Updating about the 2012 English Language Course (TEFLI – LM1)

The course so far (5th April 2012)

  1. Lessons take place according to a timetable agreed upon by the class (you can find it on this site).
  1. The main theoretical points in the programme were covered during the first three weeks and practice with corpora was introduced [British National Corpus (BNC), Brown Corpus, Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)].
  1. All attending students are now registered users of the BNC (free registration at http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/ which also allows the free use of COCA).
  1. Non-attending students are required to register if they want to get acquainted with the multiple use of corpora (as a learning, writing and translating tool). When registering, please use your official university username, and when asked about your ‘status’, click ‘undergraduate’ (by clicking ‘graduate’ there are some problems).
  1. On March 30th a passage was translated from L2 to L1, by using only the BNC and, if necessary, an online dictionary and thesaurus (www.thefreedictionary.com). Almost all students worked individually in the A and B laboratories at CLA.
  1. The following week the translation was corrected and a sample of a reasonably good solution is posted on this site.
  1. The concept of “concordance” was implemented by the use of an actual concordancer (AntConc). AntConc, which is safely and freely downloadable at http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html, will be used during the remaining lessons with both general and literary texts. A simple guide on how to use it is at http://wmtang.org/tag/antconc/
  1. During oral exams all students will be required to work with the BNC, launching some queries and explaining their procedures. Students will also be tested on the use of AndConc.
  1. Professor Guy Aston, who teaches English at the University of Bologna (Scuola Superiore per Interpreti e Traduttori), will be in Urbino and hold a seminar on 2-3 May (dates to be confirmed).