COURSE DESCRIPTION


Master in English Language and Literature

24

9

33

Major Requirement

Thesis

Total Credit Hours



Major Requirement - 24 Credit Hours:



Compulsory Courses - 15 Credit Hours

Course Code Course Name Credit hours Description
A0127201 Theories of Literary Criticism 3 This course examines the ways in which we read and respond to texts. It presents some important approaches for engaging with literary texts from different times and places, paying attention to formalism, structuralism, new criticism, neo-Marxism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, cultural studies, feminism, psychoanalysis and others. Students will work through the selected readings in order to see how they come up with appropriate literary interpretations, understand contextual effects and pursue the links between emerging theoretical paradigms as responses to and revisions of theories that came before. The literary texts and visual material included in the course will serve as practical cases that help students to see theory in practice. In addition, the course will consider the ideological debates on multiculturalism, political correctness, textual authority, the literary canon, and function and social value of literature in our world.
A0127401 Translation Technologies 3 This module aims to provide students with a systematic understanding of technology tools used in translation. It provides them with knowledge regarding the use of translation memory software, as well as other software tools such as CAT tools, machine translation and audiovisual translation such as dubbing and subtitling.
A0127202 Texts and Contexts 3 This course focuses on the production of texts in a range of historical periods through considering different genres of writing. The course is designed to enable MA students to obtain advanced understanding of the material and social conditions in which texts are produced, disseminated, and read. It also motivates them to reflect critically upon the significance of literary-historical, political, cultural and religious enquiry for the understanding of the texts and for learning more about literary interpretation by exercising techniques of close reading. The course also considers how the aesthetic dimension of the text is interrelated with the context in which the text is produced.
A0127301 Semantics and Pragmatics 3 The course provides a comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of lexical relations including the following topics: lexical ambiguity, synonymy, hyponymy, metonymy, types of oppositeness and syntagmatic relations. It also covers the main topics in pragmatics, including deixis, presupposition, implicature, pragmatic inference, speech acts, and relevance theory.
A0127101 Research Methods 3 This course provides MA students with the necessary research skills to master methods of academic paper presentations and to develop an awareness of what it means to research English Studies today. The course introduces students to key scholarly methods that enable them to address their intellectual concerns convincingly, sensibly and scientifically. The focus is on those foundational and advanced skills that students need to pursue a professional and research-led perspective of their chosen field of study, to identify a suitable topic for research, to develop writing skills in the organization of a significant piece of work, to acquire acknowledged documentation methods, and to select topics of scholarly nature. Students will have the training and skills they need to improve analytical, critical and theoretical knowledge of the subject of their choice that enable them to write creditable MA dissertations.

Elective Courses - 9 Credit Hours

Course Code Course Name Credit hours Description
A0127303 Phonetics and Phonology 3 This course introduces students to the study of the phonetics and phonology of human language, and those of English in particular. It starts with a general review of the basic tenets of articulatory phonetics, and a description of the segmental and suprasegmental components of the English sound system. The discussion moves to phonology and phonological analysis, phonological principles; how speech sounds are organized in language, and how to represent the phonological knowledge of the speakers. The course also deals with such fundamental notions as how segments are represented, the phoneme, the role of distinctive features, phonological processes, abstractness of underlying representations, and syllable structure. The various approaches to phonological analysis will also be discussed in terms of recent developments in phonological theory.
A0127404 Public Speaking 3 This module aims to equip students with the full range of skills and techniques to prepare and deliver speeches in English on a wide range of topics. It also aims to teach students to analyze, anticipate and express ideas logically and coherently in English and with confidence irrespective of students? native tongue in front of an audience in order to subsequently enable them to apply the same crucial skills when translating and interpreting.
A0127302 Syntactic Theories 3 This course deals with the rules governing the way in which words are combined to form phrases, clauses and sentences. It will focus on enhancing students' knowledge of human language syntactic principles, theories and structures in general and English syntax in particular. It will deal with grammatical categories, phrases as well as sentences in terms of their forms and functions. It will expose students to different syntactic notions, principles and terminology. In this course, students will be introduced to the theories of Generative Transformational Grammar developed by Chomsky in 1957 then to the minimalist approach. They will trace the development in the syntactic theories from the traditional transformational grammar to the most recent approach.
A0127204 From Novel to Film: Adaptation Studies 3 This course analyzes the relations between literary novels and their film adaptations. It examines the relationship between writing and cinema by focusing on film adaptations of literary genres such as the novel, short story, nonfiction essay, and poem. Reference will be to classic and contemporary theories of film adaptation as well as historical and industry-specific issues to address the central question that pertains to how studying film adaptation allows us to better understand how literature operates. This will give students the opportunity to express different perspectives relating to the value of adaptations, to watch film adaptations outside of class, to engage in discussions, and to examine one selected adaptation for a final project.
A0127403 Translation Criticism 3 This course aims at preparing the students for and equipping them with the required skills to criticize translated discourse from English into Arabic and Arabic into English through close examination. It also aims at training students how to improve a given translated text in terms of structural and semantic discrepancies (e.g. shifts of expression, adequacy, translational gain and loss) in accordance with the purpose of translation.
A0127304 Corpus Linguistics 3 This course helps students to understand how language can be studied based on large collections of "real life" language use, which is stored in corpora. It will expose students to basic terms related to this discipline i.e, lemma, lemmatization, KWIC, concordance lines, collocations, frequency list, normalization. etc. This course is expected to enable students to differentiate between generalized corpora and specialized corpora in addition to the two approaches in corpus linguistics viz., corpus-based approach and corpus-driven approach. Moreover, students will be trained on different types of corpora like BNC, COCA, COHA, MICASE etc. Moreover, students will be given in-depth training related to concordance programs as well as corpora with user interface in the computer labs. Finally, in this course, students will learn how to extract data through the concordance lines and other commands offered by the programs. Therefore, students will also be given the chance to employ corpus linguistics to answer some research questions related to different areas of linguistics.
A0127203 Contemporary Literature 3 Literature today manifests diversity. Globalization, technology, terrorism, and ecological awareness have all shaped how writers are representing the world. At the same time, literature as a discipline has been remodeled by the emergence of new critical approaches, such as postcolonialism and postmodernism, and new theories of feminism, gender, race and ethnicity. In this course the emphasis is on a selection of major texts written in English after 1965, including prose and poetry, which address the above issues. A range of writers will be introduced such as Angela Carter, Geoffrey Hill, Tom McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Ahdaf Sweif, Don DeLillo, and Marilynne Robinson.
A0127205 Colonial and Post-Colonial Discourse 3 This course introduces students to a wide range of colonial and postcolonial theoretical discourses. It offers perspectives on the emergence of the historical narrative of imperialism, psychology and culture of colonialism, nationalism, resistance and liberation. It addresses postcolonial theories of collusion and animosity and explores the profits and problems derived from reading literature and culture by means of a postcolonial and postimperial position. Through the study of various texts and contexts, both historical and contemporary, the course analyses the coming on imperialist narratives and their complex impact on the world today.
A0127305 Systemic Functional Linguistics 3 This module aims to provide students with a systematic understanding of technology tools used in translation. It provides them with knowledge regarding the use of translation memory software, as well as other software tools such as CAT tools, machine translation and audiovisual translation such as dubbing and subtitling.
A0127402 Translation for Specific Purposes 3 The course aims to expose students to aspects of lexicography and specialized terminology (jargons) and to equip them with knowledge and skills needed to translate specialized texts especially in the fields of Business, Economics and Finance from English into Arabic and Arabic into English.
A0127405 Transcreation 3 The course aims to introduce students to the practice of transcreation in marketing and promotional material. It sheds light on the difference between translation and transcreation highlighting the creative aspects of it in light of the cultural differences. The course also aims at exposing students to actual marketing transcreations between English and Arabic training them to transcreate materials of their choice into their native language.
A0127206 Renaissance Literature 3 This course will consider key Renaissance texts in relation to their wider historical, political and religious context, exploring the complex ways in which literary works take up, critique, and are in dialogue with the cultural practices, debates, and technologies of their time. It will focus on selected current issues in the field of early modern studies. Example topics include: early modern ideas about interiority; literary and cultural geography and the ways in which identity is seen to shape, and be shaped by, encounters with time and place; ideas about gender and women?s writing; and the representation of violence and trauma on the Renaissance stage. The course aims to give an insight into the current shape of Renaissance studies as a discipline. Students will learn to read literary texts historically, developing a strong sense of the ways in which literature works within its broader contexts. They will also learn to write critically about literary texts, and to develop their skills in in close and interdisciplinary textual analysis.

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