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English for Specific Purposes: ‘Focus on Register’ is a hybrid course designed to develop your understanding of variation in English texts or discourses, be they spoken, written or multimodal. In line with your studies, we will emphasise academic English.
Starting from a linguistic approach called ‘multidimensional analysis’ developed by Douglas Biber, you will learn which linguistic forms pattern with each other to fulfil specific functions like informing or narrating. For instance, typically narrative genres contain past-tense verbs, third person pronouns, and place and time adverbs. These linguistic items are common in story-telling because they are functionally adapted to the communicative purposes and situational contexts in such registers. If we find the time, we will also consider conventional structures used to construct texts from a genre-perspective and variation that is not functionally motivated, but a question of style.
The goal of this class is to develop a much deeper understanding of the different functions of linguistic items and text varieties in English. This will be helpful for your future career in teaching, e.g., to devise good exercises. Also, we hope, you will become a more confident and proficient user of English. |
