31495 - English Language - LM

Learning outcomes

Upon termination of the course the student will have a good active and passive knowledge of English. In particular, s/he will be able to: participate actively in a lesson/seminar in English; understand and comment media and academic texts; understand specialist political and media texts and discuss them in an academic context; prepare and present an oral report of a brief research project on a topic relating to the specific course of study.

Course contents

The course aims to give the student an approach to research on political texts (e.g., speeches, party manifestos, political interviews) and/or media texts (e.g., online newspapers or television sites). The methodology entails the use of a specific software for the quantitative analysis of linguistic and discursive aspects of texts, on the basis of which the student will carry out a qualitative analysis in order to highlight political and cultural meanings.
In the first phase of the course students will become familiar with the software to analyse and compare different kinds of corpora stored in electronic files. In the second phase the students will carry out research on other corpora (available on internet or collected by the students) pertinent to areas of interest or study. All research will be framed in a comparative perspective (speeches of Obama v. those of McCain; English-language newspapers or television sites in Europe v. those in the Middle East, etc.).

Readings/Bibliography

For attending students:  Materials will be distributed in class.

For non-attending students: A bibliography of case studies utilizing the methodologies presented in class will be provided.

Teaching methods

The method is interactive. In the first part of the lesson the topics and analytical instruments are introduced. In the second part, the students analyse materials presented in small groups and present their findings to the class.

Assessment methods

For attenders: The final mark will be based on the powerpoint presentation of a research carried out by the student on one or more corpora. In addition to the results of the analysis, the presentation should illustrate the procedures followed and conclusions reached. For the strictly linguistic part, there will be a brief cloze test. The final mark will also take into consideration the student's active participation in class and short presentations during the course (if relevant).

For non-attenders: The exam consists in

1- a cloze test (written) for the verification of overall language competence (30 minutes), and

2- an oral part, the modality of which the student may choose between the following options:

Option A: a powerpoint presentation of a research involving the analysis of a corpus of documents chosen by the students. The analysis will focus on linguistic and discursive aspects of the documents. There will be three obligatory meetings with the professor during the preparation of the project.

Option B: an oral exam on the case studies given in the bibliography.

 

Teaching tools

Video projector; Powerpoint presentations; linguistic and IT laboratories

Office hours

See the website of Louann Haarman