THIS CLASS WILL BE TAUGHT ONLINE (there will be no change in modality).  Students on the Durham as well as the Manchester campus are welcome to enroll. 

DESCRIPTION:

This class is intended to help those who have an interest in studying English Grammar, such as pre-service teachers, and who want to build (or build on) a strong foundation in the history of the English Language and in modes of language usage and style.

We can't understand grammar without familiarizing ourselves with the origins of the English Language. To this end, the first half of the semester will focus on discovering how English developed--and is developing. We'll also find out about Englishes: British English, American English, African-American English, Australian English, to name just a few. We'll also be probing some of the social issues surrounding the notion of Standard English and non-standard dialects and variants. Our research paper will focus on one of these elements of English.

Furthermore, the only way we can become better users of English is by engaging in rigorous revision and analysis of our own writing. Thus, in the second half of the semester, we'll be revising our research paper. We'll focus first on usage issues (commas, sentence boundaries, paragraphs etc.) using The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers; we'll then move on to matters of style (language choice, varieties of sentence structures, coherence). Throughout this process, we'll be using our own research papers as models in the revision and grammar-learning process.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2001. ISBN-10: 0374527075; ISBN-13: 978-0374527075.

McCrum, Robert, Robert MacNeil, and William Cran. The Story of English. 3rd rev. ed. New York: Penguin, 2003. ISBN-10: 0142002313; ISBN-13: 978-0142002315.

Ruszkiewicz, John, et al. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers. 9th ed. New York: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2010. ISBN 9780205751983.