0x010088F6312065A70A44B630A6848498EAD80093CFEAFE161DC94D83C7C5C9A5A748B8

Once again due to other pressures of work on the course coordinator, the major job of overhauling the pensum for this course was not done. However, the first-year courses in English language/linguistics (ENG1201/1101/1001) are planned for a major overhaul, and this will feed in to the appropriate choice of updated pensum in ENG2155.

The course was very successful in achieving its learning outcomes -- as shown by the final results (from a four-hour school exam). As noted in previous emnerapporter, participation is clearly critical to good outcomes in this course. This semester, about half of the students who were originally registered for the course participated very regularly; the other half seem to have mostly self-selected out/in practice dropped the course very early. The course coordinator is pleased to note the reference group's comments on the good atmosphere in class. This course is taught very "traditionally" -- chalk-and-talk lectures, seminar exercises -- and this seems to work well in this course, especially having a physical handout with a summary of the argument being explicated on the board (reference groups consistently, this year as in previous years, comment positively on the use of handouts).Performance on the exam seems (even) better than previous years, and this may be due to a slightly increased focus on reviewing previous exams and the form and content of question that can be expected from the exam. (The exam itself is at a reasonable level -- cf. external examiner's comments in H22. But given these good performances, not quite 'at ceiling' but almost, it may be possible to raise the bar a bit in the material covered -- perhaps shortening some of the material early in the course which reviews fundamental concepts like constituency, which is useful for weaker students/students for whom it has been a long time since they took ENG1101, but which is maybe less necessary for a group which is prepared to apply itself from the start, as this year's group was (midway feedback from the reference group suggested that some thought the course had a slightly slow start and didn't need to recap that material as much as it did). This year I once again implemented a "no deadlines" policy for obligatory assignments. I think this worked well -- it certainly removes stress for both the students, and the coordinator that doesn't have to deal with medical notes etc. But I do note the reference group's feedback that some people preferred having the externally-imposed structure of having deadlines. Maybe some intermediate solution, e.g. having soft "recommended" deadlines before "hard" deadlines, is possible.

NTNU:TIA:REST

Institutt for språk og litteratur

Department of Language and Literature

Spesifiserte trykte og håndskrevne hjelpemidler tillatt. Ingen kalkulator tillatt.

Engelsk

Mer om vurdering

Informasjon om hvilke ordbøker som er tillatt brukt under eksamen, blir gjort tilgjengelig i pensumlista ved semesterstart.

Anbefalte forkunnskaper

Forkunnskapskrav

Faglig innhold

Emnet gir en grundig innføring i utvalgte områder innen engelsk grammatikk og/eller oversettelse i lys av moderne teorier og tilnærmingsmåter. I tillegg belyser kurset tema knyttet til komparativ grammatikk, for eksempel parametrisk variasjon mellom norsk og engelsk.

Kursmateriell

Læringsutbytte

KunnskapKandidater som har bestått dette emnet,<ul><li>har kjennskap til grunnleggende aspekter ved engelsk grammatikk og hvordan disse kan beskrives og forklares med én eller flere aktuelle teoretiske tilnærminger.</li><li>har inngående kjennskap til utvalgte fenomener i engelsk grammatikk. </li><li>har grunnleggende kunnskap om problemstillinger i komparativ grammatikk.</li></ul>FerdigheterKandidater som har bestått dette emnet,<ul><li>er i stand til å beskrive systematiske forskjeller mellom engelsk og et annet språk, for eksempel norsk.</li><li>er i stand til å analysere fenomener i engelsk grammatikk innenfor ett eller flere teoretiske rammeverk eller tilnærminger.</li></ul>

Læringsformer og aktiviteter

Forelesninger, seminarer, diskusjoner og veiledning. Det forutsettes at alle studenter regelmessig bruker gjeldende læringsplattform. Studenter bør forvente at dette emnet på 7,5 studiepoeng tilsvarer omtrent 10 timers arbeid per uke, inkludert undervisningstid. Obligatorisk aktivitet:Skriftlig arbeid på ca. 2000 ord/4-5 sider, som kan bli delt på flere innleveringer. Online quizer kan erstatte en del av dette arbeidet. Godkjent obligatorisk aktivitet er gyldig i to semester (semesteret godkjenningen gis og påfølgende semester). Alle deler av den obligatoriske aktiviteten må avlegges i samme semester.

Skriftlig arbeid på ca. 2000 ord. Online quizer kan erstatte en del av dette arbeidet.

Teoretiske tilnærminger til engelsk språk

Engelsk språk

Engelsk språkvitenskap

Lektorutdanning i språkfag for trinn 8 – 13

English Linguistics and Language Acquisition (Master's Programme)

Europastudier - bachelorstudium

Fremmedspråk - bachelorstudium

Bachelor i engelsk

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Revise pensum thoroughly to bring it more up-to-date and relevant, possibly in collaboration with other relevant staff.

Tiltak

Revise pensum

This improvement/update remains to be done (simply because of a lack of time to attack it and the "there's always something more important" problem). A pensum which is a bit more up-to-date and which focuses somewhat less on 'pedantic' details of X-bar theory (and which in the best of all possible worlds gives something useful to both students who will have use for 'advanced practical English grammar', e.g. in the classroom, and those who will want to specialize on formal/syntactic topics in e.g. their masters thesis), is desirable, but is still being sought. Hopefully this semester will be the semester when it happens.

The course seems to have functioned very well, as shown by the high number of A grades. The exam this year was second-marked by an external examiner (utvidet sensur) who agreed with the given grades and that the exam was at an appropriate level. The grade distribution -- many As, many Es and Fs, few in the middle -- must reflect participation. It was very noticeable to both teachers that about half of the students regularly and diligently participated in lectures and seminars -- it can't be a coincidence that about half of the candidates seemed very well prepared for, and did very well on, the exam. We emphasize many times that participation is absolutely vital in this course and will simply continue to do so. The general set-up of the course -- handouts and 'chalk and talk' lectures, exercises in seminars -- worked well according to both the impressions of the teachers and the students, cp. reference group report. (This is the nth reference group report in a row for this course where handouts have been praised -- there seems to be a lot to be said for having something physical to follow along with. I wouldn't recommend chalk-and-talk in all courses, but it does seem to work well in this one.) One thing that was somewhat noticeable on the exam was that some candidates could draw perfect or near-perfect sentence diagrams (trees) but struggled with explaining relevant concepts in prose. It's tempting for both teachers and students to focus only on trees, but this should be resisted, because at e.g. masters level syntax is about argumentation, not (just) structural analysis ('drawing trees'). Most points on the exam were not dedicated to trees, and the seminars and OAs tried also to give practice in the relevant kind of explanation, but it may be worth increasing the amount of practice that students get in explanation/prose/argumentation. (This might usefully be linked to a change of pensum, cf. above.) This semester, we experimented with a 'no deadlines' policy for obligatory assignments (see https://kconrod.medium.com/how-to-abolish-deadlines-30cde15e5dcd) OAs (3 in total) were released at regular intervals, but the deadlines were only suggested, not firm -- students could take a couple of days, or even weeks, longer, as long as they submitted all OAs by a firm deadline a few weeks before the final exam. On balance I think this experiment worked well. The point is to emphasize that the OAs (certainly at fordypning level and up) are meant to help students understand the material, not to be 'roadblocks'; and the 'no deadlines' policy certainly seemed to reduce stress for the students (cf. reference group report). It also worked better for me as a grader (in practice, I graded a few homeworks every Tuesday, rather than a heap of homeworks on some Tuesdays, and this felt more manageable even though it's the same amount of work). I therefore think I'll continue with this policy (at fordypning level), but a few drawbacks should be noted: there is a flood of weak assignments towards the end of the semester; it is tempting to approve some of these weak assignments (letting some errors 'go') because there will not be time for the students to revise them, even if earlier in the semester a similar assignment would have been not approved/asked for resubmission; and obviously no solution guides for homeworks can be uploaded until near the end of the semester (though I didn't actually receive any complaints about that).

Informasjon om hvilke ordbøker som er tillatt brukt under eksamen, blir gjort tilgjengelig i pensumlista ved semesterstart. .

Forelesninger, seminarer, diskusjoner og veiledning. Det forutsettes at alle studenter regelmessig bruker gjeldende læringsplattform.Obligatorisk aktivitet:Skriftlig arbeid på ca. 2000 ord/4-5 sider, som kan bli delt på flere innleveringer. Online quizer kan erstatte en del av dette arbeidet. Godkjent obligatorisk aktivitet er gyldig i to semester (semesteret godkjenningen gis og påfølgende semester). Alle deler av den obligatoriske aktiviteten må avlegges i samme semester.

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Last year's report suggested that the pensum for this course should be updated to take account of the most recent developments in theoretical syntax of the kind covered by this course -- in fact, as that report notes, we have been meaning to do this for a few years now, but it is unfortunately something that tends to 'slip through the cracks' until teaching is upon us -- especially if some of the teaching in the course is taken by temporary staff, for whom it is much easier/more practical to take an established course and teach it rather than try to revise the course completely. However, hopefully this semester (i.e. spring 2022, in preparation for the course in autumn 2022) will be the semester in which this revision finally happens. See some more detailed comments below.

The course seems to have met its learning outcomes successfully, as indicated both by the reference group report and the distribution of grades. There was a wide spread of attainments in the final exam (cf. grade distribution), but this is not unusual in a course like this, and our suspicion is that the grade distribution is at least partly correlated with how closely individuals followed the course as it progressed -- although in fairness this is difficult for us to measure, as the course was taught hybrid (in-person and streamed), and we do not know how many people were following lectures from home. We do know, however, that a number of the seminars were not well attended (i.e. many students did not attend either in-person or digitally). I (AW) am in general against enforcing obligatory attendance, but it must be emphasized that participation in the seminars is essentially necessary for mastery of the material in this course (see also reference group comments on this, and comments below). Perhaps this should be made even clearer to students -- although we do say this very forcefully already. Lectures were held in-person and also streamed and recorded via Panopto. This seems to have worked well, though an in-person experience is probably all-around better than the streamed/recorded experience. The format of the lectures -- chalk, talk, and handout -- seems to work well. (We consistently get feedback from students in this course that they appreciate handouts rather than slides!) Seminars were also held in-person and streamed -- initially via Panopto, and later (after it became clear that there were technical challenges with Panopto -- both its 15-second delay, and problems with the stream being disrupted when the slide system in the classroom was turned on and off) via Zoom. The seminars were problem/exercise-based. An effort was made to use exercises that were not just 'drawing trees' i.e. giving structural analyses of sentences, but to identify/understand underlying concepts that had been covered in lecture. The in-person element of the seminars worked very well and seems to have been very useful to those students who regularly participated (cf. ref group comments). The online element of the seminars was less successful. Even after the technical problems were resolved (by moving to Zoom), it is simply very challenging for the seminar leader to manage both a classroom setting and a virtual setting (with black screens -- which in itself is reasonable enough; I (AW) don't turn on my camera much when I'm dialing into something in Zoom either) and ensure that everyone in both settings is following along with the exercises, so in effect what the digital participants get is a stream of an in-person seminar. Hybrid seminars, in other words, should probably be avoided if it is possible to do so. The OAs (online quizzes and written hand-ins) work well; we're glad to see from the reference group that the feedback on the written hand-ins was considered to be useful. The exam also seems to have been an appropriate test of attainment. The exam this semester was done from home, with all aids permitted. This is a challenging setup in a course such as this, for two reasons: (a) a number of the answers are objective, and there is a risk that they can simply be 'looked up'; (b) it allows the possibility of illicit collaboration. Both of these dangers seem to have been avoided by the use of questions which required synthesis from different areas of pensum and explanation in the candidate's own words of relevant concepts. Some answers remained wholly objective (structural analyses, i.e. sentence trees). We did note that some candidates submitted scripts which were in general very weak but which had perfect or near-perfect trees; this may however simply indicate that these candidates could find trees for example sentences (on Blackboard/in course materials) which were very similar to the exam sentences, and could adapt them correctly. Such weak scripts were in any case sufficiently penalized by their low scores on questions which required longer written answers; so overall, the right balance seems to have been struck in the setting of the exam questions. The learning objectives -- which are quite general -- are good and we don't see any need to change them. As stated above, however, it is probably desirable to change the pensum in this course, for several reasons. The first is one noted by the reference group: the existing textbook has an unfortunate tendency to switch between representations and terminology, trusting that the reader/student will be able to identify what is the final 'correct' representation we should assume and what is a temporary assumption that will later be discarded. We try our best to clarify these matters in the lectures, but this can still be a confusing experience for the student who is quite new to syntax.The second is that the existing pensum is not completely up-to-the-minute, at least with respect to "Chomskyan-style" syntax. There is something to be said for teaching the slightly 'outdated' syntactic theory (Government and Binding theory) in the current pensum, as many of its basic assumptions are still current, and much work prior to about 2000 (which students may well encounter in e.g. their masters research) is based on this theory. However, especially students who will specialize in grammatical theory later on may find it useful to start already now with more recent theories (Minimalism).The third -- which may be in tension with the second -- is that many students who take this course in fact will not go on to specialize in grammatical theory as such, but would still benefit from having a detailed grounding in some syntactic theory of English which covers, at least descriptively, some of the less 'obvious' syntactic phenomena in English (what is covered in the current course under rubrics such as "affix hopping/verb movement", "A-bar movement", "A-movement, Case, (the Case-absorption theory of) Passive, Exceptional Case Marking" etc.). It's possible that such students would benefit from a course which does not take such a structure-focused approach ('drawing trees') as is usual in most pedagogical treatments of Chomsky-type syntax. This may be so even for students who do want to specialize in syntax/grammar, because it's important for students embarking on e.g. a Master's thesis to realize that the practice of syntactic research is not fundamentally about 'drawing trees', but is rather about argumentation from linguistic data and the identification of general, underlying principles.I don't know whether there is a text or texts that can satisfy all of these needs well, or even if it is possible to satisfy all of these desires simultaneously, but this is something which hopefully can be investigated this semester (V22) in preparation for next semester's course.The suggestion in the reference group that different grammatical theories could be presented comparatively is an interesting one. There may not be time in the semester to present more than one kind of theory in a satisfactory way, but perhaps it would be possible to bring in a comparative angle, or some 'tasters' of alternative theories, here and there. Alternatively this is something that could be considered for the SPRÅK3002 or SPRÅK3210 courses.

Informasjon om hvilke ordbøker som er tillatt brukt under eksamen, blir gjort tilgjengelig i pensumlista ved semesterstart. .

Emnet gir en grundig innføring i utvalgte områder innen engelsk grammatikk og/eller oversettelse i lys av moderne teorier og tilnærmingsmåter. I tillegg belyser kurset tema knyttet til komparativ grammatikk, for eksempel parametrisk variasjon mellom norsk og engelsk. 

Forelesninger, seminarer, diskusjoner og veiledning. Det forutsettes at alle studenter regelmessig bruker gjeldende læringsplattform.Obligatorisk aktivitet:Skriftlig arbeid på ca. 2000 ord/4-5 sider, som kan bli delt på flere innleveringer. Online quizer kan erstatte en del av dette arbeidet. Godkjent obligatorisk aktivitet er gyldig i to semester (semesteret godkjenningen gis og påfølgende semester). Alle deler av den obligatoriske aktiviteten må avlegges i samme semester.

KunnskapKandidater som har bestått dette emnet,<ul><li>har kjennskap til grunnleggende aspekter ved engelsk grammatikk og hvordan disse kan beskrives og forklares med én eller flere aktuelle teoretiske tilnærminger.</li><li>har inngående kjennskap til utvalgte fenomener i engelsk grammatikk. </li><li>har grunnleggende kunnskap om problemstillinger i komparativ grammatikk.</li></ul>FerdigheterKandidater som har bestått dette emnet,<ul><li>er i stand til å beskrive systematiske forskjeller mellom engelsk og et annet språk, for eksempel norsk.</li><li>er i stand til å analysere fenomener i engelsk grammatikk innenfor ett eller flere teoretiske rammeverk eller tilnærminger.</li></ul>

Lektorutdanning i språkfag - masterstudium (5-årig)

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Results from the exam show a distribution that is similar to previous year’s results in this course. Although, the number of Fs on the exam is relatively high. This was especially surprising given that this year’s exam was given as a home exam (COVID-19). The exam was designed such that very good candidates could answer all tasks correctly (which was the case for one student getting 79 out of 80 points). Furthermore, the exam was work-heavy, such that students might easily lose a lot of time (=points) if they had to look up or check a lot of information. It seems that this might have influenced the results slightly as some of the exams that failed provided good answers to the first tasks and then left the later tasks blank or poorly answered. We interpret this as a ‘false sense of security’ in having all materials available during the exam as students might have prepared for the exam thinking that they would have time to consult their materials.  The reference group report shows that there were some aspects that worked well in the course and some that could be improved on. The learning activities, and particularly 'Three trees a week' worked well. The report commented on two areas of improvement: (1) Connection between theory and arguments The report states that students found it difficult to separate between theory and arguments supporting this theory. Related to this, the report also says that students request better organization of the use of concepts and materials and how these are presented to students. We understand this confusion around theory and arguments. Both course readings and lecture handouts are organized around argumentation leading up to a certain principle. It might be difficult for students to understand that this is as close to ‘theory’ as we get, and we advise future course teachers to perhaps spend more time on showing students how theoretical linguistics work and why we provide these arguments. We did not spend time on this, and perhaps skipped an essential prerequisite insight that would have helped students acquire new material. The lecture handouts could be slightly reorganized in the future to emphasize these points. However, given many of the answers on the exam, we also suspect that many students did not read the course materials (thoroughly or at all). The readings might have clarified these points of confusion. Furthermore, there are quite a few concepts that are required to understand the readings and the basics of the Principles and Parameters Theory which might be lost in the transition between ENG1101 and ENG2155. It might therefore be wise for the next course teachers to spend some time in the beginning bridging these courses. (2) Teaching INFL/IPThe reference report states that students found this topic particularly difficult and that how this topic is taught should be improved. This is valuable feedback, and we certainly agree that the lectures covering INFL could be improved on. Beyond improving how INFL is introduced, we suspect that some of this confusion is related to gaps in knowledge. It is expected that students that are eligible for ENG2155 can distinguish between tense, aspect and voice, but many students did not seem to know the difference between these concepts. We welcome the criticism on these particular lectures and advise future course teachers to revise the lecture handouts and consider that students find this topic difficult, but more importantly perhaps, we advise course teachers to review the basic concepts of tense, aspect and voice before going into INFL. We skipped this review this year. Furthermore, we also learned later that some students had mandatory teaching practice during one of these lectures, which naturally made this topic difficult for these students. Perhaps it could be a good idea to find a solution for this clash in schedule in the future.

The course’s learning objectives seem to have been met successfully. Naturally, the COVID-19 situation impacted the teaching of this course and subsequently the learning outcomes. We are grateful that we were allowed to teach this course on campus as there is a lot of drawing on the blackboard and direct interaction with students in this course. The room was a small auditorium, which was less than ideal. When this course is taught in the future it might be good to have a smaller room (more seminar-like) where close interaction with students is facilitated. Even though seminars were taught on campus, we felt that the learning outcomes of the seminars were decreased due to the infection control restrictions. Typically, a lot of teaching in the seminars happens when the seminar teacher walks around and discusses exercises with one or two students at a time. This allows the instruction to be tailored to each student’s needs. We were careful not to do this this year as the regulations said to keep a distance. Moreover, the last time this course was taught, a lot of seminar exercises were solved in pairs or groups, this was also prohibited under the new regulations (or at least we were hesitant to initiate group exercises). That being said, we still believe that the learning outcomes of the seminars were much higher compared to if they had been taught digitally.  Previous 'emnerapporter' for this course have advocated that this course be updated and changed. On advice from the English bachelor program leaders, we did not make any changes to the course this semester. Still, we strongly support previous statements that the course should be changed to better cater for the theoretical knowledge students will need at the MA level and we encourage next years course teachers to do this work in order to ensure the quality of this course. This is also relevant to better meet the first learning outcome: "are aware of the basic concepts of the grammar of English and ways of describing and explaining them using one or more current theoretical approaches". The Principles and Parameters Theory is not the most current theoretical approach to many of the phenomena discussed in this course (e.g., case-theory, wh-movement etc.)

Learning activities:<ul><li>12 lectures</li><li>6 seminars</li><li>3 OAs</li><li>3 quizzes</li><li>'Three trees a week'</li></ul> The learning activities were said to work well in the reference group report. Following previous feedback for this course (see ‘emnerapport H2019’ and 'emnerapport V2019'), there was a sharp distinction between seminars and lectures where seminars included hands-on exercises and solutions in plenary. After the first reference group meeting, the reference students requested more opportunities for tree drawing practice. We then started ‘Three trees a week’ where three sentences were published on BB early in the week and analyses of these sentences were published early next week. The feedback on this task was very positive, the only point of improvement being that students also want more entry-level sentences for tree drawing practice. Most students did very well on the tree drawing tasks on the exam, which might indicate that this practice seems to be worth-while. Perhaps, however, instructors should also emphasize the importance of other skills in this course beyond tree drawing. The exam showed that most students struggled to provide answers in text and discuss beyond the mere structure. Students seemed very eager to learn tree drawing, but there was not a lot of participation in lectures or seminars. This might be due to the COVID-19 situation that caused us all to be more cautious at campus. We suspect that the learning outcomes will be larger if students can be more engaged with the material especially through interactive and cooperative exercises in the seminars.

The exam covered all aspects that were taught in this course and tested all the areas covered in the learning outcomes for this course, with particular focus on the second learning outcome: "have in-depth knowledge of selected phenomena in English grammar and are able to analyse these within one or more theoretical frameworks or approaches". Due to the infection control regulations, we had to make the exam a home exam. This worked well, but a regular school exam seems to be the best format for an exam in this course.

Informasjon om hvilke ordbøker som er tillatt brukt under eksamen er tilgjengelig på eksamensoppgaven.

Forelesninger, seminarer, diskusjoner og veiledning. Det forutsettes at alle studenter regelmessig bruker gjeldende læringsplattform.

Obligatorisk aktivitet:
Skriftlig arbeid på ca. 2000 ord/4-5 sider, som kan bli delt på flere innleveringer. Online quizer kan erstatte en del av dette arbeidet.
Godkjent obligatorisk aktivitet er gyldig i to semester (semesteret godkjenningen gis og påfølgende semester). Alle deler av den obligatoriske aktiviteten må avlegges i samme semester.



Kandidater som har bestått dette emnet
- har kjennskap til grunnleggende aspekter ved engelsk grammatikk og hvordan disse kan beskrives og forklares med én eller flere aktuelle teoretiske tilnærminger.
- har inngående kjennskap til utvalgte fenomen i engelsk grammatikk og er i stand til å analysere disse innenfor én eller flere teoretiske rammeverk eller tilnærminger.
- har grunnleggende kunnskap om problemstillinger i komparativ grammatikk og er i stand til å beskrive systematiske forskjeller mellom engelsk og et annet språk, for eksempel norsk.


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Teoretiske tilnærminger til engelsk språk - ENG2155