The course starts with an overview of key concepts and approaches in comparative and contrastive linguistics. In the second part of the course, we will go through some of the major structural differences between English and German, highlighting those that often yield systematic errors among German learners of English. We will address, for example, the so-called Tense-Aspect system, alternate/raising/possessive constructions, so-called “unusual subjects/objects”, common mispronunciations, differences in the lexicon, issues of information structure and spelling. In the second part, we will also practise error analysis of texts produced by German speakers of English.
The objectives of the course thus include:
- familiarity with and awareness of major structural differences between English and German
- the ability to identify and classify learner errors and to develop exercises and strategies to counter them
- getting aware of transfer phenomena in one’s own English
Class format: in person
Assessment: term paper |
eG