| This course will address the complexity of the contemporary aesthetic experience through a related series of questions that drive the discourse in contemporary Literature and arts: How do we open ourselves to what is unfamiliar in the arts and literature and what is the purpose in doing so? Who decides what is of value in the arts and literature and how are these determinations made? How do the arts literature respond to culture and how do they lead them? Whose voice is allowed access to speak through the arts and literature? What is the place of beauty in the arts literature and how has that concept changed over time? Just what are the arts and lilterature anyway? In this course we will look at how contemporary artists and writers have presented us with answers to these questions that are sometimes startling and difficult, sometimes pleasurable and affirming, but always provocative and engaging. The notion of the aesthetic will be examined as it pertains to experiences in nature, in the environment, in the senses, in social and cultural systems, conventions and institutions, and in works of literature and different kinds of arts. Through observation, contemplation, sensation, reading, writing, attendance at some events of literature, and heightened self-awareness, the student will engage as an aesthetic observer of and participant in the world. |
| This course will introduce students to some classic plays from different times in Britain and America. The focus is to introduce the participants to this literary genre, examining the plot, characters, theme, setting, scene, dialogue, conflict, rhetorical and linguistic devices, and dramatic forms, such as tragedy, comedy, theatre of the absurd, etc. The students will examine the cultural contexts of these plays to see how these contexts are reflected in the literary works and how reality is depicted in the plays |
| This course offers a practical and theoretical introduction to the new creative and interpretive possibilities opened up by digital forms of literature. It explores what is happening to literature and its study in the digital age. Digital technologies are profoundly affecting how literature is produced, read and analyzed. It explores new theoretical perspectives on literature arising from its context: from innovative conceptions of textuality, authorship, and reading to changing understanding of the book, publishings, in and out digital forms and /or with digital methods, and for exploring a range of issues relevant to our increasingly digital textual world. Engaging with digital archives and computational techniques in literary analysis, we will ask what new insights we can gain into literature once it is digitalized. Is the digital age making literature more accessable, more inclusive and more interactive? Or will the digital age, with its many multimedia distractions, make literature obsolete? We will seek answers to these questions not only by analyzing existing literary objects, but also by making digital literary objects of their own. Students will also gain hands-on experience with and develop skills in quantitative textual analysis and text. |
The course introduces students to traditional and modern linguistic theories of translation, and factors involving translation including text types, readership, purpose, cultural and psychological aspects of translation in the modern world.
This course is designed to introduce students to the study of literary and cinematic forms. The link between the novel and film or TV, the theatre and film or TV, and the film or TV-novel will be examined. Students will explore issues pertaining to each medium as well as larger questions related to style and adaptation. In this course, several primary texts will be studied in detail and several films will be viewed. Besides, some works by some representative literary and film theorists and historians will be read.
This is a very brief introduction to the most general, intriguing and illuminating points of intersection between literature and other subjects such as philosophy, art, education, politics, religion etc. It is an interdisciplinary course which aims at highlighting the value of literature in the development of human beings. Students will be instructed to recognise and understand the interaction between literature and other social an science subjects in the history of humankind. Through exploring the relationship between literature and other subjects, students will be helped to detect the crucial roles that literature has played in our daily life so that they may make full use of literature consciously to enrich their daily life and to solve their own and community problems.
This is an introductory course for students to acquire some basic skills needed to engage with theoretically informed writing in literary studies. Students will be introduced to the nature of literature and the methods of analysing literature. Critical perspectives and theoretical languages that have informed literary study of the past thousands of years from 360 BC to the present will be briefly introduced to students. Students will learn how different theories of literature have emerged as responses to particular issues in culture, philosophy and in society.
The history of a language is the history of the people who speak it, those who read and write it, and those who come into contact with it. The
course will examine the origin and development of the English language, from its earliest beginnings in the misty past, through Old English
(or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, Early Modern English, and modern-day English, and across post-modern World Englishes. To be
able to do this, the students will be introduced to the origins of English and its changes, modern English grammar, old English, Middle
English, English of Renaissance, Prescriptive Grammar, English of the 19th Century, and American English. At the same time, some culture
events will be introduced in order to make it clear how those events influenced the changes in the English language. and across the postmodern
globe. The study of what language is how it changes, and how these changes are grounded in parallel cultural changes, is, therefore, a subject of intrinsic value, especially to those interested in literature, linguistics, history, and cultural studies.
This course is a general introduction to how to teach English as a second language. It explores the application of second language
acquisition(SLA), which studies how second languages are acquired. The theories undergirding the methods and techniques of teaching
ESL will be covered. It offers a basic framework in EFL/ESL approaches and techniques for teaching English, with emphasis on
communicative language teaching and SLA research application. The role of the teacher and learner will be analyzed. The relevance of SLA
theory to teaching the various macro-skills will be explored. Topics on the relationship between culture and language learning will be
discussed. This course is intended for students who would like to teach English as a foreign language either as a career or as part of a
travel experience, as well as those who are simply curious about TESOL. Students will research and present a selection of methods of
second language instruction, and be exposed to a variety of language teaching materials.
This course introduces students to the scientific study of human language. It covers the structure of language, including signs, sounds,
formation of words, sentence structure, meaning, language use, language change and variation in language, language acquisition, language
planning, maintenance of language, and language loss. Students will be able to examine their own language and learning of a second and
even third language. It also covers a brief introduction to Applied linguistics so that the students will know about this branch of
linguistics.
The history of a language is the history of the people who speak it, those who read and write it, and those who come into contact with it.
The course will examine the origin and development of the English language, from its earliest beginnings in the misty past, through Old
English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, Early Modern English, and Present Day English, and across the post-modern World
Englishes. To be able to do this, the students will be introduced to the origins of English and its changes, modern English grammar, old
English, Middle English, English of Renaissance, Prescriptive Grammar, English of the 19th Century, and American English. At the same
time, some cultural events will be introduced to make it clear how those events influenced the changes in the English language. and
across the post-modern globe. The study of what language is how it changes, and how these changes are grounded in parallel
cultural changes, is, therefore, a subject of intrinsic value, especially to those interested in literature, linguistics, history, and cultural
studies.
This course introduces students to speech sounds, mainly in the English language, and how they are linked together in a rule-governed way. They will be introduced to physical entities of sounds -- consonants, vowels, etc. (phonetics) and how these sounds form linguistic units (phonology).
This course aims to help students to read more effectively by presenting and developing the various skills needed for successful reading comprehension. The students will be instructed on how to extract main ideas, how to read for specific information, how to understand text organization, how to predict, how to infer, how to deal with unfamiliar words, how to link ideas, how to understand complex sentences, how to evaluate the text and how to draw a conclusion.
The course introduces students to English novels written in 18th and 19th centuries. They will critically examine the constituent elements of
the novels, including the social, cultural, historical and religious contexts, as well as the characters, plot and setting. They will learn to
critically write papers in response to the novels, and respond to the critical essays on the novels written by others. They will read a few
novels representative of the periods.
| This course introduces students the scientific study of human language and the development of linguistic theory. It examines the history behind English being developed into the world's lingua franca. It covers the structure of language such as language planning, maintenance of language and language loss. It examines main linguistic theories from Sapir-Whorf's hypotheses to theories like Generative grammar and Functional Grammer. Students will be able to not only examine their own language and learning of the second and even third language but also get better understanding of the linguistic concepts. |
| This course introduces students to the theories and methodologies used for discourse analysis of authentic written langauge and speech in English. The history of studies on assumptions and principles, verbal and nonverbal communication, and societal and cultural roles in a variety of discourse genres is also covered. Spoken and written discourses in English are presented for analysis. These are occasionally compared with similar discourses in students' native languages to enhance undertanding and learning. |
| This course will provide the participants with the opportunity to learn to search for materials in their areas of interest, and to critique these materials to establish a niche area for their research. They will learn the research language, ethics, and approaches for conducting their research. They will explore quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods, and decide which methods are more appropriate for their own investigations. They will learn the format of a research paper, and the style sheets they need to use for documenting their research. They will also learn to use some online tools for facilitating their research. |
| In this module, students will attend a few lectures to revise the basics in thesis writing, including stylesheets, citations and bibliography, but most of the time will be spent in writing their theses, and meeting up with their supervisors and revising their works. Time will be spent working out a supervision system and timeline so that students may complete their theses in time and be ready for the final submission and viva. |