230189 Grammar (S) (WiSe 2004/2005)

This is one of the prescribed courses in Basismodul 1 and is intended for students in their first or second semester. Fundamentally, the purpose of the course is to acquaint students with some of the basic syntactic areas of English which tend to give teachers and learners of English difficulties. These will center chiefly around the verb, dealing with such topics as the progressive, the perfect, the modals, conditional clauses, indirect speech, and verb complementation. However, other problematic areas such as the use of the article and relative clauses will also be treated.

Work will involve reading and discussion of linguistic descriptions which deal with the points mentioned, exercises on them, and student presentations of each of the topics. One of the goals of the course will also be to acquaint the participants with a variety of grammar books and the advantages and disadvantages of each depending on what the purposes of the user are.

There will be a final exam.

Literature:

Bald, W.-D. (ed.) Kernprobleme der englischen Grammatik. Munich (Langenscheidt-Longman) 1988.

Gramley, S.E. and K.-M. Pätzold. A Survey of Modern English. London (Routledge) 1992, chap. 4 or sec. ed. 2004, chap. 5.

Palmer, F.R. The English Verb. sec. ed. London, 1988.