universit ä tbochum seminarinternes vorlesungsverzeichnis ba-st

Course book:
Mesthrie, Rajend et al. (2009). Introducing Sociolinguistics. 2 nd ed. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
050 617 Thiele
Second Language Acquisition, 4 CP
2 st. mo 16-18 GB 03/46
There are a number of popular opinions on how second or foreign languages are
learned and what is needed to become a successful speaker of another language.
Starting from these opinions, we will look at the research findings of recent decades
in the area of second language acquisition and review such popular views in the light
of this research. Topics we will cover include the role of previously learned
languages, non linguistic factors such as motivation, personality and learning styles.
We will also look at developmental stages in the language learning process and at
suggested explanations of how they come about.
Requirements for credit points: active participation, completion of all assignments,
plus a final test (3 CP) or seminar paper (4 CP). Reading material will be made
available
050 618 Strubel-Burgdorf
Exploring English Varieties with the International Corpus of English (ICE), 4 CP
2 st. mo 10-12 GB 5/37 Nord
In this seminar, we will have a look at one of the most compelling corpus projects:
The International Corpus of English (ICE), which compiles language data from
various English varieties from all over the world. The aim of this course will be to
understand how the ICE is designed and how we can work with it. What information
can we find in these corpora about the use of discourse markers (such as, "well") in
different registers or English varieties? What difference in use of the words "sorry" or
"like" can we detect? Can we even find out about differences in cultural values and
norms due to the usage of specific speech acts such as apologies or directives?