Contents

Autumn Term courses

Language and Linguistics

Students are introduced to the study of formal linguistics; the aim is to familiarize you with the main sub-branches of the discipline. The following areas are covered: sounds and sound patterns (phonetics and phonology); word, sentence and discourse structure (morphology, syntax, discourse); and linguistic meaning (semantics and pragmatics). Emphasis is placed on using the theories, methods and techniques from each of these sub-disciplines to examine real language data. Students carry out practical analysis of spoken and written texts.

Language in Culture and Society

Focuses on theories and methods for the analysis of language and social context. Many language issues are of social, educational and political importance. The course aims to offer you the theoretical background to approach these issues reflectively. It draws in particular on the contribution made by the anthropological tradition in the USA and Britain, including the ethnography of communication, and the issue of linguistic relativity -the question whether different language structures give rise to different cognitive experience in their speakers. The course also introduces some key ideas in the sociology and social psychology of linguistic variation, including the relation between linguistic categories and social ones such as class and gender. Other topics are: politeness phenomena, language and disadvantage, multilingualism and ethnicity, language planning, and the social psychology of attitudes to language varieties and to speakers.

Spring Term courses

Language in Human Psychology

Covers the basic areas of psycholinguistics -language processing (the processes that take place in the human mind/brain when people produce and understand language), and language acquisition (first and second, by children and adults). Students will be introduced to the controversies that rage in the field -such as whether or not humans are born with a genetic blueprint for language, whether or not language processing is fundamentally different from other cognitive processes, and whether or not human cognitive functioning depends on language. Other topics may include bilingualism, neurolinguistics and aphasiology. Students may also take the opportunity to obtain some first-hand experience in psycholinguistic research by designing and carrying out a psycholinguistic study of their own.

Discourse and Communication Analysis

Focuses on the study of discourse analysis of spoken or written text in the widest sense. It aims to provide you with insight into methodological and ethical aspects of data collection, enabling you to adopt a critical view of your own activities in this field. You are introduced to observation and elicitation techniques as employed in dialectology and other branches of social linguistics. A basic understanding of discourse transcription conventions is aimed at. Students acquire knowledge of the formal aspects of textuality (cohesion), prosody, information structure, conversation structure, patterns of inference, and cognitive approaches to pragmatics.

The course equips students with techniques of text analysis generally applicable in all communicative situations. Students design and carry out projects involving conversation or discourse analysis of patterns according to the type of communicative event and other factors such as, for example, gender, age and number of participants.

Principles and Practice in English Language Teaching

This course focuses on the development of ELT from the traditional Grammar-Translation Method to the Communicative Approach, including PPP and its alternatives, as well as Content-based Teaching and Task-based Learning. Particular attention is given to the teaching of language skills, grammar and vocabulary, and testing and evaluation. Individual learning styles, as well as a cross-cultural view of learning styles, and recent research on Multiple Intelligences (M.I.) and developments in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), and how they affect an individual's learning performance, are investigated. The course is assessed by a take-away paper.

Dissertation

You prepare a dissertation (20,000 words) during the summer term and summer vacation, for submission at the beginning of September. A dissertation is a substantial piece of work on a single topic that gives evidence of independent and original thought. The topic of each is negotiated between the student, the course director and the dissertation supervisor. MA dissertations typically report a research project, involving data collection, questionnaires or interviews; a dissertation may also be a piece of critical or theoretical work. The important thing is that it should contain some element of originality. A pass mark in the dissertation is required in order to pass the MA.

Assessment

There are five assessment elements: one for each of the four courses, plus the dissertation. There are no unseen examinations. Language and Linguistics is assessed by a take-away paper which consists of a set of exercises which students are expected to work on individually, to show that they have understood the concepts and can apply them to examples. Principles and Practice in English Language Teaching is assessed by a take-away paper involving a choice of short essay topics. Each of the other taught courses is assessed by a 5,000-word term paper, the topic of which is agreed individually between the student and the course tutor. This allows you to develop expertise in areas of your particular interest; the approach in your term-paper may be critical, theoretical, or data-oriented, and may involve forms of survey or data collection. The topic-based term paper tests skills of collecting and assimilating sources, organization (including time management) and academic writing to a word limit.