Just to make sure that there is no confusion – there are two types of “homework” associated with this module:

1. The “Exam Questions” (also referred to as “transfer tasks”) – there is one exam question every week, published on the Blackboard page of the Lecture on Friday at 12:00, which you must submit by Monday at 14:00. Your answers will be graded and your final grade will be based on these. You can consult your notes, books, the internet and other materials when answering these questions, but you must not discuss them with each other or with other people.
2. The homework exercises posted by the instructors of your individual seminars (either on the blog or on the blackboard page of the seminar, not the lecture!). These are meant to give you opportunities to practice, they will typically be posted after the seminar. Ask your instructors about feedback. The exercises will not be graded and will not form part of your final grade. You can consult any materials you want and also discuss the exercises with each other.

1. For the first few weeks, the lecture will take place directly in my Webex room – simply go to https://fu-berlin.webex.com/meet/anatol.stefanowitsch – please remember to turn off your microphone when you join the room, turn it on only when you want to speak.
2. If you do not have a place in one of the seminars yet or if you have a place but want to switch to a different seminar, please fill out this form by Friday, 6th November: https://forms.gle/MARvV3AnAQuE6keG6
3. Attendance is obligatory in the lecture and in the seminars. You can miss up to three classes without having to tell us or giving us a reason, but please make sure to ask someone you know about what was discussed during class.
4. The exam for this course will be delivered in the form of one so-called “transfer question” per week, which will be posted on the Blackboard page of the lecture each Friday at 12:00 and must be answered before Monday 14:00. Each question will be graded and your final grade will be the average grade of all your answers, excluding your worst two grades. You may use any resources you want in answering the questions, but you must not discuss it with other students or copy other student’s results.
5. If you have not been enrolled automatically on Blackboard, please go to “Course Search” and search for “Course ID contains PHILGEIST_V_17308_20W” – when you have found the course, you can self-enroll. Please be patient, the Blackboard system is always slow at the beginning of a new semester.
6. There will be WhatsApp groups for the individual seminars, where you can connect (your instructors and I will not be members, this is just for you). We will create the groups once we have made sure everyone has a place in one of the seminars.
7. Follow us on Instagram @fu.linguistics or (if you are a bit old-fashioned) Twitter @structengfu for campus atmosphere, pictures from our home offices, linguistics fun and a sense of community (the woolly socks in the colors of the Freie Universität which I am wearing on today’s picture were handmade for me and are not for sale, sorry).

The Linguistics section of the Freie Universität’s English program would like to congratulate you on being accepted into one of the top universities in the country and thank you for choosing us!

Of course, we would like to welcome you in person to our beautiful campus in Berlin’s historic Dahlem district, but the global COVID-19 pandemic has made this impossible. Your first semester at university will take place entirely (or almost entirely) online – through video and audio conferences, blogs, forums, text chats and email.

But don’t worry – we will make sure that your start into university life will be just as interesting, inspiring and personal as it would have been under different circumstances.

In your first semester, you will take two modules – Introduction to English Linguistics and Introduction to Literary Studies. This blog is your starting point for everything related to the first of these modules – check this blog regularly several times a week, and you will always know what to do and where to be at what time!

The module consists of a lecture “Survey of Language and Linguistics” and a seminar “Introduction to Linguistics”. You are all in the same lecture, which takes place on Mondays from 14:15 to 15:45. For further information, simply click on the link “Lecture” in the menu. For the seminars, you have been divided into six groups. To find out more about your seminar, click on the course number of your seminar.

If you are confused, please feel free to send us an email at structeng@fu-berlin.de. Make sure your email contains your full name and your student-id number!

To find out a little bit more about us or to contact us personally, look at the Contact page of this blog.

If you want, you can follow us on Instagram @fu.linguistics for a mixture campus atmosphere, linguistics fun and getting to know us a little better (if you are concerned about your privacy – don’t worry, we will not follow you back or look at your instagram posts unless you specifically ask us!).

Again, welcome to the Freie Universität and have fun!

– The Linguistics group