The teaching is organized as follows:

Learning outcomes

The course aims at helping students improve, consolidate and further develop their competence in English, particularly with reference to the four basic skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) within the context of the language of news, advertising, and politics.

Program

Pre-requisites:
Entry level required: B1 (intermediate), according to the European framework at the beginning of the course.
In order to give the exam, the students need to have reached the B2 level (post-intermediate).

Programme
INTRODUCTORY MODULE (36 hours)

1. basic aspects of the history of the English language;
2. main phonetic symbols (IPA alphabet);
3. English morphology, with special reference to the most recurrent affixes;
4. analysis and discussion of English TV programmes (mostly from SKY NEWS, BBC WORLD, CNN and FOX NEWS);
5. analysis of political debates and political speeches (with special attention to the covert/overt ideological background.

ADVANCED MODULE (36 hours)
1. Analysis of political speeches, highlighting the rhetoric-discursive structures typical of political language;
2. analysis of TV / on-line / printed advertisements, highlighting the rhetoric-discursive structures typical of the language of advertisements;
3. analysis of newspaper texts, with special reference to news reports, features and commentaries;
4. selection, presentation and evaluation of internet sites to be accessed in order to select:
a) articles and documents (pertaining to the language of news and politics);
b) on-line dictionaries and grammar books.

Examination Methods

Written test, divided into five sections:
1. Contents and lexicon;
2. Phonetics;
3. Morphology ;
4. Textual analysis: part 1 – analysis of an advertisement;
5. Textual analysis: part 2 – analysis of a short political speech or of a newspaper piece.