There are two groups.
Group 1 meets Tuesdays from 16:15 to 17:45
Group 2 meets Wednesdays from 16:15 to 17:45
Meetings will take place as MS Teams videoconferences. Students can attend whichever meeting they want, either Tuesday or Wednesday, but please let me know in advance if you are switching groups just for one week. Based on the experience of last semester, we may perhaps decide to shorten the meetings to just 45 minutes, from 16:15 to 17:00. Weekly meetings will start in the first week of lectures (13, 14 April); however, most of the work for the first few weeks is available online and can be worked through in your own time and at your own pace, so do not panic if you miss the first week's meeting.
A major restructuring of this course is long overdue, but on the assumption that major restructurings typically end up being minor ones, the following may serve as a non-binding guide to what we will be doing.
The course will be structured in a number of blocks:
The first block will involve exchanging contact details and making decisions about communication channels and frequency of virtual contact, as well as providing a general overview of free online resources available for doing phonetics.
The second block will involve you sending me a voice message in which you read aloud two paragraphs of English prose. You can then tell me what aspects of your pronunciation you think you need to work on, and I can tell you whether I agree with you or whether there are other things I think you should work on. I will then point you to the resources you will need to practice with. (I would like to do this block in the form of brief one-on-one MS Teams meetings, if time permits. We could discuss the arrangements for this at the first meeting.)
The third block will involve becoming more familiar with the basic concepts and terminology of Systemic Functional Linguistics and of phonetics and phonology; there will be reading material as well as slide shows. This block will also involve weekly exercise sheets and listening exercises.
The fourth block will consist of practice in describing and producing the individual consonant and vowel sounds of English and putting them together to form syllables.
The fifth block will involve becoming more aware of what happens when syllables are strung together to form larger rhythmic units.
The sixth block will consist of practice in English intonation, based on material by M.A.K. Halliday.
The seventh block will involve assessment. In a 20-minute online oral exam, students will demonstrate that they can read IPA transcriptions, and will read aloud the same passage as at the beginning of the course, as well as discussing a topic of their own choosing.
All materials will be made available via:
- DozentIn: Robert Spence
My "Written Expression (Intermediate)" course for the English Department is completely identical to my course "ERASMUS -- Written Expression", which is offered in the Department of Language Science and Technology.
Meetings for these courses will take place at the following times:
Tuesdays 14:15-15:45 (Anglistik, Group 2)
OR
Wednesdays 14:15-15:45 (Anglistik, Group 3)
OR
Thursdays 14:15-15:45 (LangSciTech, ERASMUS group).
Students can join any group they wish, and can attend on different days in different weeks, provided they let me know in advance (so that I have the right writing tasks corrected for the right people on the right day). Note: Erasmus students taking the course normally need an additional ECTS point; they can obtain this by handing in more work. We will discuss the details of this early on in the semester.
Meetings will take place as MS Teams videoconferences. Based on the experience of last semester, we may perhaps decide to shorten some of the meetings to just 45 minutes, from 14:15 to 15:00, depending on how much material there is to get through. Weekly meetings will start in the first week of lectures (13, 14, 15 April), but over the first few weeks much of the material can be worked through in your own time and at your own pace, so do not panic if you miss the first online meeting.
The course will be structured in a number of blocks:
The first block will involve exchanging contact details and making decisions about communication channels and frequency of virtual contact.
The second block will involve becoming more familiar with the basic concepts of Systemic Functional Linguistics and the approach known as “genre-based literacy pedagogy”; there will be reading material as well as slide shows. This block will also involve weekly exercise sheets — some of these will be questions on the reading material, others will involve analysing certain aspects of four short texts.
The third block will consist of four major tasks, such as writing (or rewriting or editing) texts belonging to four different genres. We will explore the conventions of each genre and look at the regions of English vocabulary and grammar that the genre in question tends to foreground.
The fourth block will consist of general feedback. We will discuss grades, as well as arrangements for sending your results to the examinations office.
All materials will be made available via:
http://www.spence.saar.de/courses/writtenexpression
- DozentIn: Robert Spence