This course discusses many aspects of everyday life in the United States. The weekly topics include the geography and history of the US, schooling, and this year's presidential election.

This class will serve as a guideline for practical sentence analysis with the help of tree diagrams. It will give an outline of present-day English syntax, taking into account basic units such as word classes, phrases, sentence elements, and subordinate clauses. Its aim is to equip the participants with the theoretical knowledge and practical skills necessary for a comprehensive discussion of grammatical structures. In doing so, specific topics will be, for instance, multi-word verbs, noun phrases, types of verb complementation, ellipsis, as well as direct and indirect reported speech.
Recommended textbooks:
Biber, Douglas, Susan Conrad and Geoffrey Leech (2011). Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.
Greenbaum, Sidney and Randolph Quirk (1990). A Student’s Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.

This course first introduces theories on the origins of language. The focus then shifts to language acquisition. We will discuss the development of each linguistic level in a child’s acquisition of English as a first language. We will start with the sounds which are easiest to produce and continue up to more difficult syntactic constructions.

This seminar provides a survey of English word-formation patterns as well as the underlying morphological processes, including allomorphs and morphonology (e.g. invade – invasion). In addition to the major types of compounding (e.g. selfie stick), prefixation (e.g. internet), suffixation (e.g. writer), and conversion (e.g. to google), we will discuss the minor types of acronymy (e.g. BFF), blending (e.g. infomercial), clipping (e.g. blog), reduplication (e.g. ping-pong), and back-formation (e.g. to sight-see). Furthermore, theoretical issues such as productivity, institutionalization and lexicalization will be covered, and the make-up of technical terminology will be taken into account (e.g. biochemical).
Recommended textbooks:
Plag, Ingo (2018). Word-Formation in English. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schmid, Hans-Jörg (2016). English Morphology and Word-formation: An Introduction. 3rd ed. Berlin: Erich Schmidt.

This class investigates the structures and functions of written, spoken, and electronic discourse above the level of single sentences. Focusing on differences regarding medium, we will discuss the following questions: how can the sentences of a text be connected by cohesion (lexical and grammatical ties on the surface level) and coherence (logical connections inferred by the recipient)? In which way is the progression of given and new information organized in discourse? How can texts be classified into types (e.g. descriptive, narrative, or argumentative) and genres (e.g. story, recipe, essay, review, advertisement, or prayer)? How does interaction in conversation work (e.g. turn-taking, adjacency pairs, and repair sequences)? In which way does electronic communication (e.g. e-mail, text messaging, social media) differ from written or spoken texts? For illustrative purposes, we will examine these issues with the help of fictional and non-fictional sample texts.
Recommended textbooks:
Renkema, Jan and Christoph Schubert (2018). Introduction to Discourse Studies. New edition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Schubert, Christoph (2012). Englische Textlinguistik: Eine Einführung. 2nd ed. Berlin: Erich Schmidt.

William Labov is a contemporary scholar considered by many to be the founder of variationist sociolinguistics. His contributions to linguistics are immense and this course covers his entire career. We will discuss his research on mostly American English and how the science of linguistics has changed since his early research in the 1960s.

This seminar traces the history of the English language from Middle English (Geoffrey Chaucer) to Early Modern English (William Shakespeare). On the basis of representative examples, developments at the levels of orthography, phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicology will be outlined. In addition, the extralinguistic historical and sociocultural contexts will be discussed in order to provide a comprehensive diachronic survey. In general, this course intends to point out basic principles and features of language change and to give insights into present-day English by looking at earlier stages of the language.
Recommended textbooks:
Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable (2013). A History of the English Language. 6th ed. London: Routledge.
Jucker, Andreas (2011). History of English and English Historical Linguistics. 3rd ed. Stuttgart: Klett.

Migrant_innen sind Menschen, die ihre Heimatländer aus unterschiedlichen Gründen, wie Wiedervereinigung mit der Familie oder Bildungs- oder Arbeits-chancen, verlassen. Zu unterscheiden davon sind Personen mit einem Migrationshintergrund, also Personen, die in Deutschland geboren wurden, aber Eltern haben, die außerhalb von Deutschland geboren wurden (Baykara-Krumme & Vogel, 2020). Zu der Gruppe der Migranten gehören auch alte Individuen, die entweder im jungen Alter zugewandert sind und sich mittlerweile ein Leben in dem Aufnahmeland aufgebaut haben oder die im hohen Alter migriert sind.
Die alte Migrant_innen werden immer noch kaum in der Literatur und in öffentlichen Debatten thematisiert. Problem ist ja auch vor allem das man wenig über diese Personen, ihre Bedürfnisse, Erfahrungen, Kompetenzen usw. weiß und es stellt sich die Frage, wie Integration und kulturelle Anpassung passieren soll, wenn wir zu wenig davon wissen, was zu einem erfolgreichen Altern dieser älteren Menschen beiträgt.
Ziel dieser Veranstaltung ist es, sich aus psychologischer Perspektive mit dem Thema Migration und Alter(n) auseinander zu setzen, damit wir mit Hilfe von Theorie und Literatur Projektvorhaben für Interventionsprogramme zur Verbesserung des Alltags der alten Migranten entwerfen können.

Reading and understanding research articles is a requirement for becoming proficient in theories and research techniques. A research article is the outcome of–usually–a long process of study preparation, data analysis, and results interpretation. One can say that it is a skill to read and understand a research article properly.
The seminar will introduce techniques on how to read and understand research articles in Psychology and the Social Sciences.

Age-related changes in important life contexts in the 2nd half of adult life
The role of cognitive, motivational, and emotional development/aging in these changes
Examples in the work domain: age-related changes in work performance, motivation, and commitment as well as transition into retirement
Examples in the family domain: psychosocial adjustment during normative transitions (empty nest, grandparenting, widowhood) and nonnormative transitions (divorce, loss of a child)

Am Ende des Seminares werden die Studenten Wissen über unterschiedliche moderne Theorien und aktuelle Befunde der Heterogenität bzw. Vielfalt des Alterns aus der psychologischen Perspektive haben. Wir werden mehrere Aspekte über die Entstehung dieser Heterogenität, über spezifische Gebiete dieser Heterogenität und ihre Bedeutung für die betroffenen Menschen lernen und auch diskutieren.

Hier geht´s zur Modulbeschreibung

Hier geht´s zur Modulbeschreibung

Hier geht´s zur Modulbeschreibung

Hier geht´s zur Modulbeschreibung

Hier geht´s zur Modulbeschreibung