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Anonymous Posted 15 years ago
Letter Writing

PhD Cover letter

Dear all, could you please review my PhD cover letter

Thank you!

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to apply for the PhD in Linguistics and Literary Studies within XXX.

I graduated in Languages and translation (Spanish, English and Russian) in 2010 from XXXX. During my degree I became very interested in theory and practice of literary translation and textual analysis. From 2010 I have been working in XXXX giving lectures and organizing seminars on the topic of translation, hermeneutics and foreign literature (English and Spanish). The predominant subject of the material covered on lectures is narrative aspect of literary texts.

I also published several works devoted to the problem of national discourse in Irish literature. Mainly my articles are devoted to the works by Thomas Moore and its reflection and influence onto Russian society as well as the problem of literary translation and the theory of equivalence.

Since 2006 I also focused my career on IT, web-development and web-site optimization. To complete my projects I often needed to read foreign books about web-development practices. This required sufficient knowledge of specific terminology which is not always clearly transmitted into my native language. Taking into consideration this fact I became concentrated on theoretical aspect of this question and devoted my master’s thesis to the problem of functions of web-development terms in the Russian, Swedish and Spanish languages in comparison with the English language (as the main source for such kind of terms).

In summer 2009 I participated in the conference devoted to Linguistics and literary studies organized by XXXX, Slovakia where I presented the report on the contribution of Irish realists to Russian literature.

The sphere of my academic interests is contact and cognitive linguistics, as well as textual analysis. I consider literature as an extremely rich ground for research in terms of hermeneutics and textual analysis. From this point of view Irish literature opens a number of opportunities for better understanding of country’s national spirit and views. The problem is also interested for me because there is no any unified opinion about the roles of authors in creation of national self-consciousness of Irish people.

The theory of equivalence in translation is also among my scientific interests. During my career as a translator I dealt with different kinds of texts from technical to literal which enriched my competence and stipulated my further work in this direction.

Abovementioned stimulates my interest in this topic, to which I intend to contribute and get involved as a researcher. Hence, I intend to develop a PhD related to textual analysis and interpretation.

Thank you very much for considering my application and I look forward to hearing from you.

With kind regards,

Vladislav.
  

Top answer

Hi, Are you also sending a CV? I would put this point at or near the start of your letter. I intend to develop a PhD related to textual analysis and interpretation.

  • Hi, Are you also sending a CV?
  • I would put this point at or near the start of your letter.
  • I intend to develop a PhD related to textual analysis and interpretation.
  • Clivec
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3 Answers
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Hi,

Are you also sending a CV?

I would put this point at or near the start of your letter.

I intend to develop a PhD related to textual analysis and interpretation.

Clivec
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Thank you, Clivec

Yes, I am sending a CV in a separate file.

Do you think this letter is not so detailed as it should be? Also, I would like to ask about the usage of articles in the letter, did I use them right?

Thank you so much for your help.
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Hi,

On the contrary, I think this letter is too detailed, in the sense that it seems to be repeating stuff that would be better left in your CV. That's why I asked if you were doing one.

My advice is this.

Consider focussing on the 3 main reasons that they should accept you.

And try to talk more about the future than the past.

Try it, and see how you li

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