Semesterarbeit

21:12 Sep 15, 2014 

...as Wiki already says:
"Note also, that the number of search string matches reported by search engines is only an estimate. For example, Google will only calculate the actual number of matches once the user navigates through all result pages, to the last one, and even then it places restrictions on the figure. At times, the 'match' count estimate can be significantly different (by one or more orders of magnitude) to the total count of results shown on the last results page.

A site-specific search may help determine if most of the matches are coming from the same web site; a single web site can account for hundreds of thousands of hits."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Search_engine_test#ci...

In addition, you need to put the entire term in quotation marks. That gets me a total of 185 hits globally, adding CV gets me 28, and none of them are related to the question.

Cambridge and other universities have some excellent resources on how to write an academic CV. None of the examples I've surveyed so far mention unpublished papers.

And if it's true that the essay will be scrapped, why include it in your CV. It's no use in science to own papers soon to go unnoticed.

20:41 Sep 15, 2014 

Strange: I get 293.000 hits for end of term assignment. And I don't see what the problem is with unveröffentlicht. If you look at the university page you will see that the Semesterarbeiten are archived for a certain length of time and then presumably scrapped. If it were a dissertation you would expect it to be published, but not otherwise.

20:32 Sep 15, 2014 

Considering that we're talking about a CV, I just googled "end-of-term assignment" - nothing came up ("termly assignment" didn't show up either). And how are you going to fit in the "unveröffentlicht"?


If I were the employer looking at a CV and saw something like that on it, I'd be thinking: So what? Had several assignment myself that didn't need mentioning. That's my main difficulty here.

Just to give you some other examples of how people call papers similar to it:

Senior seminar essay
http://jamesewilcox.myrpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/cv_...

Senior seminar paper
http://www.benjaminbennettcarpenter.com/cv

Research essay
http://www.unisa.ac.za/contents/about/principle/docs/Prof_pi...

Theses
http://cola.siu.edu/africanastudies/_common/documents/curric...

Research
http://www.readingpictures.com/CV.pdf

Most of them don't have anything on it like this. Why should they? Science is all about publications. What good is it to mention unpublished work? "Forthcoming" may sound nicer but I don't know whether that's true then.

Anyway, have a good night!

PS: Helen's suggestion of "long essay" seems to show up a few times.

19:59 Sep 15, 2014 

You may well be right.

The problem is: We don't have any mid- and end-term assignments. Aside from projects and exams, we only have Semesterarbeiten/Hausarbeiten, which you can actually start at any time during the semester. Ours are basically a combination of both: That's why they are double to triple as long as a normal essay (15-40 pages).

I guess finding a suitable translation is as complicated as differentiating between the terms available in the British educational system...

19:30 Sep 15, 2014 

Afraid I'm still in favour of end of term assignment or paper! Assignment seems to cover everything and I think end of term is an important part of the phrase, as term paper could equally well be mid-term.

19:16 Sep 15, 2014 

Splendid :)

How about "research essay" then? Avoids "paper" and makes it sound a bit more "sophisticated" in my view.

"assignment" for an "unpublished" paper would not work that well in my opinion.

19:05 Sep 15, 2014 

Just to add to the confusion:

An assignment which asks you to do some library research to write about a topic may be referred to as an essay, a paper, a research essay, a research paper, a term assignment, or a term paper. The terminology is not necessarily consistent: a term paper may tend to be a longer paper written in advanced courses, but not necessarily. You may be assigned a specific topic or asked to choose your own from subjects relevant to the course; the assignment will require you to read up on a specific topic, using either books or journal articles, and to integrate those sources to inform or persuade a reader.

http://www.studyhood.com/english/writing_university_essays.h...

17:32 Sep 15, 2014 

"Why, you ask, do professors have so many words just to assign you a paper? All these words exist so that your assignment can subtly tell you what the focus of your work should be. As a direct result of the Smarter Than You Act of 1932, colleges and universities are forbidden from giving their assignments in plain English. And so based on what the professor wants to read, he or she chooses from a list of words that are intended to tell you what to produce. All of these words, amazingly, mean 'paper.' But since not all papers are alike, each of these identifying words and phrases have subtle differences."

http://www.customwritten.com/Writing/essay-researchpaper-dif...

Here a link from Cambridge:
http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/students/mphil/work.html

Please also see these two British CVs:
http://www.csupomona.edu/~absimpson/cv.htm
https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/people/plynn.pdf

Didn't want to give you the third one: It was 58 pages long! Brigitte may be on to something here. The question is why they say "unveröffentlicht". Normally, Semesterarbeiten are not published anyway (they're for you to write and your professor to grade). Maybe "unpublished research paper/article" or similar?

17:15 Sep 15, 2014 

Doesn't that already help a bit:

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/thesaurus-category/britis...

Difference between essay and dissertation:
http://www.rlf.org.uk/fellowshipscheme/writing/undergraduate...
http://www.ukessays.com/dissertation/help/what-is-a-disserta...

The person that has done the paper (yes, I will admit I am under the influence of AmE) may have a better idea but as I know it from my studies, a Semesterarbeit cannot be that long.

However, in light of the fact that this is part of a CV, I am inclined to attach a bit more meaning to it than simply calling it an "essay".

11:31 Sep 15, 2014 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_paper
Times change - I wouldn't have dreamt of mentioning such a paper in my cv (not important enough to be of interest to any potential employer)