B005353 - ENGLISH LANGUAGE 1 (12 CFU)

English

Prof. Brownlees's course is "Text types and language varieties in a diachronic perspective. " Text types that will be examined linguistically and rhetorically, as they evolve over time, include news, advertising and diplomatic texts. In the ‘lettorato’ there are annual and single semester courses consisting of lectures and elective modules, designed to develop oral, written and analytical abilities within the framework of English for academic purposes.

For Prof. Brownlees, lessons refer to lecture notes and the book: Nicholas Brownlees, 2014 (2nd edition), The Language of Periodical News in Seventeenth-Century England. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. For the lettorato materials are prepared and/or written by the teachers specifically for each module.

Prof. Brownlees’s lessons aim to develop students’ understanding of the significance of the socio-historical context in the evolution of text types. In the lettorato all modules consolidate and extend academically oriented language skills at the C1 level of the CEFR. For details, see Programma esteso.

C1 level of CEFR

Lectures, group work, seminar discussions, blended learning, research projects, cooperative learning (depending upon module).
In the lettorato use is often made of the e-learning platform Moodle, (http://e-l.unifi.it/moodle19/course/view.php?id=3934) where students can find course information, external links, homework assignments, supplementary materials, exam administration etc. Teachers regularly reply to individual student requests via email.

For Prof. Brownlees’s lessons there is a spoken exam. For the lettorato there is predominantly continuous assessment, oral and written, research papers, written and oral examinations, with variations according to module.

Prof. Brownlees’s final programme will be given at the beginning of the course.
The broad lettorato programme is the following but the definitive version will be given at the beginning of the course:
Lectures:
For students studying English as their first langugae: 'Language Week' offers a series of three individual lectures: Characteristics and Varieties of North American English (John Gilbert), English for Professional Purposes Phil Lazzaro (Filomena Lazzaro) and Are you Listening? (Louise Williams) which aim to offer single lectures of special interest, with a view to broadening students' vision of diverse aspects of language, not available in the main lettorato programme.
Annual courses:
Literary Translation into English (John Gilbert) focusses on an investigation of contrastive grammatical analysis, lexical choice, dictionary usage, questions of style, and the concepts of equivalence and cultural untranslatability.
Translation into Italian (Christine Richardson) explores text manipulations and translation strategies, addressing linguistic problems, cultural constraints and changes in the text-reader relationship.
Learning Language for Language Teaching (LLLT) introduces students to the core concerns of the modern language teacher, interweaving teaching theory and practice through a framework of Experiential Learning and Loop Methodology.
Single semester courses:
Dramatic Adaptation (Elizabeth Sainsbury) requires individual research on a selection of texts, group discussion and analysis of the problems of an actual performance, re-writing and experimentation with different readings.
Topics in Grammar (Scott Staton) introduces the meaning-based and usage-based approach of Cognitive Grammar, by examining the theoretical framework and exploring a central area of conceptualization normally realized in the language in the word class of nouns. Required text: G. Radden & R. Dirven, Cognitive English Grammar (John Benjamins, 2007).