340053 UE Text and oral communication English (2025S)

"There's a blaze of light in every word | It doesn't matter which you heard | The holy or the broken." (L. Cohen)

Transcultural communication is about cooperation, compromise, tolerance.

This course focusses on the performed text. We will listen to the spoken word, identify (and mimic) patterns—and break with patterns. We will mostly work with voice and body (here and now), sometimes with pen and paper. And mind you, understanding accents is about exposure and patience. Not being in a hurry, and not getting upset.

The difference between PRINTED and PERFORMED text? Mosaic and kaleidoscope!

A performed text (spoken, embodied, enacted; f2f)—even when recorded—always appears to be volatile (moving, vanishing?) when we reach out to touch and hold on to it.

We will research, plan, design, rehearse and deliver presentations on a bunch of topics, sequencing selected content and multimodal elements for accuracy and their impact on the audience.

We will use (amongst other sources) the BBC Sounds radio app to listen live in class (or on the go) to vibrant and varied symphonies of (new) sounds and voices. Then we will retell, reenact in class what we have heard. We will also play BROKEN TELEPHONE: Some of you will have to leave the room while the others are listening; then you will be told about it by one of your classmates (immediately afterwards, but still outside); finally, you will have to perform in class what you have heard in the secondhand account …

As we often work in highly asymmetric communicative settings, we will not only determine the purpose of a given assignment but also reflect upon the concept of PURPOSE in general: Whose purpose, really? To whose benefit?

You will also learn to deal with circumstances when comprehension is not possible (e.g. dialect; articulation/enunciation, volume ... background noise). What if somebody is incoherent, or when someone often digresses, adding aside after aside, and 'footnote' after 'footnote' (and perhaps even a footnote to the aside) …? How to deal with stats and figures, (unheard of) names, a series of proper nouns, a list of items?

In this course, you will experience a collaborative and supportive environment.
We will embrace our accents (i.e., part of what we are)–nothing to get rid of–and broaden our repertoire.–––Do we dare bring all our own Englishes into the classroom?

Learning objectives:
(i) to improve listening comprehension and broaden performance repertoire;
(ii) to hone performance skills with a focus on the communication situation and text organization.

Live performances and peer-reviewed out-of-class recordings.
Individual, pair and group work.

So, let’s hit the ground running …