Proponowane seminaria magisterskie na I roku 2,5 - letnich niestacjonarnych zaocznych studiów magisterskich (2008/2009)
Dr Janusz Kaźmierczak
Media, culture and society
The seminar will equip the students with a set of conceptual and methodological tools with which to investigate an important aspect of culture. The focus will be on the representations carried and the role played by the media in modern society. Students will be introduced to media theory and research. The conceptual and methodological apparatus will enable the students to complete their MA thesis projects that will involve studying the representations carried or the role played by the media in British or American culture, or investigating links between British, American and Polish culture as observed in the media. Accordingly, in addition to the theoretical input, the seminar will offer guidance in developing and applying research skills, including making library searches, assessing literature, as well as planning and writing MA theses.
Suggested reading:
Fiske, John. 1990. Introduction to communication studies. London: Routledge.
Thwaites, Tony – Lloyd Davis – Warwick Mules. 1994. Tools for cultural studies: An introduction. Melbourne: Macmillan.
Prof. dr Joseph Kuhn
American literature
This seminar will try to cover as much as possible of the chronological range of American literature – from its beginnings in Puritan writings to its latest manifestations in ipostmodernism. As this is a very broad field, the seminar will concentrate on a few central subjects: for example, the 1920s writings of the Lost Generation; Faulkner and the literature of the American South; the nineteenth-century fiction of Hawthorne and Melville; regional writers of the later nineteenth century; and the Confessional poets. Please note that this seminar requires close and intensive study of original literary texts. It is therefore suitable for those students who have the aptitude and application for this kind of academic work.
Suggested reading:
Andrzej Kopcewicz, Marta Sienicka. 1982, 1983. Historia literatury Stanów Zjednoczonych w zarysie.(Tom I i II). W-wa: PWN.
Leslie A. Fiedler. 1966. Love and death in the American novel. New York: Stein and Day, 1996.
Dr Agnieszka Setecka
English literature
The seminar will be devoted to the analysis of English literary texts of different literary periods with emphasis on literature of the Victorian Age. The focus will be on the novel but poetry (especially narrative poetry) and drama will also be considered. The seminar will discuss, among others, Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Charles Dickens’s “The Cricket on the Hearth”, George Eliot’s Adam Bede, E.M. Forster’s Howards End, Jeanette Winterson’s Lighthouse Keeping as well as poems by Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson and Christina Rossetti, and plays by G. B. Shaw or Oscar Wilde. Texts will be analysed with regard to recurrent motifs (e.g., the motif of madness or of virtue rewarded), to generic conventions (e.g., conventions of sensation novels, detective fiction or of dramatic monologue), or underlying ideology.
Suggested reading:
Daiches, David. 1992. A critical history of English literature. (4 vols.) London: Secker-Warburg.
Davis, Philip 2002. The Oxford English literary history. Vol. 8. 1830-1880. The Victorians. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
dr Marcin Turski
Analysis of literary translations into Polish of selected texts of US and British literature
The first objective of the seminar is to familiarize the students with the major translation theories, with emphasis on such issues as definitions of translations and equivalence, translation techniques, translation errors, and translator’s competence. Against this theoretical background, the students will get acquainted with a broad range of aspects of literary translation and will provide analyses of selected Polish translations. Specific credit requirements include timely reading of assignments, active participation in discussions, well-researched in-class presentations, good attendance record, and adequate progress on the M.A. project.
Suggested reading:
Pisarska A., Tomaszkiewicz T. 1998. Współczesne tendencje przekładoznawcze. Poznań: Wyd. Nauk. UAM
Venuti L. (ed.) 2000. The Translation Studies Reader. London-New York: Routledge
Dr Michał Remiszewski
Managing language teaching online
The increasing popularity of e-learning and CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) results from the attractiveness of new technologies and their growing applicability in a language course. The seminar will be devoted to managing language teaching process by means of computer software and, especially, Internet-based applications. The participants will become familiar with aspects of creating educational content for online use as well as designing new functionalities in e-learning software. The discussion of CALL will be held in the framework of current methodological theories.
Suggested reading:
Chapelle, Carol A. 2003. English language learning and technology: Lectures on applied linguistics in the age of information and communication technology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
Hubbard, Philip and Mike Levy (eds.). 2006. Teacher education in computer-assisted language learning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
Dr Karolina Rataj
The psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic aspects of language processing
The seminar is designed for students interested in issues in cognitive psychology and neuropsychology that contribute to our understanding of language processing. Discussed will be stages of language development, processes of language perception (including unusual perception of language, e.g., synaesthesia), bilingualism, the role of affect in language perception, language organization in the brain. Also included in the program will be the contribution that research into disordered language (aphasia, dysphasia, language disorders in schizophrenia, and language in autism) has made to understanding how language is processed in a healthy brain. The seminar will familiarize students with the methodology used in research on language comprehension. Students will be expected to conduct their own small-scale study on a selected aspect of language comprehension.
Suggested reading:
Altmann, Gerry T. M. (ed.). 2002. Psycholinguistics: critical concepts in psychology. London; New York: Routledge.
Gleason, Jean B. (red.). 2005. Psycholingwistyka. Gdańsk: Gdańskie Wydawnictwo Psychologiczne.
dr Aleksandra Jankowska
Task-based learning and teaching
The aim of the seminar is to examine the principles and effectiveness of Task-based Learning and Teaching. The course will also cover such issues as using tasks to develop the four language skills, the influence of task types on classroom interaction patterns, the influence of planning and task repetition on student performance, principles of task design and task-based assessment. Major studies devoted to measuring the effectiveness of tasks will also be discussed. The students will be encouraged to analyze and evaluate tasks included in ELT coursebooks used in Poland as well as design their own tasks to supplement existing teaching materials with special focus on tasks suitable for higher levels of language instruction. The preferred format of the MA thesis will be a study examining various features of tasks and their influence on language learning.
Suggested reading:
Ellis, Rod. 2003, Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford: OUP.
Willis, Dave – Jane Willis. 2007. Doing task-based teaching. Oxford: OUP.
Dr Dorota Nowacka
Barriers to effective foreign language communication
The seminar will investigate some communication problems learners encounter in the foreign language classroom, such as polarization, indiscrimination, fact-inference confusion, the dynamism of grammar, i.e. communication problems inherent in the language. Furthermore, the seminar will discuss such barriers as decontextualized vocabulary, inefficient listening strategies, the classroom situation (i.e. power and status difference, communication noise, psychological and social context, temporal and physical context), the structured aspect of a communicative task, and the learner’s self. Unless foreign language learners learn to communicate in the classroom, they will never be capable of communicating in real life situations. Therefore, the seminar will include some pedagogical implications as well.
Suggested reading:
Kasper, G. and Kellerman, E. (eds). 1997. Communication strategies. Psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives. London/New York: Longman.
Lynch, T. 1996. Communication in the language classroom. Oxford: OUP.
Dr Magdalena Kębłowska
Individual differences in language learning
It is believed that language teaching success can only be achieved if the student’s cognitive (e.g. hemisphericity), affective (e.g. the level and type of anxiety), and social (e.g. attitude to L2 community) are considered by the teacher. In the seminar, the participants will revise and expand their knowledge of the individual learner differences as well as will become familiar with research findings in this area. They will also get insights into ELT research methods (data collection and analysis) and learn how to interpret and evaluate the available literature on the selected topics. By the end of the first year the students should be able to specify the topic of their MA thesis and decide on adequate techniques of data collection and analysis.
Suggested reading:
Brown. H. D. 1987. Principles of language learning and teaching. Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice Hall Regents.
Skehan, P. 1989. Individual differences in second-language learning. London: Edward Arnold.
Dr Danuta Wiśniewska
Theoretical and pedagogical issues in EFL teaching
The seminar is addressed to teachers and prospective teachers wishing to gain a broader perspective on EFL teaching. Its aim is:
– to give an overview of recent educational theories (e.g., humanism, constructivism, critical theory, socio-cultural theory, self-determination theory) and to examine how they relate to the context of teaching English as a foreign language;
– to explore the implications of these theories for the actual practice of English as a foreign language teaching and learning. Special attention will be drawn to the following issues: (1) teacher professional development, teacher autonomy, teachers’ philosophies, teacher research, exploratory teaching, the role of mediation and dialogue; (2) understanding of the person as foreign language learner, learner centredness, situated learning, dynamic assessment;
Suggested reading:
Holliday A. 1994. Appropriate Methodology and Social Context. Cambridge: CUP.
Legutke M., H. Thomas. 1993. Process and Experience in the Language Classroom. London and New York: Longman.
