Due to medical reasons, Prof. Moldero

 won't be teaching her class on Monday. 
All work assigned for that class will be supervised in the tutorials.

Midterm and Makeup essay 2013

Please bring Fairclough to class tomorrow and the remaining texts assigned for your midterm the following class. We'll be working with study guides to dispel your doubts.

Julia

To All Students

Dear All

It has recently come to my notice that some students have voiced a complaint before SAE over the reading list prescribed for the coming Midterm Test Part on applied theory. To my surprise, they claimed that some topics had not been covered in the tutorials and that there were too many readings to do. While I can understand that exams are often a source of anxiety for everyone, there are one or two things I feel I need to bring to your attention at this point.

After reviewing class reports on the activities you have done with your tutors and discussing the issue with them, we have been able to ascertain that the topics in the tutorials were properly dealt with. Students were provided with study guides specially designed to highlight the main issues and facilitate home reading, and tutors covered the texts adequately in class, including awareness-raising, discussion, analysis and application activities.

As for the concerns about the length of the reading list, we must consider that it covers at least six months’ work. The texts were assigned for home reading and treated one at a time in the course of the lessons, as those of you who have followed the coursework regularly will confirm. It is no less true, though, that in many cases there has been poor compliance with the reading assignments according to your assistant teachers’ reports and, of course, those students who fall behind with their work or fail to study conscientiously will find considerable difficulty tackling several readings at the last minute.

And then again, still allowing that there are, in fact, a large number of texts to read for the midterm, Language IV is no subject to be sitting through and just managing a few deadlines. Upgrading one´s language level and acquiring a professional discourse management is a complex matter that requires large exposure, steady dedication and commitment. I must also remind you that as students towards the end of our university course, we are expected to read extensively, unless we are prepared to admit that students from the English course are less apt than those from other degree courses in our school and others, where the reading load for their midterms is just as heavy, if not heavier, than in our case.

Having said this, we are willing to take a flexible approach and we have decided to postpone the date of the Midterm Test Part 2 to Friday October 18th so as to allow time for revision of the key points and to give everyone the opportunity to check their doubts both at lectures and tutorials. In order to dispel your concerns, I would like you to know that the readings are grouped around three central issues as follows, Discourse Genres, Discourse and the News and Discourse, Ideology and Power, and that the tasks and /or questions on the test will be modelled after the tasks covered in the Tutorials and questions in the Study Guides.

With best wishes,

Prof. Ana Moldero

To All Students -Class 2013

Updated Reading List for Midterm Part 2: Theory

(Friday, October 18th, 2013)

The contents of the test will address three central issues as follows:

Discourse Genres

·       Eggins and Martin, “Genres and Registers of Discourse”

·       Swales, “The concept of Genre” (Chapter 1)

·       Swales, “Genres, Schemata and Acquisition” (Chapter 5)

·       Bhatia “Perspectives on Written Discourse” (Chapter 1)

·       Bhatia “Generic Integrity” (Chapter 5)

·       Gill and Whedbee, “Rhetoric”

Discourse and the News

·       Hartley, Understanding News, “News as communication” (Chapter 1)

·       Hartley, Understanding News, “News and society” (Chapter 3)

·       Hartley, Understanding News, “Selection and construction” (Chapter 5)

·       van Dijk, “The study of news” (Chapter 1)

·       van Dijk, “The structure of news” (Chapter 2)

·       Bell, “The Discourse Structure of News Stories” (Chapter 3)

Discourse, ideology and power

·       van Dijk, “Opinions and Ideologies in the Press” (Chapter 2)

·       Fairclough, Language and Power, “Discourse and power” (Chapter 3)

·       Fairclough, Language and Power “Discourse, common sense and ideology” (Chapter 4)