Italian and English Language and Linguistics - BA (Hons)

This module will focus specifically on the level of language we call grammar. Each week students will focus on a particular aspect of English grammar (e.g. word classes, grammatical functions, sentence structure) from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Students will be provided with analytical tools for understanding and constructing arguments about linguistic structure (e.g. morpho-syntactic tests, constituency tests). Through being provided with a conceptual framework for description and analysis, students will gain a deeper understanding of English grammar, whereas practical application will enable students to be more critical of their own written work, and thus also to develop and hone their writing skills.

The module is particularly useful for students who are studying language or literature, as it enables them to compare styles in light of grammatical information and provides them with analytical skills for understanding language and language-related behaviour. Likewise, the module is also useful for students wanting to improve their writing in an academic context as well as those contemplating a career in publishing, journalism or teaching, in which the ability to express oneself accurately and succinctly is essential.

This module will begin by offering a basic description of speech sounds, with emphasis on those used in English and detailed descriptions first of consonants, and then of vowels. The gaps between sound and orthography will be highlighted as symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are learned. The course will then move from phonetics (the study of speech sounds) to phonology (the study of the sound systems in language), focusing on phonotactics and other phonological rules of English. At the end of the term, basic prosodic concepts such as stress, rhythm, intonation and phrasing will be discussed. The main focus of the module will be on the standard variety of English spoken in the UK (often referred to as Received Pronunciation, or RP), but phonetic and phonological variation in non-UK and non-standard varieties of English will also be discussed (rhotic vs. non-rhotic varieties; luck-look merger).

In the decade between 1943-1952, Italian cinema produced a series of films that departed dramatically from the traditions of mainstream cinema (both that of Hollywood and that produced under Fascism). These 'Neorealist' films were enormously influential around the world and had a lasting impact on film technique and style. This course will introduce students to the study of Italian cinema through an exploration of Neorealism – arguably the most significant 'movement' in Italian film history – and the work of several of the major Italian filmmakers involved in the movement (e.g. Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti).

In particular the course will consider:

- How to analyse a film, in terms of narrative, technique and style..

- The ways in which Neorealism constituted an alternative mode of practice to that of mainstream cinema (e.g. Hollywood) and the ways in which it rejected the tenets of the cinema of the Fascist era.

- The notion of realism in the cinema, in particular through the work of theorists such as André Bazin and Cesare Zavattini, and the ways in which this concept can be applied to the films studied.

- The social and political upheavals of wartime and post-war Italy and how these were reflected and negotiated in film.

- How and why Neorealism ended in the early 1950s and the ways in which its legacy is reflected in later Italian films.

This module aims to introduce students to Italian literature and culture from the Unification to the late 20th century. It will explore the principal historical events of this period (e.g. the Risorgimento, Fascism, the Second World War and the birth of the new Republic, the 'economic miracle', the ‘years of lead’ and the Berlusconi era) and examine how these periods have been interpreted by a number of key literary authors, artists and intellectuals such as Di Lampedusa, Vittorini and Pasolini. Particular emphasis will be placed on the relationship between Italian literature and social and political history.

This module presents and discusses the properties of human language, explaining how the discipline of Linguistics investigates and theorises about these properties. It familiarises the students with the goals and principles of Linguistics, as well as their development over the years. Students will also learn about core concepts and debates (e.g. language universals, relationship between language and cognition).

This is an intensive module for absolute beginners, Post-GCSE students and students who have not yet mastered level A2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). On successfully completing the module students will have mastered level A2. The emphasis in this course is on acquiring a sound knowledge of the structure of the language as well as basic vocabulary and cultural insights while developing the speaking, listening, reading and writing skills.

This module is for Post-A-level students and students who have mastered level A2 but not yet B1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). On successfully completing the module students will have mastered level B1. The emphasis in this course is on furthering knowledge of the structure of the language as well as vocabulary and cultural insights while further developing the speaking, listening, reading and writing skills.

The course offers an introduction to major themes in sociolinguistics. It will begin by exploring how our notions of 'language', 'dialect' or ‘style’ are constructed, and from there explore notions of ‘correctness’ in language, and their origins. It will then consider how social relationships are reflected and encoded in different languages, for example in kinship terms, terms of address, or politeness forms, and how individuals are placed – or place themselves – socially through their linguistic choices.

The middle part of the module will explore language variation and change, and the social parameters which correlate with them. It will conclude by analysing issues arising from the interplay between language and identity in multilingual societies: bi- and multilingualism, code-switching, language death and its causes, language revival and language revitalisation.

The module introduces students to the study of Stylistics as a systematic way to explore and analyse literary texts. Particular aspects of the structure of English will be related to literary texts from the three main genre. The first block considers linguistic choice and its relation to style and meaning, the levels of language, sound meaning and effect in poetry and figurative language and metaphor; the second block examines style and style variation in prose fiction, point of view and speech and thought presentation; the third block examines conversational structure and character, discourse structure and strategies, and impoliteness and characterisation in drama text. The lectures introduce theoretical and methodological material and the seminars enable the student to produce their own analyses with reference to specific stylistic features.

This module will introduce students to key concepts in grammar, especially as exemplified by Latin and English and with reference to other languages as appropriate. The module will cover topics such as verbal tense and aspect, nominal case and gender, agreement, and word order. Students will be provided with the terminology and skills to describe these concepts as they encounter them in language samples. Students will not be required to learn the Latin language, but to understand the grammatical features they encounter during the course of the module. Students will also learn about the development and meaning of grammatical terminology. Skills and knowledge gained on this module will be of use in language learning and in linguistic description and analysis, and for that reason it is recommended for those taking modules in English Language and Linguistics, Classical and Archaeological Studies, or Ancient History.

This module is an intermediate level module. Its aims are to strengthen and widen the linguistic knowledge provided in ITAL3080, to consolidate students' vocabulary and improve their knowledge of written and spoken Italian through immersion in a variety of texts, and to practise translation skills both from and into Italian.

This module is the natural follow-on for those who have, in the previous academic year, successfully taken an intensive beginners Italian course such as IT301, and who have covered the basics of grammar, acquired a stock of high frequency vocabulary and reached a degree of proficiency beyond GCSE and approaching A-level (A2 way stage in terms of the Common European Framework of Reference).

IT508 is designed to allow students, upon completion, to demonstrate a level of ability up to the B2 threshold, turning students into independent users of Italian, in both oral and written contexts. The course is thus also designed to prepare students for their year abroad and independent life in Italy as a foreign country. IT508 is an intensive course, which develops the student's active and passive aural and written skills.

This module will explore the reasons for the initial exclusion of extralinguistic (i.e. social) data from linguistic theory, and the limitations of traditional dialectology, before exploring some early variationist studies by Trudgill (Norwich) and Labov (Martha's Vineyard; New York) and examining their theoretical bases. It will then examine the advances brought about by network studies (e.g. Lesley Milroy in Belfast), and the extent to which they offer a challenge to traditional assumptions in sociolinguistic methodology, which critically evaluates the so-called sociolinguistic gender pattern. The later lectures focus more specifically on issues of change, looking initially at neogrammarian theories and then the claims of Trudgill, James Milroy and others that certain kinds of change are predictable in specific types of social arrangement.

This module is concerned with the stylistic analysis of literature and is based on the premise that the decision to study literature is also a decision to study the expressive mechanics of language (and vice versa). Attention is given to all three main genres (poetry, prose fiction and drama); thus the module is divided into three blocks according to the kind of text analysed. The first section examines poetry and considers topics such as patterns of lexis, phonetic and metrical organisation and the relationship to meaning; the second looks at fiction through patterns of style variation, inferencing and speech thought presentation; the third examines drama and considers topics such as the patterns in turn-taking and their relationship to the roles and functions of characters, speech act analysis and styles of politeness behaviour. At all stages of the module, the social and cultural context of the works studies will be an important consideration.

This course will introduce students to one aspect of formal linguistics, specifically syntactic theory. Syntax will be defined as one aspect of a person's grammar, to be distinguished from the lexicon, semantics, morphology, and phonology. Focusing on the structure of sentences, the course will examine the principles according to which phrases and structures are formed, as well as speakers' knowledge about the structural well-formedness of the sentences they hear and produce.

Students will gradually learn to draw syntactic trees that can represent the syntactic operations that they will be introduced to. They will learn to conduct syntactic tests on English and cross-linguistic data, thereby becoming versed with the empirical method. The course will combine both minimalist and earlier government and binding work. We will examine the competence/performance distinction, the notion of I-language, poverty of the stimulus arguments, levels of representation, phrase-structure rules, and constituency tests as a means for testing phrase structure, case theory, theta theory, binding and movement.

This course will equip students with the necessary training in a broad range of research skills, with the express aim of preparing them for their final-year dissertation. Key topics will include, hypothesis formation; falsifiability; ethical procedures; experimental versus naturalistic settings; questionnaire designs for sub-disciplines within linguistics; corpus research; introduction to quantitative and qualitative methods; conducting and presenting descriptive statistics; formal theory-based and applied methodologies; case study research; empirical validity and reliability issues.

This course is an introduction to morphology and to the practice of morphological analysis. By focusing on a range of phenomena, including those falling under inflection, derivation, and compounding (both in English and in other languages), the course helps students develop tools for pattern observation in data, description and analysis of word structure, and hypothesis testing. Students will also gain an understanding of the role of morphology in the grammar and how it relates to other components, such as phonology, syntax and semantics.

This module will introduce the students to the study of meaning at the levels of semantics and pragmatics. The discussed topics will range from the study of word meaning to the study of sentence meaning and utterance (contextualised) meaning. The module will introduce significant notions and theories for the field of semantics and pragmatics, such as theories of concepts, Truth Conditions, the Gricean theory of conversational implicatures, Speech Act theory, and Politeness theory. The students will have the opportunity to reflect upon real data and analyse the processes of conveying and understanding meaning at the semantics/pragmatics interface..

In this module, students develop a range of skills which will enable them to undertake the narratological and linguistic analysis of media texts (the term 'text' is used broadly here, and will encompass both written and oral sources) taken from a number of sources, including newspapers, magazines and online discourses. Areas covered include: genre theory, register, narrative theory, multimodality, dialogism and discourse analysis. Also discussed are complex and challenging ideas around the notion of words, signs, and grammar in context. Students will develop the ability to approach the language of the media critically and to read the press perceptively so as to understand the importance of the media in a democratic society.

In this module, students continue to develop and explore the themes introduced in LING5360 – English Language in the Media 1.

Here, the focus is on semiotics as applied in the linguistic analysis of a wide range of media discourse types, but with particular emphasis on advertising. Areas covered include: semiotics, the work of Saussure, the British press, multimodality, the new media and social networking. Also discussed are complex and challenging ideas around the notion of words, signs, and grammar in context. Students will further develop the ability to approach the language of the media critically and to read the press perceptively so as to understand the acute importance of the media in a democratic society.

Groups of marks or bursts of sound are just physical entities but, when produced by a writer or a speaker, they are used to point beyond themselves. This is the property of aboutness or intentionality. Other physical entities generally do not have this property. When you hear a sentence, you hear a burst of sound, but typically you also understand a meaning conveyed by the speaker. What is the meaning of a word – some weird entity that floats alongside the word, a set of rules associating the word with objects, an intention in the mind of the speaker….? What is the difference between what your words imply and what you convey in saying them? How are words used non-literally, how do hearers catch on to the meaning of a newly minted metaphor? How can we mean and convey so much when uttering a concise sentence? When someone says something offensive, is it part of its meaning that it is offensive, or just how it is used? In this module we shall try to find some answers to the questions listed above.

In this module students will be given the opportunity to gain experience in guided research, contributing to projects run by members of ELL staff, under their supervision. The research project will normally be relevant to a module that the student has taken or is currently taking.

At the beginning of the term, students will meet with the module convenor, who will recommend a project that is suitable to their interests. The assigned work may be affiliated to an on-going departmental research project documenting linguistic varieties. Alternatively, other guided research opportunities may be offered by members of staff carrying out investigations within their individual research interests.

During the course of this module, students will have to complete research tasks set by their supervisor. Students will meet with the supervisor at agreed intervals, in order to set a timetable for the completion of each task. Through these meetings, they will also receive advice and feedback on the progress of their research. Students will keep a log on the research process, which will be monitored by the supervisor. After having successfully completed the set research tasks, students will also write a report on the conducted research, demonstrating both their general understanding of the research process and their specific understanding of the project and the area of linguistic analysis that it belongs to.

This module examines the principles on which contemporary second language teaching methods are founded. It will analyse first and second language acquisition theories in the light of current developments in language learning and teaching theories. Students will analyse a range of language teaching methods taking into account the ways in which they reflect acquisition theory. The module will give students the opportunity to compare L2 teaching methods from the perspective of: form, function and meaning and student and teacher roles. This will allow students to evaluate the effectiveness of specific language teaching methods. Students will have the opportunity to discuss the ways in which context directly influences the choice and implementation of L2 teaching methods, and will be able to follow personal interests by investigating language teaching methods in context.

Although the focus is primarily on learning and teaching English, the language acquisition theories and L2 teaching methods examined in this module may also apply to the teaching and learning of any language.

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This course will start by examining the topic of language acquisition, demarcating the domains for linguistic inquiry. It will challenge everyday assumptions about the way in which children acquire language and introduce key theoretical issues, always assessing the validity of each theory on the basis of empirical evidence. The course will examine the biological basis of language and its localisation and lateralisation, using evidence from both typical and atypical populations. It will evaluate the role of input in language acquisition and the extent to which this facilitates linguistic development. All these issues will be set against an understanding of the normal stages of language acquisition, essentially mapping out the linguistic milestones reached by typically developing children to the age of four. An understanding of the interaction between the components involved (phonology, morphology, semantics, rudimentary structure, pragmatics) will provide the empirical backdrop to assess the efficacy of theoretical models introduced. The course will end, having laid the foundations for students to undertake a higher level of research in this area.

This module deals with the linguistic study of speech. It covers how speech sounds are produced and perceived and what their acoustic characteristics are. Emphasis will be placed on the sound system of English (including dialectal variation) but basics of sound systems across the world's languages will also be briefly covered and contrasted with English. Finally, the course will cover the differences between the traditional "static" view of speech sounds as articulatory postures and the organisation of running speech.

This course will examine the human ability to receive and process spoken signals. It will start with introducing the foundations of human audition, the hearing mechanism and its properties in healthy and clinical populations. Ways of measuring perceptual impressions (auditory scales) and multimodality of speech perception will be discussed, along with models of speech perception. Students will be introduced to the key issues in speech perception research, including perception of different linguistic units (consonants, vowels, words, prosody) and different accents (regional, social, non-native). The course will cover perceptual illusions where there is a discrepancy between the subjective percept and the objective physical reality, and explain how they arise. Students will have an opportunity to learn how perceptual research is conducted by using the relevant specialist software (e.g. Praat, DMDX, Psychopy), and hone their IT skills by setting up small-scale perception experiments.

This module introduces students to key concepts in the analysis of musical products such as opera, traditional songs, pop and counter-culture songs. It also introduces students to the use of music in literature and film in Italy from mid-nineteenth century to the present. It does so by considering a selection of relevant cultural products from a variety of sources, such as nineteenth-century opera (e.g. Giuseppe Verdi; Giacomo Puccini), literature on music (e.g. Anna Banti's Lavinia Fuggita; Alessandro Baricco’s Novecento), 1960s 'cantautori’, Italian progressive rock bands and political impegno (e.g. Fabrizio De Andrè, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, Area), soundtrack composers (e.g. Ennio Morricone), and contemporary singers (e.g. Simone Cristicchi, Caparezza, etc.). The module uses musical products as a point of access to understand Italian culture and history and analyses how these mirror, criticise and try to change Italian social, cultural and political beliefs. Special attention will be given to the textual and literary aspect of musical products, focusing on close readings of lyrics.

This module focuses on a number of Italian contemporary short stories. More specifically, this module discusses the literary treatment of love, and the love story, in the short stories of some of the most important Italian writers of the second half of the 20th century and early 21st century. Works by worldwide renowned authors such as Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginzburg, Cesare Pavese, and Leonardo Sciascia, accomplished "postmodernist" writers belonging to a younger generation such as Antonio Tabucchi and Pier Vittorio Tondelli, as well as less celebrated authors such as Gianni Celati and Fabrizia Ramondino, will be taken into consideration. While not underestimating the profound economic, social and political changes that Italy underwent during the last sixty years, particular emphasis will be given to the similar way in which all these writers seem to fictionally conceive of the love relationship as a missed encounter. In spite of the manifold forms of love being described in these texts (between husband and wife; wife and lover; young boy and ideal father; sister and brother; mother and daughter; two young men, etc.), all the short stories chronologically analysed in this module seem to rely on Calvino's provoking suggestion according to which the missed encounter is the "fundamental element" of love relationships.

Despite her incomparable heritage, Italy experienced for many centuries a sense of cultural provincialism, with the world's intellectual curiosity switching to Paris, London, New York, and other centres of innovation. This module focuses on the clear connections between rapid socio-economic and socio-political change and the thrust for cultural modernity that made 20th century Italy once more a key contributor to the literary and visual arts in Europe and beyond. A wide variety of Italian 'texts’ of the first half of the 20th century will be taken into consideration, including novels, plays, short stories and films.

This module proceeds from the premise that the ambition to write creatively presupposes an interest in the 'expressive mechanics' of language. A more in-depth understanding of these processes will benefit the writer in many ways, for example by providing them with a precise taxonomy with which to precisely describe various fictional, poetic and dramatic techniques and by furnishing them with a critical nomenclature which will aid detailed analysis of their own and others' creative work. The module is designed to appeal not just to those with an interest in writing, but to anyone who would like to explore further and in a 'hands on' fashion the insights into the expressive functions of language and text offered by stylistics. Students will be 'doing stylistics' in the broadest sense of that phrase.

A two-pronged approach is adopted, whereby students are at first introduced to various stylistic and narratological concepts and models (e.g. linguistic deviation, deixis, register, focalization, ways of representing thought/speech, and metaphor), then expected to produce creative exercises which implement and explore these concepts (for example, using linguistic deviation to foreground themes and images or using varying focalization to tell a story from different perspectives). Various 'input’ texts (poetry, fiction and drama) will also be used as examples of the techniques and concepts under discussion, and some as the basis for textual intervention exercises (critical-creative rewriting). This process culminates in the production of a portfolio of students’ creative work (which may be one or more complete stories, a selection of poems, a dramatic text, or a mixture), accompanied by a critical commentary and stylistic analysis which will focus on how an understanding of stylistics and linguistics in general has impacted on the work.

This course will focus on the structure of lexical items, the way in which these different lexical items are stored and the nature of the relation between them. Relevant theoretical work in the fields of psycholinguistics and language processing is outlined and discussed. And students will evaluate the efficacy of these theories on the basis of experimental investigations which they themselves will construct and conduct, for example word association experiments, lexicon decision tasks and parsing phenomena.

This course builds on the student's knowledge of semantic phenomena, introducing formal approaches and the semantic metalanguage. Students will be provided with a small set of formal tools for the analysis of linguistic meaning. Students will learn to use these tools to probe into the nature of meaning in natural language and into different types of semantic phenomena. Specific topics that will be dealt with include predication, argumenthood, entailment, presupposition, definiteness and quantification.

This module is useful for anyone who may be considering teaching languages to second language/foreign language learners in the future, with particular emphasis on English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), although it provides a rich variety of transferable skills for any participant. It raises awareness of the English language, introduces lesson planning, classroom organisation, language teaching and feedback. There will be an opportunity to observe ESOL teaching and plan and prepare a lesson. Guidance will be given on writing a lesson plan, using resources and creating materials for foreign language learners The emphasis is on building strategies and techniques for foreign language teaching and understanding what makes good practice.

This module is useful for anyone who may be considering teaching languages to second-language/foreign language learners in the future, with particular emphasis on English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), although it provides a rich variety of transferable skills for any participant. It builds on An Introduction to English Language Teaching 1 by increasing the range of skills and considering how to go about teaching specific groups of foreign language learners and assessing their needs. Guidance will be given on writing a syllabus, using resources and creating materials for learners. There will be an opportunity to observe ESOL teaching and to deliver an English lesson.

This module enables students to research in depth a linguistic topic. The dissertation topic may be chosen from a list provided by the supervisor, or selected by the student under guidance from the supervisor in an area reflecting the student's interests and the supervisor's research programme, interests and expertise. The topic will normally build upon a module that the student has undertaken in their second year. In the rare case that the chosen topic builds upon an Autumn-term module in the student’s third year, acceptance is at the supervisor’s discretion; it is expected that the supervisor will be the convenor of that module and can reach a decision on the basis of their assessment of the student’s potential and the viability of the project.

Topics available for study are subject to the availability of an appropriate supervisor. In order to ensure adequate supervision, supervisors may not accept to supervise more than three dissertations in a given year.

With guidance from their supervisors, students will identify a research question and apply appropriate methodologies to data collection and their analysis. While the supervisor will be there to guide students, students will take responsibility for setting their own deadlines, working at a pace that suits them.

The module will aim to equip students with the necessary training in a broad range of research skills typically required for dissertations in linguistics.

Groups of marks or bursts of sound are just physical entities but, when produced by a writer or a speaker, they are used to point beyond themselves. This is the property of aboutness or intentionality. Other physical entities generally do not have this property. When you hear a sentence, you hear a burst of sound, but typically you also understand a meaning conveyed by the speaker. What is the meaning of a word – some weird entity that floats alongside the word, a set of rules associating the word with objects, an intention in the mind of the speaker….? What is the difference between what your words imply and what you convey in saying them? How are words used non-literally, how do hearers catch on to the meaning of a newly minted metaphor? How can we mean and convey so much when uttering a concise sentence? When someone says something offensive, is it part of its meaning that it is offensive, or just how it is used? In this module we shall try to find some answers to the questions listed above.

This module employs specific theoretical frameworks within the area of Pragmatics (Neo-/Post-Gricean theories, Speech Act Theory, Interpersonal Pragmatics) in order to discuss issues of intercultural communication. It covers phenomena such as indexicality, (im)politeness, humour, non-literal language, while also discussing a range of discourse situations (classroom, business, media).

This module discusses contemporary adaptations from different Italian textual sources (e.g. children's tales, novels, non-fiction) under the following main aspects:

As "parallel" works which supplement the original literary texts. Films expand, update and adjust the themes of the original literary texts to the historical, social and cultural context in which the adaptations are made;

As works of literary criticism. The way the narrative of a film adaptation is structured and the way a film chooses to selectively focus on some particular episodes and themes is evidence of how the film director critically analyses the literary text and "re-writes" it in the form of a screenplay and in the editing of the material filmed;

As an altogether "new" product that structurally differs from the original literary source. Cinema's language relies on signifying images or visual signs that are irreducible to those of written and spoken languages;

Finally, we will analyse the impact that filmmaking had on the art of writing, assessing the extent to which contemporary novels are often already written with the big screen in mind.

We will focus on emblematic contemporary adaptations such as Collodi's Pinocchio, adapted, among others, by Roberto Benigni, Baricco’s Novecento, adapted by Tornatore (La leggenda del pianist sull’oceano), Ammaniti’s Io non ho paura, adapted by Gabriele Salvatores, and Saviano’s Gomorra, adapted by Matteo Garrone for the big screen and by Stefano Sollima for the television.

This module is intended to introduce undergraduate students to research. As such, it provides an opportunity to work on a topic of their own choosing relating to Italian language, culture or literature. Originality and feasibility are important aspects of writing dissertations and topics will be scrutinised and approved by Italian staff before research can begin. Students can expect guidance from the module convenor and an academic supervisor throughout the process, varying from one-to-one tutorials to classes on how to edit your own prose. There will also be a meeting regarding the Dissertation at the end of the Spring term of the previous year to clarify arrangements and to outline what work is required on this module.

The programme document with regulations is sent to all students at the end of the Spring term of Stage 2. Students are invited to suggest titles for comment, for which tutors are allocated. They are advised to do preliminary reading over the summer based on generic advice of the module convenor. They then choose precise topics in consultation with the convenor and personal tutors at the start of the Autumn term.

The module develops advanced proficiency in writing, speaking and comprehending Italian. It concentrates on translation into Italian and English and the development of analytical skills in the production of written and spoken Italian. Translation exercises confront students with a variety of advanced texts in different styles and registers, and encourage accuracy and critical reflection as well as acquisition and consolidation of grammatical structures. The language skills component combines discursive writing on advanced topics with the development of proper oral competence through discussion. Conversation classes with a native speaker develop presentational ability, and enable students to speak fluently and idiomatically at the advanced level.