Stony Brook University Faculty of Sciences and Humanities

Program Overview

The PAE oral/aural program is designed to help international Ph.D. students (for whom English is not their first language) and funded Masters' students raise their English proficiency to a level that enables them to be able to teach, function in the business world, and present in English. For those graduate students who do not show adequate proficiency in speaking as measured by the iBT TOEFL, IELTS, or TSE, three levels of OAE course work are offered at the graduate level: OAE 581 Intermediate Oral/Aural Skills, OAE 583 High Intermediate Oral/Aural Skills, and OAE 585 Advanced Oral/Aural Skills. Students are required to take the course that corresponds to their test scores and then advance through the course sequence.  (Undergraduates may elect a cross-listed OAE 190 or OAE 194)

English Language Requirements

All students who are not native or primary speakers of English must demonstrate proficiency in English to be admitted to the Graduate School.

Stony Brook University has established overall minimum English language competency requirements for admission to graduate study and additional, more stringent speaking competency requirements for PhD applicants as well as master’s students who serve as Teaching Assistants. Students may be conditionally admitted without meeting some admission requirements, but under no circumstances may students teach in a class or laboratory until they have met Stony Brook University’s speaking competency requirements.

A native speaker of English is someone who learned English as a child and uses English as his or her primary language at home. A primary speaker of English may speak a language other than English at home but has developed native fluency as a result of using English exclusively in most social and educational contexts.

All students must declare their native language as part of the admission process. Intentional misrepresentation by a student of his or her native language is academic dishonesty and is grounds for dismissal from the graduate school.

English Speaking Proficiency Requirements to Serve as a Teaching Assistant

Supervised college-level teaching is required for the award of any doctoral degree at Stony Brook, and occasionally master’s students serve as teaching assistants. Eligibility for any student serving as a Teaching Assistant is contingent upon the candidate’s ability to speak English proficiently.

All prospective Teaching Assistants who are not native or primary speakers of English must achieve a minimum score on the Speaking subsection of the Internet-based TOEFL or IELTS.

The TOEFL iBT is administered at centers throughout the world several times each year; applicants should forward their scores directly to SUNY Korea Graduate School.

Further information is available by contacting SUNY Korea Graduate Admissions Office at gradadmission@sunykorea.ac.kr.  

All applicants who fail to achieve the minimum score on one of these tests will not be allowed to serve as a Teaching Assistant. This includes all doctoral students and all master’s students who will be assigned as a Teaching Assistant.

Students who will have a teaching role at the University and whose speaking test scores do not meet our minimum standards for teaching will be assigned to an Oral Academic English (OAE) course. 

NOTE: OAE courses are remedial and cannot be counted toward degree requirements or degree completion from any program