1 Linguistic Comparison: Identify a particular area in English Linguistics, e.g. an aspect of pragmatics or segmental phonology, and compare it with the corresponding system of your own language or another language you have some familiarity with. Discuss similarities and differences and account for these as appropriate. More importantly, you should discuss what implications these similarities and differences might have for second language learners or for everyday communication and/or why this is an important area in language teaching and language use. You may need to narrow your topic down to a manageable area so that you can provide original examples and comparisons and in-depth discussions.

2 Linguistics in the Classroom: Describe and analyse one or more incidents that you have witnessed in language classrooms where teacher’s knowledge of linguistics would have been desirable. A careful and clear analysis of what has happened and to what area of linguistics they are related will set the background for further evaluation and discussion of the incidents. In light of your further reading around the topic, discuss to what extent knowledge of linguistics can help a language teacher in overcoming such problems and what impact it can have on the process of L2 teaching and learning.

3 Analysing Communication: Using your own data, gathered from native English-speakers conversing naturally or live unscripted TV/Radio discussion, record, transcribe and analyse a segment of the conversation (finalise your choice of the conversation with your tutor). Comment on its linguistic, paralinguistic (if appropriate), pragmatics and discourse-level features, and on the implications of your findings for the practice and/or theory of language teaching. See Carter & McCarthy (1997) for further information and guidance.