ENG BASF: Engelsk sprog: system, struktur og funktion

In this course you will be introduced to the fundamentals of linguistic knowledge with a focus on grammar and phonetics. This knowledge, along with the proficiencies and competences you will develop throughout the course, is crucial to becoming a reflexive and critical language expert who knows the whats, hows and whys of English – how to use it best and how to analyse the ways others use it. 

You will learn grammar through a functional approach to the structure of the English language that explains why we use English in the ways we do. In this way you will gain skills in the analysis of syntactic, morphological and semantic structures in authentic language use. You will also learn the foundations of phonetic theory, as well as insights into the phonological structure of the English language. This will allow you to understand and analyse the ways in which we produce spoken language, and to recognise and theorise variation between different accents of English. 

The course will enable you to identify and discuss important differences between the linguistic systems and structures of the English and Danish languages. To be able do so, you will learn how to conduct qualitative analyses of linguistic data using both digital and analogous methods. This course will thus provide you with competencies which will be useful in professional contexts as a reader, writer, speaker and/or teacher.

With its focus on spoken and written text production, this course is integrated with the other first semester courses and provides foundational skills and knowledge for second semester courses, e.g. English Linguistics: Use and Variation.