This course is intended as a practical course on grammar and text reception in
English from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics. This perspective
essentially involves that language acts construct meaning and grammar becomes
the study of how meanings are built up through lexical and grammatical choices in order to achieve specific communicative goals. Since the course is mainly
addressed to English Studies majors for whom English is a foreign language, a
second aim is to develop the students’ communicative competence in English by
acquiring a more technical and sophisticated awareness of verbal communication
in that language. This increased awareness includes (a) practical awareness
(i.e. the capacity to control, manipulate and be creative with language, (b)
discursive awareness (i.e. the ability to discuss language in precise terms and
engage in formal analysis), and (c) critical awareness (i.e. the capacity to
consider language use as the result of and, at the same time, a tool for social
and ideological practice). If there is a new lockdown and/or any modification to the sections of the teaching guide, the adjustments that need to be made to teaching practices will be announced via Moodle. |