Syllabus

Here is the link which shows you how to use and download VPN. You need it to download textbooks from the FU library (Primo) system

Here is the link which shows you how to find your text book

Week 1 (4 November): Basic information

Let’s get started

Lo and behold! You have come to the blog page of the seminar Introduction to linguistics II (17309). This is the place where you will find all the necessary information about our seminar.

What I offer?

This module (=seminar & lecture) offers you an introduction to the basic concepts and methods of linguistics on various levels of analysis: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics as well as text linguistics. At the end of the semester, you will understand what linguistics is about and you will be ready to attend further, more specialised courses. Moreover, by successfully attending this module, you will earn 5 ECTS credits.

What you have to do?

In order to achieve the goals mentioned above and in order to get your credit points, you have to do the following on weekly basis:

Read a short textbook chapter to prepare for the live sessions. Sometimes, there will also be optional follow-up readings.
Watch the pre-recorded video(s) to prepare for the live sessions.
Attend the live session. This is the core of our seminar. We will discuss the topics introduced in the texts & videos.
Do your homework. The homework tasks will prepare you for the weekly quizzes you have to take in order to pass. The homework will be discussed in the following live session.
Take the quiz. The quizzes will be published on Fridays at noon. You will have time until Monday to answer the questions.

This video explains how to get a (digital) copy of the textbook.

Live sessions

The live sessions take place on every Wednesday & start at 12:15. We will meet in a WebEx room which you can access using this link. In order to enter this room, you will need the following password: 5tSJB9c8YnQ

You can find useful information and tips concerning WebEx here.

Tutorial

The course is accompanied by a tutorial organised by Eva Sirlinger. All details can be found here.

If anything

If you experience any technical difficulties, if you have any questions about the course or if you simply want to talk about linguistics, feel free to contact me at any time. There is a number of ways you can do that:

My email: martin.konvicka@fu-berlin.de
My office hours: Tuesdays, 14:00-16:00 in my personal WebEx room.
My Twitter account: @teapotlinguist

Stay healthy, stay safe & see you on Wednesday!

Martin

Some important information from today’s session

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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).

Welcome to Introduction to Linguistics!

Welcome to the wonderful world of language. You’ll find all important information about this course on this blog, either in text form or as link. All important news and instructions will be posted here and also sent via email, so you cannot miss anything.

Weekly live sessions

My seminars will take place at their allotted times in my WebEx room at
https://fu-berlin.webex.com/meet/alexander.rauhut.

General information on Webex and how to use it can be found here: https://fu-berlin.webex.com/webappng/sites/fu-berlin/dashboard?siteurl=fu-berlin. Please send me an e-mail should you experience any technical problems.

Weekly workflow

Aside from the live sessions, there are three major components to this course:

Weekly readings:
You are expected to read a (short) textbook chapter to prepare for each week. I will also post optional follow-up readings from time to time.
Weekly videos:
half of the weekly seminar time is going to be replaced with video talks. Make sure you watch them in advance every week.
Weekly homework:
We will offer you a weekly homework task to test your knowledge and show you what you understood well and what you need to work on. Take it seriously, you’ll need the thinking practice for the “Prüfungsleistung”.

In Summary, what you have to do every week:
read text –> watch video(s) –> attend live session –> do homework

I will upload all necessary material to Blackboard so make sure you have access to this course over there. If I’m late with anything, feel free to send me an email in case there was some technical issue.

Links to the videos for each week will follow. Here’s a short (<2min) video that shows you how to find the main textbook. (I’ve set the video to “public” since some of you were apparently unable to watch it. You’ll need to allow your browser to accept cookies from https://fu-berlin.eu.vbrickrev.com.)

See you online!
Alexander

Welcome to the course Introduction to Linguistics (17312)

Seminar Introduction to Linguistics (17312), Thursday 10.15-11.45

Course Instructor: Magdalena, Borowik, M.A., Assistant Lecturer at the Institute of English Language and Literature, Freie Universität Berlin

Welcome to the seminar Introduction to Linguistics!

This module (seminar and lecture) offers an introduction to the basic concepts and methods of linguistics on various levels of analysis (phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and text linguistics). In the end, you will be able to understand the language of linguistics and pursue further studies in the discipline.

The seminar is a combination of live sessions, weekly readings, weekly videos, and weekly homework:

You are expected to read a textbook chapter before each of the weekly seminars;
It is crucial that you watch the videos and make sure you make notes of all of the questions that come to your mind.
Weekly homework: you are expected to do your homework after having done each week’s reading and watching the video. We will discuss the homework in the following week.

Under this link, you will find a short video explaining how to find the textbook.

Live Sessions:

The seminar will be held entirely online via my Webex personal room.

General information on Webex and how to use it can be found under the following address: https://fu-berlin.webex.com/webappng/sites/fu-berlin/dashboard?siteurl=fu-berlin

I recommend that you install the Webex app on your preferred device, as the quality is much better than the web browser version. Should you experience any technical problems, do not hesitate to contact me via email: borowik@zedat.fu-berlin.de

Best wishes,

Magdalena Borowik

[17310/17339] Introduction to Linguistics II

Welcome new and returning students!

Great that you decided to study linguistics with us! I’m looking forward to meeting you online next week and, hopefully, in person next year. Here’s some information on the module, my seminars and the the first sessions.

Course description

This module offers an introduction to the basic concepts and methods of linguistics on various levels of analysis (phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and text linguistics). In the end, you will be able to understand the language of linguistics and pursue further studies in the discipline.

Syllabus, Bibliography, Homework

I have prepared a few documents for you and exported them to a folder in my Dropbox. At the moment, this folder contains:

A document with some general information on the course, the expectable workload, etc.
The course syllabus. The syllabus tells you what we are planning to do each week and what you should do to prepare for each session. There will be texts to read and videos to watch.
The course bibliography. The bibliography explains the text citations used on the syllabus (and in the videos) and contains all necessary bibliographical information on the texts you are to read.

I will also add

Documents for each week’s homework tasks.

Live sessions

My seminars will take place via WebEx at their allotted times. My personal “room” can be found at https://fu-berlin.webex.com/meet/kirsten.middeke. If you go there at the right time, you sould automatically enter our meeting once I start it. But there are also direct links for each seminar:

See you all next week!
Kirsten

[17314] Introduction to Linguistics II

Course description

This course offers an introduction to the basic concepts and methods of linguistics and will enable you to carry out your first linguistic analyses. There will be an overview of the most important concepts and characteristic phenomena on various levels of analysis (phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, phraseology, semantics, pragmatics and text linguistics). It also provides an outlook on current methods and tools used for linguistic analysis. In the end, you will be able to understand the language of linguistics and pursue further studies in the discipline.

The course is entirely online. It will take place via WebEx on every Tuesday 12:15 at my personal room https://fu-berlin.webex.com/meet/s.ho. You will receive an email invitation of WebEx from me for the first session. So please do remember to check your email and download WebEx before. More about how to use WebEx can be found here.

See you all next week!

Cheers,

Shuk Han Ho

Welcome

Welcome everyone! I am Eva and I am in the 5th semester of my Bachelor in English and French with the option of becoming a teacher. This Tutorial is meant to give you an opportunity to practise and ask questions outside of the seminars and lecture. I will be there to help you as it is not that long ago that I was a first semester myself and full of questions in regards to Linguistics. I therefore wish to support you in diving into the fascinating realms of language studies.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me: evas29@zedat.berlin-fu.de

The Tutorial will take place through Webex and you can choose either Tuesday or Thursday, from 2:15-3:45 pm.

Tuesday:

Meeting-Link:https://fu-berlin.webex.com/fu-berlin/j.php?MTID=mf511595681984fef2a98c44ccb00db9b

Meeting-Kennnummer:121 174 1482 Passwort:npBN5fyut82

Thursday:

Meeting-Link:https://fu-berlin.webex.com/fu-berlin/j.php?MTID=m3f903f3e1be029e2446853f35fad4309

Meeting-Kennnummer:121 697 6271 Passwort:AHx3me9gJ5D

See you there!

Welcome, new students!

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

[17308] Survey of Language and Linguistics

Course description

The module consists of two parts – the lecture “Survey of Language and Linguistics”, which is mostly taught in the form of a live lecture in a video conference format and which all students attend together, and the seminars “Introduction to Linguistics”, for which students are split up into groups and which are taught as a mixture of recorded presentations and live video sessions.

In the lecture, I will introduce each week’s topic in broad terms and provide a general space for discussion, as well as trying to provide a general linguistic education. In the seminars, your instructors will then get into the details of linguistic terminology and analysis.

The lecture takes place in my “Webex” video conference room, which you can access under http://fu-berlin.webex.com/meet/anatol.stefanowitsch can sign in with your ZEDAT email address and password. It is possible to use this video conferencing system in your web browser, but I recommend that you install the Webex Meetings app on your preferred device, as the quality is much better!

Course schedule