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GERM-B100

English linguistics I

academic year
2023-2024
2024-2025

Course teacher(s)

Philippe DE BRABANTER (Coordinator) and Louise Raynaud

ECTS credits

5

Language(s) of instruction

english

Course content

This course provides a linguistic, therefore descriptive, approach to the study of English grammar. It relies largely on A Student's Introduction to English Grammar (Huddleston, R., Pullum, G. & Reynolds, B. 2021). It should not, therefore, be confused with an English proficiency course, where students learn what should be instead of what is.
The following key elements of English grammar are covered:
- verbs and verb phrases
- complements in clauses
- nouns and determinatives
- adjectives and adverbs
- clause types
- subordinate clauses
- relative constructions (time permitting)
- non-finite clauses (time permitting)

Objectives (and/or specific learning outcomes)

Students are expected

  • to familiarise themselves with the descriptive approach to the study of languages
  • to grasp the difference between a precise and rigorous linguistic approach and the looseness of traditional student grammars
  • to form a clear idea of all the key areas of English grammar.

Prerequisites and Corequisites

Required and Corequired knowledge and skills

The minimal levels of English proficiency for students to be able to follow the course successfully are shown in the table below. But let me insist that these are minimal requirements. Ideally, students should have achieved advanced mastery of English (or nearly), i.e. they should be able to read various types of texts with ease (fiction, newspapers, essays), readily understand spoken English and be able to express themselves fluently.
 

GERM-B100

CEFRL

Oral production

B1

Written production

B1

Listening comprehension

B1+

Reading comprehension

B1+

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages

Teaching methods and learning activities

Weekly lectures: 2 credits
Weekly exercise sessions: 2 credits
Weekly online tests (non-compulsory but recommended)
Personal reading: 1 credit

Contribution to the teaching profile

This course makes the following contributions:

1. Training students to think critically (by insisting on preciselfy defined concepts and rigorous analyses)
2. Developing students' command of English
3. Training students to adopt a scientific approach to language phenomena (cf. point 1)

References, bibliography, and recommended reading

Compulsory reading:

  • Huddleston, R., Pullum, G. & Reynolds, B. 2021. A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press. 

Course notes

  • Université virtuelle

Other information

Contacts

MAIL : Philippe.De.Brabanter@ulb.be
TEL : 02/650.38.12
OFFICE : AZ4.109 Make an appointment via e-mail.

Campus

Solbosch

Evaluation

Method(s) of evaluation

  • written examination

written examination

Mark calculation method (including weighting of intermediary marks)

There are two written exams:

  • January: chapters 1 to 6 in Huddleston, R., Pullum, G. & Reynolds (2021)
  • May-June: chapters 10 to 14 in Huddleston, R., Pullum, G. & Reynolds (2021)

Each exam is worth 50% of the final mark.

Students who didn't obtain the credits for the course in June will have to redo in August all the parts of the evaluation for which they got less than 10.

Language(s) of evaluation

  • english

Programmes