dengel-Janic
• Linguistics: Prof. Dr. Sam Featherston
• Academic English: Stu Watts
• Teaching English as a Foreign Language: Dr. Lilian Chaitas & Dr. Stefan Hofstetter

Since semester start and end dates as well as holidays vary, the deadlines to apply for classes and exams and to renew your university enrollment may be different each semester. You can always find up-to-date information on semester dates.

Application deadlines for class signup and exam signup are published on our department homepage as well as our Facebook page and Instagram page.

On Alma you can see the exact dates and times for each course. Times indicated as "c.t." are cum tempore, i.e. 12 c.t. means the class will start at 12:15 p.m. The expression "s.t." stands for sine tempore, i.e. 12 s.t. would be 12:00 noon sharp.

Prior to each semester, all students must apply online for placement in their desired classes. Students are highly encouraged to use all of their four priorities when applying.

Application periods may vary for first-semester students as well as for lectures and any other type of class. The application period is indicated on the details page of every class listing in the Alma system, so be sure to take note of the deadline for each of your desired classes.

 Important: Registering for a course does not mean signing up for an exam. Registration for exams takes place separately during the semester. 

last updated: 10.07.2024

Please make sure the following conditions are met:

• Both registration phase and place allocation for the course have expired (see Dates & Deadlines or “Zeiträume/Periods” under the course’s “Basic Data/Grunddaten” on ALMA).
• You have not received the status “zugelassen” in any of your required courses.
• The course you want to register for has places left (check the number on ALMA: "Termine"//"Events" tab, maximum capacity and students admitted are listed per parallel group, login required)
  • First semester courses (namely Academic Writing I and S: Introduction to Literary Studies) are partially exempt from this requirement. Their listed participant numbers can be exceeded if all courses are at maximum capacity.

If all these conditions are met, you can check on ALMA whether you need to contact the Main Office OR the course’s lecturer directly (see “Inhalte”//"Contents", scroll down to "Belegungsinformationen"//"Enrollment information”). Before you get in touch, please familiarize yourself with the following:

General Information and Guidelines

• Please use your student email address and always(!) provide your matriculation number.
• Do not delay sending your request. If you are not “zugelassen”/”admitted” to a course, you are not in the course. Neither “hohe Priorität”/”high priority” nor “niedrige Priorität”/”low priority” indicate waiting list rankings. Treat them as rejections.
• Manual admissions are always module agnostic. You must ensure that the course is credited towards the correct module when you register for the exam later in the semester!
• Usually, we receive a high number of requests for late admissions. It will take some time to process each, and you are unlikely to receive individual replies. Therefore, please check your status on ALMA from time to time.
• Try to limit yourself to one e-mail. Unless you must correct or add to your first, please do not send any additional e-mails, as it slows down the process further.
  • Exception: if your status hasn’t changed and you haven’t been contacted for an extended period of time (e.g. 2 weeks) get in touch again.

Late Admissions: Lecturer

Simply get in contact with the course’s lecturer via e-mail and make sure to include all pertinent information:

• Course details
  • Title
  • Time
  • Parallel group (if there is more than one)
• Your matriculation number/student ID (without this, admission is impossible!)

Missing information may make it impossible to process your request.
You can find our lecturers’ contact information under Faculty & Staff. If someone is missing, please contact the Main Office. They might not be able to provide an e-mail address but can usually forward the request.

Late Admissions: Main Office

Simply get in contact with the department’s Main Office via e-mail and make sure to include all pertinent information:

• Course details
  • Title
  • Time
  • Parallel group (if there is more than one)
• Lecturer
• Your matriculation number/student ID (without this, admission is impossible!)
• 2-3 alternatives in case the course has filled up in the meantime

Missing information may make it impossible to process your request.
Please note, the Main Office can only:

• admit students if a course is tagged "Late Admissions: Main Office". Otherwise, students must provide prove that the lecturer has given them permission to attend (e.g. forwarded e-mail).
• admit students up to the maximum course capacity listed on ALMA.
• admit students until classes begin (see Dates & Deadlines). Requests must be submitted until 12 p.m. on the Friday before (see course entry on ALMA for deviations).

Tutorials usually take place in the context of a larger lecture, for example the Introduction to Literary Studies or the Introduction to Cultural Studies. During the tutorial, you will meet with a smaller group of students and a tutor—who is usually a more experienced student—once a week in order to talk about what you learned in the lecture.
In some tutorials, the tutor will also instruct you on general skills that you need in order to study successfully, such as writing, giving presentations, or using the library. Please read the description of the class listing on Alma carefully to see whether you have to sign up for a tutorial ahead of the upcoming semester's lectures. In some cases instructors for the lecture or accompanying seminars will pass around tutorial sign-up sheets during the first class session instead.

The first upper floor of the Brechtbau building houses the Fachbereichsbibliothek branch of the university library. Here you will find literature pertinent to your term paper research for classes taken in the English Department. While the collections of the Brechtbau Fachbereichsbibliothek are generally non-circulating, certain exceptions can be made. For more information on this and any other rules as well as the library’s opening hours, please see their web page at www.bbb.uni-tuebingen.de (in German only).

To find further literature please visit the main library (Universitätsbibliothek) building at Wilhelmstraße 32.

You will need to sign up for all exams (Prüfungsleistungen) for your courses on Alma during the exam registration period. Not registering means that you cannot take the exam! See the website of the exam office ("Prüfungsamt") for a detailed guide.

You can find your exam results in the Alma system. Please allow some time for your exam to be graded and the grade to be entered. All students able to sign up for their exams online can view and print their exam results via "My Studies | My achievements." If the credits for your exam do not appear in your transcript (Notenspiegel) after two or three months, please contact your instructor directly.

Plagiarism—that is, copying from other writers without acknowledging your source—is one of the worst crimes in academia. Please make sure that you sign and attach a copy of the department's plagiarism declaration with each of your written papers. You can download the document here.

1. Personally
   If no instructions are given in the class syllabus or during a session (which they usually are), please contact the instructor for information on where to hand in your paper. Instructors associated with the American Studies department usually have a mailbox in room 553, while most other faculty members have a mailbox in room 362.
    
2. Via postal mail
   If you are unable to submit your paper in person, you can mail it to the following address instead:
   
   Englisches Seminar
   Philosophische Fakultät
   z.H. [recipient’s name]
   Wilhelmstr. 50 (Brechtbau)
   72074 Tübingen
   Germany

The examination regulations contain the general parameters with regard to your program of studies and are legally binding. In the regulations, you can find important information such as the number of semesters needed to complete the program, the proceedings, types, and dates of exams, terms and times for exam registrations, how many times you can repeat exams, how the final grade is calculated, and much more.

The module handbook contains important information about each module that you have to take during the course of your studies: learning methods and objectives, course formats, prerequisites, exam types and ECTS credits. The timeline in the module handbook is a suggestion; as long as you pay attention to the prerequisites for certain modules (as an example: you need to finish certain basic modules before you can start certain advanced modules) you have some flexibility in planning your course program.  

In addition, the module handbook contains more general information on the program itself, e.g. the structure and content, the orientation and intermediate examinations, the bachelor thesis, the professional skills, and the composition of your final degree grade.

Please consult the website of the Prüfungsamt for all current and archived module handbooks.

Generally speaking, this depends on the semester in which you commenced your studies. The examination regulations and module handbooks of the English Department were updated between 2015 and 2016. These new regulations apply to all students who commenced their studies in or after the winter semester of 2016/17. Lehramt students are an exception; those who commenced their studies in or after the 2015/16 (!) winter semester study according to the new regulations of the Bachelor of Education.

If you began your studies prior to the semesters indicated above, the earlier version still applies to you. On the website of the Registrar's Office (Prüfungsamt) you can download current and archived versions of all exam regulations and module handbooks.

The Registrar's Office for the Faculty of Humanities (Prüfungsamt der Philosophischen Fakultät) is located at Keplerstraße 2. Please visit their website to find the person associated with your degree program and see his or her office hours.

It is important for students to gain knowledge in multiple areas of linguistics, not just one, because the various fields can be quite different from each other.  There is therefore a rule that the Proseminar in the Advanced Module has to be in a different area of linguistics to the Proseminar in the Basic Module.  The areas are, roughly, Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics, Phonetics and Pholonogy, Historical Linguistics, Language Acquisition, Morphology, Psycholinguistics/Language Processing.
It is sometimes said that you need to switch to a different Lehrstuhl, and that is a simple guide, but it isn't strictly necessary.  It is the topic of the Proseminar which is the relevant factor.

There are no restrictions on which Übungen/Lectures you can do for the 3-point component of the Linguistics modules.  There is also no such restriction on what linguistics Hauptseminar you can do for the Focus Module.

If you study in the B.A. English and American Studies (Anglistik/Amerikanistik) major or B.A. Interdisciplinary American Studies, you are encouraged to do an internship for Professional Skills. In the M.A. American Studies, M.A. English and American Studies, or M.A. English Linguistics, you are supposed to do an internship (or teach a tutorial) in the module Professional Experience. For details, see your respective Module Handbook.

To obtain credit, you have to hand in an official letter from your employer (detailing the duration and the weekly hours of your internship) and an internship report with your major’s student advisor. (If you study in the B.A. minor English & American Studies, please consult the student advisor of your major subject. The requirements may be different from those described here.) The internship report should be about 1.500 words long and has to be in English. It should be structured into paragraphs, and you may write the report in the first-person. A separate title page and a table of contents are not necessary.

Please provide basic data like your name, your student ID number (Matrikelnummer), your internship provider, and the duration of your internship. Please describe:

• your tasks and responsibilities as well as their scope.
• what skills were needed for that.
• what your own expectations and goals were for the internship.
• what you have learned from the experience.

The internship report is an excellent opportunity for you to reflect upon how the internship has given you opportunities, clarity, or challenges that you may benefit from later. If relevant, you may draw connections to your studies.
 

Once you’re approaching the end of your studies, you need to start thinking about a topic for your Bachelor thesis. The topic can be based on one of the courses you’ve taken (although it shouldn’t be the same as your term papers), but this is not necessary. Once you have done some preliminary research, you can send an outline to one of the professors in the department to discuss your plans. Staff members with a PhD (Assistant/Associate/Adjunct Professors) can also act as supervisors, but please note that their capacities are limited to just a few theses per semester.

You can find a list of qualified supervisors on out Thesis Supervision page.

The length of your thesis, the number of weeks you have to write it, and the ways of registering your thesis depend on your study program. Please check your module handbook and the website of the Prüfungsamt for the details. 
 

You can find a list of qualified supervisors and their respective fields of expertise on our Thesis Supervision page.