Seminaria licencjackie - studia stacjonarne 2014–2015 :: BA Seminars - full-time programme 2014–2015

Scholars analysing mechanisms of socialisation have noted the importance of texts of conduct in the processes of disseminating, promoting and fashioning normative and eliminating transgressive conduct. Historians have explored various conduct manuals in order to study the history of human comportment, morals and morality, showing a progressive change from rules of courtliness, chivalry and courtesy, through rules of etiquette, to bourgeois patterns of behaviour. While re-discovering the history of women, feminist scholars have noted that many of such cultural narratives focus on socialising women and policing their proper conduct both in the private and the public sphere. Equally, researchers of the notions of childhood have engaged in investigating paraliterary conduct manuals, trying to discover not only the positioning of children in various societies across centuries, but also the (gendered) advice on their upbringing and education.

   This BA seminar rationale is based on the assumption that by studying British texts/books/manuals of conduct as well as British prose, drama and poetry, one may gain some valuable insight into issues, such as: social and individual identity; socially-approved and forbidden modes and models of behaviour; definitions of individual and national duties and rights; precepts of morality; definitions of monstrosity; cultural sources of gender stereotypes; and various other minutely anatomised strategies of survival and success in a given culture. The seminar will be devoted to studying literary and paraliterary ways of presenting, instilling and perpetuating various norms of behaviour as well as eliminating transgressive conduct. As such, the students participating in the seminar will join the ongoing investigations of the value, power and intricacies of lessons on conduct by confronting, comparing and contrasting such cultural and ideological narratives with selected examples of literary texts. Further, while analysing (para)literary texts, we will conduct an interdisciplinary examination of socio-cultural topics, such as (and definitely not limited to): the cultural/social/biological positioning of women/men/children; intra-societal dynamics; the value of virginity/marriage/widowhood; the role of biological sex in culture on the micro- and macro-scale; various identity constructions; the history of sexuality and morality; and the notions of religious and secular transgressions across centuries. The seminar will involve the close reading and study of selected narratives, class presentations and discussions, and the results of the research conducted during the academic year will be presented in the form of a BA thesis.

Selected bibliography
Arditi, Jorge. 1998. A genealogy of manners: Transformations of social relations in France and England from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Armstrong, Nancy, Leonard Tannenhouse. 1987. The ideology of conduct. Essays in literature and the history of sexuality. New York: Methuen.
Auerbach, Nina. 1982. Woman and the demon. The life of a Victorian Myth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bicchieri, Cristina. 2006. The grammar of society: The nature and dynamics of social norms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Carré, Jacques (ed.). 1994. The crisis of courtesy: Studies in the conduct-book in Britain, 1600-1900. Leiden—New York—Köln: E. J. Brill.
Eagleton, Terry. 2007. Ideology. An introduction. New and updated edition. London: Verso.
Elias, Norbert. 2000 [1939]. The civilizing process. Sociogenetic and psychogenetic investigations. Revised edition of 1994. Oxford: Basil Blackwell].
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and punish. (Translated by Alan Sheridan.) New York: Pantheon.
Foucault, Michel. 1998. The history of sexuality. Volume 1: The will to knowledge. London: Penguin Books Ltd.
Hull, Suzanne W. 1988. Chaste, silent & obedient: English books for women. 1475-1640. San Marino: Kingsport Press.
Jones, Vivien. 1997. Women in the eighteenth century: Constructions of femininity. London and New York: Routledge.
Macrae, C. N., Ch. Stangor, M. Hewstone. 1999. Stereotypy i uprzedzenia. Najnowsze ujęcie. [Stereotypes and stereotyping.] Gdańsk: Gdańskie Wydawnictwo Psychologiczne.
Mulder-Bakker, Anneke B. (ed.). 2002. The invention of saintliness. London and New York: Routledge.
Tague, Ingrid. H. 2002. Women of quality: Accepting and contesting ideals of femininity in England, 1690-1760. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press.
Vickery, Amanda. 1999. The gentleman's daughter: Women's lives in Georgian England. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
White, Hayden. Tropics of discourse. Essays in cultural criticism. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.

The seminar constitutes an assessment of the growing body of research devoted to the studies on argumentation. The topics that are discussed range from rhetorical  and pragmatic to dialectical ones. The main focus is on these theoretical concepts which help to study potential interdependencies between argumentation and persuasion. Among a number of new concepts the most crucial are: contextualism vs. semantic minimalism,  default semantics, the neo-Gricean and  post-Gricean approach to inference and  abduction. The seminar aims to show what the roles of these concepts are in the study of argumentative discourse. It will provide students with different analytical frameworks which either integrate or selectively apply these concepts for the study of genuine discourse. Students will be encouraged to evaluate the applicability of one of these frameworks through the study of the samples of literary, mass-mediated or political discourse.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Blakemore, Diane. 1998. Understanding utterances: An introduction to pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Carston, Robyn. 2002. Thoughts and utterances: The pragmatics of explicit communication. Oxford: Blackwell.
Eemeren, Frans H. van – Rob Grootendorst – Sally Jackson – Scott Jacobs. 1993. Reconstructing Argumentative Discourse. Tucaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
Eemeren, Frans H. van – Rob Grootendorst – Francisca A. Snoeck Henkemans. 2002. Argumentation: Analysis, evaluation, presentation. Mahwah: LEA.
Eemeren, Frans H. van (ed.) 2001. Crucial concepts in argumentation theory. Amsterdam: AUP.
Fiske, John. 1990. Introduction to communication studies. London: Routledge.
Grice, Paul Herbert. 1989. Studies in the way of words. Harvard University Press.
Lakoff, George -- Johnson, Mark. 2003. Metaphors We Live By. Reprinted edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Leech, Geoffrey.1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
McQuail, Dennis. 2005. McQuail's mass communication theory. London: Sage publications
Mey, Jacob L. 2001. Pragmatics: An Introduction. 2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell.
O’Keefe, Daniel J. 2002. Persuasion: theory and research. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Perloff, Richard M. 1993. The dynamics of persuasion. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Reardon, Kathleen Kelley. 1991. Persuasion in practice. London: Sage Publications.
Robinson, Peter. 2006. Arguing to better conclusions. Mahwah: LEA.
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1994. Approaches to discourse. Oxford: Blackwell.
Schoemaker, Pamela J. – Stephen D. Reese. 1996. Theories of influence on Mass Media Content. New York: Longman,
Tokarz Marek. 2006. Argumentacja, perswazja, manipulacja.  Gdańsk: GWP.
Walton, Douglas. 2007. Media argumentation: dialectic, persuasion, and rhetoric. New York : Cambridge University Press.
Zimbardo, Philip G. – Michael R. Leippe. 1991. The psychology of attitude change and social influence. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

The aim of the seminar is to study the contemporary Canadian literature, with a special emphasis on the notion of identity, its roots and influence on contemporary prose. During the course students will discuss various works of the most famous contemporary Canadian writers (e.g. Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields, Michael Ondaatje and Alice Munro) as well as a selection of theoretical and critical essays (e.g. by Linda Hutcheon, Margaret Atwood, Wayson Choy) that will provide a certain background for our discussions and future BA papers. We will place a range of chosen literary texts in the Canadian historical and cultural contexts. The seminar will introduce students to the process of writing BA papers within the field of literature. We will address a number of issues ranging from the formal aspect of writing theses to methodology of research, gathering materials and developing a critical approach to the views of others.

   Candidates wishing to participate in the seminar should have good knowledge of English and American literature and an authentic interest in literature. Prior knowledge of Canadian literature is not obligatory.

Selected Bibliography:

Hammill, Faye. 2007. Canadian literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Kröller, Eva-Marie. 2004. The Cambridge companion to Canadian literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

New, W.H. 2003. A history of Canadian literature. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
 

In this seminar we will examine the structure of dictionaries and their use. Students will get an insight into a variety of dictionary types on paper and in electronic form. The seminar will be mainly concerned with, but not limited to, dictionaries for learners of English as a foreign language. The treatment of different information categories in such dictionaries as well as search options, radically changed by the electronic medium, will be carefully considered. We will also see how selected (learners’) dictionaries present information on language and assess the identified solutions. Apart from dictionary structure, research into dictionary use is an important focus of the seminar. Methods of monitoring dictionary consultation will be presented and we will reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. Students will learn how to determine what really happens during dictionary look-up and measure the effects of dictionary consultation. Selected studies discussed in class will show how research methods are employed in practice. BA projects could involve comparative dictionary analysis or empirical research into a selected aspect of dictionary use. Students’ preparedness, active involvement in weekly discussions and work on BA projects will be evaluated. Course requirements include interest in words, language and  dictionaries.

Atkins, Sue B. T. and Michael Rundell. 2008. The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Béjoint, Henri. 2010. The Lexicography of English. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Hartmann, Reinhard R. K. 2001. Teaching and Researching Lexicography. Harlow: Longman.
Sterkenburg, Piet van (ed.). 2003. A Practical Guide to Lexicography. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
 

The aim of the seminar is to explore aspects of present-day ways of approaching Elizabethan drama. These will be contextualised in 1. the conventions of early modern English theatre; 2. the history of stage and film transpositions of Elizabethan plays. The historical overview serves as the first step in the approach to the 20th and 21th century adaptations of Elizabethan plays, most notably those written by Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson, especially Shakespeare’s plays thanks to their popularity. It is important to note that the productions will include both Polish and English / American renderings of Elizabethan plays, presented in three independent media: theatre, film and television. The seminar will be devoted to an examination of selected stage productions (both Polish and English / American) and the way in which they have been documented (reviews, television clips and recordings, etc.), as well as to a discussion of the variety of categories of Shakespeare films and teleplays (again, both Polish and English-speaking). The productions will be considered in light of text, stage and screen semiotics. The analysis will be conducted with the help of methodological tool which would facilitate approach to stage and screen productions. The tools will be based mainly on theatre and film semiotics; the major focus will be on how the literary text of a play is translated into its stage version, and / or how the literary text and the performance text (both the original Elizabethan performance and the 20th and 21st stage productions) are rendered on screen, both big and small.

Critical questions to be addressed:

Students will be asked to pose critical questions to analysed texts. They will be asked to report on literature on the subject. Finally, they will need to prepare two power-point presentations: first on selected theoretical/historical issues, second on how chosen methodology is employed in their analyses.

Important dates: mid-November 2013: the topic of the B.A. thesis is formulated
End of the first semester: theoretical chapter is handed in

Select bibliography:
Aston, Elain and George Savona. 1991. Theatre as Sign System. London – New York: Routledge.
Balme, Christopher. 2002. Wprowadzenie do nauki o teatrze [Introduction to theatre studies]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Barroll, J. Leeds et al. 1975. The Revels History of Drama in English. Vol. III 1576-1613. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.
Bevis, Richard W. 1988. English Drama: Restoration and Eighteenth Century, 1660-1789. London – New York: Longman.
Brown, John Russell. 2002. Shakespeare and the Theatrical Event. Houndmills: Palgrave / Macmillan.
Bulman, James C. (ed.) 1996. Shakespeare, Theory and Performance. London – New York: Routledge.
Cartmell, Deborah. 2000. Interpreting Shakespeare on screen. London: Macmillan Press.
Coursen, H.R. 1992. Shakespearean Performance as Interpretation. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London – Toronto: Associated University Press.
Cox, John D. and David Scott Kastan (eds.) 1997. A New History of Early English Drama. New York: Columbia University Press.
De Marinis, Marco. 1993. The Semiotics of Performance. Tr. by Áine O’Healy. Bloomington – Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Dessen, Alan C. 1985. Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dessen, Alan C. 1994. “Shakespeare and the theatrical conventions of his time”, in: Wells, Stanley (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 85-100.
Elam, Keir. 1980. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. London – Methuen: New York. Esslin, Martin. 1987. The Field of Drama. London: Methuen.
Fabiszak, Jacek. 2005. Polish Televised Shakespeares. A Study of Shakespeare Productions within the Television Theatre Format. Poznań: Motivex.
Fabiszak, Jacek. 2000. “Elizabethan Staging and Greenawayan Filming in Prospero’s Books,” in: Stalpaert, Christel (ed.). Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books: Critical Essays. Ghent: Academia Press. 121-139
Gurr, Andrew. 1987. The Shakespearean Stage 1574-1642. The Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gurr, Andrew. 1997. Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hatchuel, Sarah. 2000. A Companion to the Shakespearean Films of Kenneth Branagh. Winnipeg, Niagara Falls: Blizzard Publishing.
Hatchuel, Sarah. 2004. Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hendrykowski, Marek. 1999. Język ruchomych obrazów. Poznań: Ars Nova.
Hilton, Julian. 1987. Performance. London: Macmillan.
Innes, Christopher. 1995. Modern British Drama 1890-1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jackson, Russel (ed.). 2000. The Cambridge companion to Shakespeare on film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kowzan, Tadeusz. 1998. Znak i teatr. Warszawa: Polskie Towarzystwo Semiotyczne.
Leggatt, Alexander. 1988. English Drama: Shakespeare to the Restoration, 1590-1660. London – New York: Longman.
Lapsley, Robert and Michael Westlake. 1988. Film Theory: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Limon, Jerzy. 2002. Między niebem a sceną. Gdańsk: słowo/obraz terytoria.
Pfister, Manfred. 1991. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rothwell, Kenneth S. 2004. A History of Shakespeare on screen. Second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stam, Robert. 2002 [2000]. Film theory. An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Thomson, Peter. 1994a. Shakespeare’s Thatre. Second edition. London – New York: Routledge.
Thomson, Peter. 1994b. “Playhouses and players in the time of Shakespeare”, in: Wells, Stanley (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 67-84.
Ubersfeld, Anne. 2002. Czytanie teatru I. Przełożyła Joanna Żurowska.Warszawa: PWN.
Wells, Stanley and Sarah Stanton (eds.) 2002. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Worthen, W.B. 1996. “Staging ‘Shakespeare’. Acting, authority, and the rhetoric of performance”, in: Bulman, James C. (ed.) Shakespeare, Theory and Performance. London – New York: Routledge. 12-28.
 

Celtic languages, once spoken over vast swathes of Europe, are now mainly confined to areas on the continent’s western edges – in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Brittany. Why is this so? This course looks at the historic and sociolinguistic aspects of language change, particularly in Ireland and Wales, over the course of many centuries. The roles of politics, economics, population movements, education, religion, literacy and the mass media are considered, as are the failures and successes of the revivalist movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By the end of the seminar students should have a broad understanding of the causes which have led to the Celtic languages becoming endangered and to the general challenges which lie ahead in preserving less-widely-spoken languages.
   Students will be able to describe language shift in the Celtic countries, and the historical reasons for it. They will be able to compare the different fortunes of the Celtic languages. They will be able to place their discussions in the broader theoretical framework of language interaction, and make informed comment on some of the factors which may affect the Celtic languages in the twenty-first century.
   The seminar will consist of:  Lectures (15 hours), specified learning activities (30 hours), autonomous student learning (15 hours) = Total Workload (60 hours).
Assessment: attendance and preparation (15%), essay (35%), presentation (50%).

Selected reading:
Ball, Martin J., and Nicole Müller, eds. 2010. The Celtic languages. London: Routledge.
Brown, Keith, et al., eds. 2006. Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. 14 vols. Boston: Elsevier.
Haywood, John. 2001. The historical atlas of the Celtic world. London: Thames & Hudson.
Koch, John T., ed. 2006. Celtic culture: A historical encyclopedia. 5 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
MacAulay, Donald, ed. 1992. The Celtic languages. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Price, Glanville, ed. 2000. Languages in Britain and Ireland. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Russell, Paul. 1995. An introduction to the Celtic languages. London and New York: Longman.
Sims-Williams, Patrick. 1998. The Celtic languages. In The Indo-European languages. Edited by Anna Giacalone Ramat and Paolo Ramat, 345–379. London: Routledge.

In this seminar we will find out that English vocabulary, grammar and grammatical rules in general, are not arbitrary but semantically motivated, being rooted in everyday spatial experience. They vary from language to language because in different cultures we construe them in different ways. Thus, the way we use nouns, verbs or other parts of speech reflects the way we think of and perceive things and processes in the world/culture.
   During the course we will try to gain an understanding of certain noun or verb patterns and differences in their use in English and Polish. We will investigate, for example, why certain nouns can be used only in singular or plural forms (e.g. English hair (mass noun) vs. Polish włosy (count noun)), or why verbs can be followed by a direct (e.g. say something) or an indirect object (tell sb), or by a prepositional phrase (think about something). Conceptual metaphor and metonymy will also be discussed in the course and their exemplification will be searched for both in lexicon and grammar.
   For their BA projects, students may use the gained knowledge of cognitive linguistics and, on the basis of literary or internet resources, carry out analyses of the collected data. Comparative English-Polish studies are welcome.

Requirements: prepare at least one in-class presentation; regularly report on the progress of the BA project; actively participate and contribute to class discussions; keep submission deadlines. 

Selected references:
Barcelona, Antonio (ed.). 2003. Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Evans, Vyvyan and Melanie Green. 2006. Cognitive linguistics: An introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Geeraerts, Dirk (ed.) 2006. Cognitive linguistics: Basic readings. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Goldberg, Adele. Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gonzalez-Marquez, Irene Mittleberg, Seana Coulson, Michael J. Spivey (eds). 2007. Methods in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kristiansen, Gitte, Michael Archard, Rene Dirven and Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibanez. (eds). 2006. Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Radden, Günter and Rene Dirven. 2007. Cognitive English Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Ungerer, Friedrich and Hans-Jörg Schmid. An introduction to cognitive linguistics (2nd edition). London: Pearson.
 

This BA seminar is intended for those who have a serious interest in literature and who are prepared to study in depth a substantial number of novels, some poems, and the relevant literary criticism. Participants in the seminar will be expected to write their final dissertations on an author or authors within the subject area of the literature of the American South.
     The seminar will look at selected works from the full chronological range of Southern literature. It will begin with the dark romances of Edgar Allan Poe in the nineteenth century, proceed through the   complex modernism of such authors as William Faulkner and Katherine Anne Porter, and conclude with the more recent Gnostic fables of Cormac McCarthy.  Other authors that will be studied include Kate Chopin, Charles W. Chesnutt, Carson McCullers, Robert Penn Warren, and John Kennedy Toole.
     As a part of the nation that once tried to secede from the United States, the South has always seen itself as an exception to the rest of the country. This sense of difference has historic roots; it goes back to the presence of slavery in the South until the 1860s (an anomaly in a supposedly egalitarian America) and it is also connected to the experience of defeat in the Civil War. It is not only the culture of the South that stands apart from that of other parts of the Union. The region has also produced a unique and idiosyncratic literature.  In the BA seminar we will be asking the question of what makes a literary text a “Southern” one.  Is this “southern-ness” a scenic one: a question of incorporating an exotic landscape of plantations, white pillars, and cotton fields? Is it more a sense of the past: an awareness of the burden of history, especially of tragic history, that is not so evident in the rest of the future-orientated United States?  Is “southern-ness” a special kind of heterodox religious sense, as might be suggested by the bizarre fictions of Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy?  Is it a question of distinct literary forms: a penchant for the Gothic, the picaresque, and the grotesque?  Or can it be argued, with very recent critics of the New Southern Studies, that the South is a false unity and that there are many “Souths”?

Description: The seminar is devoted to the transition from the Theory of Government and Binding (GB) to the Minimalist Program. The course is based on the assigned readings and further discussion thereof.
   Objectives: The goal of the course is to introduce and discuss the intricacies of the minimalist framework and at the same time set the relevant problems against the GB-background. The participants will be encouraged to select and investigate particular aspects of the discussed frameworks and possibly make them the core of their theses.
   Requirements: The participants will be required to put forward a topic for their BA paper, provide a bibliography for the chosen topic (by December), a detailed plan of the thesis (by the end of the 1st sem.), and the chapters of the thesis by the appointed deadlines.
   The participants will also be expected to take active participation in the discussions, read the appointed texts, pass the in-class tests/quizzes and do the assigned homework. The candidates will also prepare 1-2 presentations in the course of the year.
   Pre-requisites: The pre-requisite for the participation in this seminar is a successful completion of the 2nd year Descriptive Grammar (syntax) course and a genuine interest in the theory of grammar.

Some references:
Chomsky, N. 1993. "A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory." In: Hale, K. & S.J. Keyser (eds.) The View from Building 20. Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Haegeman, L. 1994. Introduction to Government and Binding Theory. Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics.
Hornstein, N., Nunes, J. & Grohmann, K. 2005. Understanding Minimalism. Cambridge University Press.
Lasnik, H., Uriagereka, J. & Boeckx, C. 2005. A Course in Minimalist Syntax. Foundations and Prospects. Blackwell Publishing.
 

The 20th century was dominated by the principle of monolingualism in the teaching of English as a foreign language. In many teaching contexts, learners’ own languages were banished from the classroom and translation was seen as a relic of the discredited grammar-translation method. However, since the beginning of the 21st century the monolingual principle has been questioned more and more often and calls for a reassessment of translation have begun to appear. This reflects a more general shift of attention towards cross-lingual procedures in foreign language instruction.
   In this seminar, we will first look at the place of learners’ own languages in teaching methods of the 20th century. We will discuss the reasons for the rejection of mother tongue aids in the major methods and the application of such aids in the ‘alternative’ ones. We will then consider the motivation behind the recent revival of interest in cross-lingual procedures. In their BA projects, students will work on cross-lingual procedures (e.g. bilingual drills) which can be applied in the Polish foreign language teaching context.

Systemic competence constitutes a vital part of a language user’s communicative competence, as it covers knowledge and skill related to the way the language works as a system. In the seminar, issues underlying the learning and teaching of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation (i.e. different levels of the system) will be explored. More specifically, the seminar participants will investigate the position of the language system in foreign language didactics, the differences between explicit and implicit, inductive and deductive approaches to teaching, language system learning strategies, the state of the art research findings on the development of systemic competence as part of foreign language learning and teaching, and a variety of practical concerns of teaching grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. A special emphasis will be placed on innovative ways of teaching, such as project work, task-based instruction, various applications of modern technology, etc.
   Moreover, applied linguistics research traditions (qualitative and quantitative) and a variety of data collection techniques within them will be presented and discussed, as the seminar participants will be expected to carry out a small-scale empirical study within their BA projects. Alternatively, a BA project can involve an evaluation of selected didactic materials according to certain criteria.
   Credit requirements include: regular attendance, active participation in classes, fulfilling background reading assignments, timely submission of parts of the BA paper, preparing one oral presentation in each term (in the winter term, these will be topic-based presentations, in the summer term – presentations of study findings).

Sample BA paper topics:

Sources:
Nassaji, Hossein and Sandra Fotos. 2011. Teaching Grammar in Second Language Classrooms: Integrating Form-Focused Instruction in Communicative Context. New York: Routledge.
Nation, I.S.P. 2001. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schmitt, Norbert and Michael McCarthy (eds). 1997. Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The aim of the seminar will be to look at the situation of ethnic America and study its complex nature in order to understand  the importance of immigration in the United States of America in general, and the role of ethnic or racial groups in particular in the economic, cultural and political development  of this country. We will also look at the contribution of the groups to American demography, economy, school system, foreign policy, culture and politics and the like. This can be done by  analyzing past events on the basis of different sources: history books, literary works, documentaries or feature movies, newspaper articles, or censuses.
   A mixture of unity and diversity runs through American history as through American society today. It has its roots in the fact that America was built as a nation of immigrants who, however, for years had to accommodate to the way of life imposed by the strongest groups of immigrants. With the passage of time their grip has lessened  and the newcomers could and wished to retain their unique ethnic character, thus the idea of the melting pot could concur with the idea of a salad bowl or multiculturalism as metaphors of America. The experience of accommodation for millions of the Irish, Italians, Jews, Poles, or the Japanese,  Chinese or other Asians, not to mention the blacks and Native Americans, was a painful process, the result of which is still tangible discrimination, racism, ethnic prejudice, social or economic inequality, higher death rates or suicide rates in some ethic groups, and other social ailments. The result of resistance to accommodation is the incredible contribution of each ethnic group into the culture of the USA,  in the form of its cuisine, holidays,  religious practices, unique values and heroes, varied attitudes, or great artists.  In order to understand why it is so, it is necessary to research  the predicament  of an individual ethnic group at a given time and place and the changing immigration policies of the country,  and see what forces were mobilized to bring about the changes and thus shaped the present image of America.
   Thus in the course of the seminar students will be familiarized with the history of chosen ethnic groups, with the basic tenets of immigration policies of the USA or policies expounding treatment of racial/ethnic  groups till now,  learn basic concepts related to immigration: culture, ethnicity, acculturation, assimilation, hybridity, identity, race and racism as well as learn how histories can be written and presented by studying tenets of historiography and the theory of  narrativity and representation.
   The seminar will consist of close-reading of selected texts on the topics suggested, discussions, teacher and  students class presentations, and the scholarly preparation of a thirty-page dissertation on topic connected with ethnic America.

Selected Reading List:
Barth,  Frederic (ed.). 2007. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Boston: Little and Co.
Bode, Carl. (ed.). 1992. American Perspectives. The United States in Modern Age. Washington: Forum Reader Series.
Bradbury, Malcolm and Howard Temperley. 1989. Introduction to American Studies.2nd ed. London: Longman.
Brown, Wesley and  Amy Ling (eds.). 1993.  Visions of America. Personal Narratives from The Promised Land.
Giles, Judy and Tom Middleton. 2008. Studying Culture: A Practical Introduction. (2nd edition). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Hall, Stuart. (ed.). 2009. Representation. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London:
Holt, Hamilton. (ed.). 2001. Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans As Told by Themselves. New York: Kessinger Press.
Mann, Arthur, 1987. “From Immigration to Acculturation” in: Making America (ed. Luedke L. ed.). 68-80.
Mauk, David and John Oakland. 2005. 5th ed. American Civilization. An Introduction. London, NY: Routledge. 47-68.
Shell, Mark and Werner Sollors (eds.). 2000. Multilingual Anthology of American Literature. New York, London: New York University Press.
Perin, Constance. 1988. Belonging in America. Wisconsin: Wisconsin University Press.
Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. 2007. Herman, David, Jahn Manfred and  Rayan Marie-Laure (eds). London: Routledge.
Reede, Uede.(ed.). 2005. A Companion to American Immigration. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Smedley, Audrey. 2007.  Race in North America. Origin and Evolution of a Worldview. (2nd ed.). Boulder, Co: Westview Press.
Schuck, Peter. H. and James O. Wilson. 2008. Understanding America. The Anatomy of Exceptional Nation. New York, NY: Public Affairs.
Sollors, Werner, Henry B. Cabot, Anne M. Cabot (eds). 1996. Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Sollors, Werner. 1987. Beyond Ethnicity. Oxford: OUP.
Sollors, Werner. 1989. Invention of Ethnicity. Cambridge: CUP. IX-XX
Sowell, Thomas. 1981. Ethnic America. New York: Basic Books, Inc.
Takaki, Ronald. 1993. A different Mirror. A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1-17.
Tindall, George Brown and David Amory Shi. 2007. America: A Narrative History. New York, NY: Norton.
 

The seminar focuses on the notion of genre in contemporary linguistics as well as within historical studies. Presenting an overview of the rich scholarship on the issue, it is mostly oriented towards the socially grounded views of genres as conventionalised solutions to recurring problems. Its major tenet is: resulting from the tensions between stability and change, genres evolve in line with their communities of users and provide fascinating evidence for linguistic variation. Central to the issue of variation, the concept of genre change, both historical and in progress will be introduced and discussed. The two major lines of the social aspects in the study of genres i.e., social variability (variation with respect to age, gender, social class, style, modality, etc.) and the linguistic dimensions of language use in society (e.g., language and identity) will be introduced. Additionally, selected approaches from discourse analysis (e.g., critical discourse analysis) and pragmatics (speech act theory, linguistic politeness) will be incorporated into the discussion. Moreover, the seminar will also familiarise the participants with some basic techniques of data collection required in linguistic analysis.

Suggested reading:
Bazerman, Charles, Adair Bonini and Débora Figueiredo (eds.). 2009. Genre in a Changing World. Indiana:  Parlor Press.   
Diller, Hans Jürgen, and Manfred Görlach (eds.). 2001. Towards a History of English as a History of Genres. Heidelberg: C. Winter.

This seminar will be devoted to the discussion of the key issues in child language acquisition. Its aim is to give you an insight into the process of phonological, morphological and lexical development in children. The course will begin with the overview of theoretical perspectives on language acquisition, methods used in the study of child phonological development as well as phonological processes characteristic of early phonological development.

Clark, E. 2003. First language acquisition. Cambridge: CUP.
Fletcher, Paul – Michael Garman (eds.). 1986. Language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fletcher Paul – Brian MacWhinney (eds.) 1995. The handbook of child language. Oxford: Blackwell.
Lust, B. C. – Foley, C. 2004. First language acquisition. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Vihman, Marylin May. 1996. Phonological development: The origin of language in the child. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.
Villiers, Jill. G. de. – Peter de Villiers. 1979. Language acquisition. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Yavaş, Mehmet (ed.). 1994. First and Second Language Phonology. San Diego, California: Singular Publishing Group Inc.