Incoming students often get in touch to ask what they could read to get ready for their first term with us. Below, instructors across the courses you’ll take in the first term of your first year on our undergraduate degrees give their suggestions for what you might want to explore over the summer.

 

ET117 – Foreign Language Learning – Professor Tony Liddicoat – Linguistics with a Modern Language

Students preparing to take this course with me would benefit from getting hold of a copy of Rubin & Thompson's How to be a More Successful Language Learner: Toward Learner Autonomy. This book looks at what good language learners do and what everyone else can learn from them. Part 1 of the book looks at things that you need to think about before your language course. Chapters 1-4 in particular set out some of the main challenges of learning a new language and gives advice about how you might address these in your learning.

 

ET118: Linguistics: Understanding Language – Dr Evi Sifaki – All Degrees

I recommend getting started with Fromkin, Rodman and Hyam's An Introduction to Language (10th edition) over the summer. This is a very good textbook which we will be using throughout Year 1. It provides a very useful overview of the major theoretical disciplines that we examine in linguistics in an unassuming manner, as it does not presuppose any prior linguistic knowledge. I would be thrilled if students focused on the first chapter only. This chapter explores the question of 'What is language?'. This first chapter brings to your attention a number of linguistic issues that you will be exploring in your degree and even though this is done in passing in this chapter, I expect it to make you curious about language and about the course more generally. If after reading Chapter 1, you want to continue reading, then feel free to move to Chapter 7, 'Language in Society'. Something tells me that you will find this chapter equally fascinating.

 

ET120: Research, Academic, and Professional Skills – Dr Matthew Voice – All Degrees

My module is all about individual intellectual curiosity. You’ll be tasked with designing and conducting a small-scale research project, and all good projects need that spark of inspiration! To that end, I recommend that you spend some time over the summer thinking about the full range of topics you might explore within the remit of language research. David Crystal's The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language gives an excellent and accessible overview of a huge range of linguistic research topics. I’m not expecting you to read the entire encyclopedia from beginning to end - rather, think of it as a guide through the sheer variety of issues you might explore under the remit of a linguistic research project. Part V, 'Using English', gives a particularly good insight into the kinds of sociolinguistic research you might conduct and engage with throughout your degree. This is a great way of starting to think about what linguists do when we study language, and will provide you with some excellent references to help you begin exploring more academic work.

 

ET122: History and Spread of English - Professor Richard Smith - English Language and Linguistics

You don’t need to read anything before starting ET122 History and Spread of English, which is a core module for Year 1 BA English Language & Linguistics students and open also to visiting students. However, if you want to get a taster for the kind of thing we cover, you could read through the content of the OpenLearn course ‘English in the World Today’ by Philip Seargeant of the Open University, which he says should take you eight hours but which will probably take you much less. There are a lot of good internet resources available these days for studying the topics we cover, and more of these will be recommended once you start the course. There are also good books and journals which are free to access online via the library once you become a student. A book we always suggest students should think about actually buying or asking for as a present, though, is David Crystal’s The Cambridge Encylopedia of the English Language (ideally, in its latest, third, edition). For content relevant to ET122, you could particularly read Part 1 on ‘The History of English’ and chapter 20 on ‘regional variation’.