• Oswald Steve

In this introduction proseminar, students will learn how to read, understand and summarise scientific articles in the field of linguistics – with a focus on the discipline of pragmatics, which studies the way language is used by speakers.

In the first three sessions of the semester, methodological input on (i) how to make sense of scientific articles in linguistics and on (ii) how to identify their main claims and arguments will be given and discussed. We will then train and consolidate these analytic and synthetic skills during the semester by reading together 10 scientific articles or book chapters that are representative of the discipline – but also of the research orientations in English linguistics at the Department here in Fribourg. For each of these articles, students will be expected to produce a 2-page reading report, which should serve as a summary of the article that any other student can use to have a clear idea of its content.

Attendance and participation are compulsory. Students will need to hand in reading reports for all 10 articles. One of them will be selected as the reading report that will be given a grade.

At the end of the proseminar, students should:

• be able to read and understand scientific articles in the fields of linguistics and pragmatics
• have developed analytic and synthetic reading skills, among which:
  • identifying the logical structure of a scientific article
  • identifying the main claim and the main arguments put forward by the author(s)
  • synthesising the latter in a concise and legible reading report
• be familiar with different areas of research in linguistics and pragmatics

The list of bibliographical references will be given on the first day of class and all readings will be made available on Moodle.