ATS2673-3673: History and Sociolinguistics of English

Assignment 1 - Critical Review (15%)

Assignment 2 - Short Answers (25%)

Assignment 3 - Major Essay / Research project (30%)

Exam - Mix of long and short answers (30%)

This unit is an elective for linguistics taught at Monash Clayton campus. For those of you who have taken English Language Unit 1 & 2, this content will be familiar. The unit is structured like so:

Week 1: Introduction
Week 2 and 3: Old English - 449AD to 1100AD
Week 4 and 5: Middle English - 1100AD to 1500AD
Week 6 and 7: Early Modern English - 1500AD to 1800AD
Week 8: The development of standardisation and purism
Week 9 and 10: Modern English - 1800AD to present
Week 11: Global Englishes
Week 12: Review and hands on with Old English/Medieval texts

Although this didn't exactly go according to plan, we managed to cover it all. I found the unit overall fairly good. It was challenging at times but the assessments are designed so you can pass (pending you have attended/listened to the seminars). I would not take this unit if you have no background in linguistics. Kate made every effort to cater for these people, but as a linguistics student myself I often found some of the discussion hard to follow. I can't see how a non-linguistics student would cope. But hey, give it a go if it is something you are into My major complaint is about the seminars. This subject demands a tutorial and a lecture. The seminar set up was a disaster because so many (~50) people took the unit and we were crammed into this ghastly lecture theatre with backboards and no recording facilities.

Kate was approachable and ran the unit well. She was, however, very busy at times, so emails were often never replied to and consultations hard to get. She does make every effort to make time, though.

Assessments

There were four major assessments for this unit. Participation was not marked. Assignment 1 was a critical review of one of five articles. It's a reasonably easy 15%, but don't leave it to the last minute like I did The short answer assignment is a very easy 25%. Many of the answers simply require you to write what is already present in Kate's book of notes. Just don't go overboard with them, a lot of people overthought every answer and subsequently missed the point of the question. Assignment 3 was interesting. It was originally a 'major essay' but Kate altered it and it became a research project. Some of them require a lot more preparation than others, but they are all evenly matched in terms of difficulty. Some are more data driven, others require an opinion. I enjoyed this assignment, but it is due during week 11 which can be hell at the best of times.

Exam
The exam was worth 30% of the overall unit mark. It was mostly straight forward except for the first question. Most of the questions were short/long answers. They covered almost all the topics covered in the lectures. Now... the first question. That was an absolute doozey. It was about grammar over time and you needed to have extensive knowledge of English grammatical functions. Study hard for that section because you will need it!

- Kate Burridge

Kate is the main lecturer/tutor you will have. She is an exceptional teacher and makes even the most tedious of Old English grammar interesting. She will primarily discuss the 'inner' history of English with you ('inner' history meaning the complex changes in the language). Note that she rarely uses lecture slides and usually follows the notes provided. Although this worked, you'll find yourself never writing many notes during the lecture (this can be both bad and good!).

- Robert 'Bob' Dinapoli

Bob is a guest lecturer (a former lecturer at the University of Melbourne) who will discuss the 'outer' history of English ('outer' meaning the socio-political events) and what happened to the literature at the time. Bob is lovely, but his lectures do drag on and he finishes right on 2 hours He has a great passion for English and balances between a historical view of the language and literary interpretation. He even speaks in Old English!! He does use slides, but they mostly have paradigms and text not worth copying down.

Yes there was one, but it was quite old and had nothing to do with what we did during the unit.

3.5 out of 5

Yes, without screen capture. This problem stemmed from the lecture theatre we were put in. Kate recorded the lecture audio and uploaded it manually to MULO, so expect online lecture availability to be slow.

As of 2015, we used A Biography of the English Language. I honestly would not bother buying this one. It simply goes into greater detail of what you will discuss in lectures. Kate provided a neat little summary of the entire unit in the first lecture with extensive notes. That is all you will need.

1x 2 hour seminar per week

Semester 1, 2015

N/A at this time, but ~HD.