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GERM-B555

Topics in linguistics

academic year
2025-2026

Course teacher(s)

Philippe DE BRABANTER (Coordinator)

ECTS credits

5

Language(s) of instruction

english

Course content

Speech and thought representation
The seminar requires students to read and discuss articles on what is usually called "reported speech" and to analyse real-life interactional data.

Objectives (and/or specific learning outcomes)

In this course you will
- get acquainted with a variety of approaches to a single object of research 
- get familiar with the fact that it's quite normal for there to be distinct approaches to a single topic, and you will learn to appreciate and assess their pros and cons
- write a research report and deliver an oral presentation of your findings.

Prerequisites and Corequisites

Required and Corequired knowledge and skills

GERM-B555

CEFRL

Oral production

C1

Written production

C1

Listening comprehension

C1

Reading comprehension

C1


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_Reference_for_Languages

Teaching methods and learning activities

  • Seminar: 2 credits
  • Individual work: 2 credits
  • Oral presentations: 1 credit

References, bibliography, and recommended reading

See portfolio (articles and book chapters) on the UV

Course notes

  • Université virtuelle

Contribution to the teaching profile

This course makes the following contributions:

1. Training students to think critically (by insisting on preciselfy defined concepts and rigorous analyses)
2. Developing students' command of English
3. Making students aware of the close connections between social factors and speakers' linguistic choices
4. Training students to adopt a scientific approach to language phenomena (cf. point 1)
4.1. They learn to formulate a research question
4.2. They learn to plan a research assignment
4.3. They learn to identify the relevant literature
4.4. They learn to write a scientific paper in English
4.5. They learn to think independently but also to cooperate with classmates
5. Helping students give a state-of-the-art oral presentation

Other information

Contacts

Philippe De Brabanter
AZ4.109
Philippe.De.Brabanter@ulb.be

Campus

Solbosch

Evaluation

Method(s) of evaluation

  • Personal work
  • Oral presentation
  • Written report

Personal work

Oral presentation

Written report

  • Active classroom participation
  • Homework
  • A research report
  • Oral presentation/defence of the report

Mark calculation method (including weighting of intermediary marks)

The final grade for the course will be determined by the following components

  • Participation + homework (20%)
  • Written report (50%) 
  • Oral presentation (30%)

Students who didn't obtain the credits for the course in June will have to redo in August all the parts of the evaluation for which they got less than 10. If they did not get half the marks for participation, the weighting of the marks changes in August: 60% for the written report and 40% for the oral presentation.

Language(s) of evaluation

  • english

Programmes