English

This course provides an introduction to the very complex phenomenon of first and second language acquisition. It explores the fundamental properties of language acquisition and discusses, compares, and evaluates significant theories of language acquisition and empirical findings. The course covers the linguistic nature of second language learner's inter-language systems and underlying cognitive mechanisms posited to explain them, as well as the various social and effective factors that affect the ultimate success of the learner. 

This ground-breaking course invites humanities, pre-med, and social science students interested in reading literature to experience the effects of ‘shared reading’: reading literary texts together, out loud, with communities such as people in care homes, schools, hospitals, prisons, or asylum seeker centers. Students learn the basics of how literary texts can "work" for readers, both in theory and in practice. The course discusses the issues in proving the positive effects of literary reading scientifically while seeing in practice when a text resonates with someone. Students take part in shared reading groups first-hand and examine under which circumstances shared reading can lead to comforting or transformative experiences.  The course connects students to other communities, and vice versa, as well as the community members to each other.

This course is designed to improve critical thinking skills in English that will further enhance problem solving and overall communication ability. It covers argument structures, analysis, definitions and fallacies and provides application of these components in oral forms of debate and negotiation along with writing.

This course provides an overview of working in the United Kingdom and of the current economic situation in the country. It further discusses how the economic situation affects the workplace, how students can integrate into British working life, and how they can make the most of their internship placements. Topics include current political and economic climate, national legal framework, structure and workflow, integration of immigrants into the workforce, discrimination in the workplace, and comparison between U.K. and U.S. work experiences.

This course provides a study of the principal aspects of language acquisition, particularly as it relates to the case of second languages, examining the main theories of language acquisition while focusing particularly on English as a first and second language. Topics covered include: input, interaction, and output-- language as a generator of second languages; acquisition in natural and formal contexts; the language learner-- individual variables and the age factor; acquisition and communication strategies-- pragmatics and interaction in English as a second language; research methodology in second language acquisition.

Has contemporary culture taken a funny turn? This course offers you the chance to find out. Students look at the recent proliferation of comic novels and short stories, as well as stand-up comedy, sitcoms, and film, in order to ask questions such as: why is this funny? how is this funny? should we be laughing at this? and what does this type of comedy say about the contemporary moment? You will also study the theory and philosophy of comedy, using this to inform our understanding of what comedy and laughter do, culturally, psychologically, ethically, and politically.

This course examines decadence as a textual, historical, sexual and cultural formation across a range of literary texts of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Students are introduced to European and British varieties of literary decadence and aestheticism; art for art's sake theories of aesthetic production; relations between lifestyle, aestheticism and commodity culture; and emergent discourses of degeneration and sexology. The course asks students to consider how decadent aestheticism was shaped by regulatory categories of taste and vulgarity, and by cultural practices of tastemaking, lifestyling and the aestheticisation of sexuality. Students also consider the relationship between sexual dissidence and social and cultural distinction as produced in the representative examples of decadent literature studied.