SKILLS – ENGLISH STUDIES

OBJECTIVES AND SKILLS.

General objectives:

• Train students to apply the knowledge acquired and their ability to solve problems in new environments within broader inter- and multidisciplinary contexts, both multilingual and multicultural.
• Encourage students to integrate knowledge and face the complexity of making judgments with adequate social and ethical responsibility.
• Train students so that they know how to communicate their conclusions —and the knowledge and reasons that support them— to specialized and non-specialized audience in a clear and precise way.
• Train students as highly qualified professionals in the field of linguistic mediation and communication, which today takes place within a globalized and multicultural society.
• Promote, through institutional agreements with universities in Europe, the integration of our students in the European Higher Education Area and the reception in our courses of students of different nationalities.
• Facilitate the labour integration of our students in the productive framework of our society, in sectors as determinant as those of technological, economic, social or cultural development.
• Offer active professionals the possibility of continuous training that allows them to recycle and update the training received at the time in their degrees.
• Allow active professionals, both from the public and private sectors, to complete and enrich their training in modern languages.
• Give students the conceptual and methodological tools necessary to undertake an advanced research work such as the completion of a doctoral thesis.

 
Specific objectives, given its mixed professional-research orientation, are the following:

• Train professionals who are able to perform in a multilingual and intercultural context within the public and private sectors.
• Train students to appreciate both the cultural and linguistic dimensions of an international language, such as English, in its various discursive fields.
• Raise students’ awareness on the effects of discursive practices in multilingual professional environments, focusing not just on English, but also on other modern languages, such as Spanish, French and German.
• Help students to acquire the necessary receptive and productive skills to improve their understanding and production of technical and scientific texts, as well as other types of specialized texts.
• Introduce students to key issues and topics within the different research fields related to linguistic studies (theoretical or applied), literary studies, and cultural studies.
• Provide students with advanced research methodologies and tools in the study of the linguistic structure of contemporary English, as well as those that analyse English from a diachronic perspective.
• Introduce students to key aspects of English literature, from a socio-historical and socio-cultural perspective.  

 

General skills:

• Excellent oral and written communication skills in English.
• Ability to communicate orally and written in a foreign language (German/French) other than English.
• Oral and written fluency within the pragmatic level required by different professional contexts (specialized, semi-specialized, lay, etc.).
• Ability to organize and plan professional and academic tasks.
• Ability to handle computer and audiovisual tools.
• Interaction and mediation skills in multidisciplinary contexts, allowing for effective communications in work-related fields, and for the exchange of information and knowledge.
• Ability to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes that make possible the comprehension of new theories, interpretations, movements, lines and critical tendencies in a communicative area, leading to optimally satisfy the academic and professional demands.
• Ability to know how to apply the knowledge acquired and to solve problems and adapt to new or little-known environments within the study area.
•  Ability to interrelate diverse fields of knowledge.
• Ability to communicate orally and in writing the main hypotheses, acquired knowledge and conclusions of their work to specialized and non-specialized audiences in a clear and unambiguous way, adapting to the characteristics of the context.
• Ability to integrate knowledge and face the complexity of formulating judgments based on information that, being incomplete or limited, includes reflections on social and ethical responsibilities linked to the application of their knowledge and judgments.
• Ability to develop learning skills that allow them to continue studying in a self-directed or autonomous way.

 
Specific skills:

• Ability to communicate in English (C2 level), produce texts in English (C2 level) and instrumental domain of the English language (C2 level).
• Ability to communicate, produce texts and instrumental domain in a second foreign language (German/French) (B1 level).
• Ability to recognize methodologies and theories, as well as topics and the fundamental terminological, theoretical, formal and ideological principles for the introduction to linguistic or literary research in the area of English Studies and in the field of Multilingual and Intercultural Communication.
• Ability to interpret and analyse representative texts of the linguistic and cultural plurality of contemporary Anglophone societies in order to reflect on their relevance, not only in reference to the socio-linguistic, historical, political and cultural contexts, but also in relation to the globalization of culture.
• Ability to apply and integrate the skills and theoretical knowledge acquired on the different tools available both in print and computer support in order to perform a critical and rigorous analysis.
• Ability to organize, structure and develop ideas in various types of academic documents, of greater or lesser scope: from the essay, the technical report, the critical comment, to the initial approach that should underlie a broader research work as it is the completion of a Master’s Thesis or even a Doctoral Thesis.
• Ability to obtain an overall perspective of current linguistic research and to locate and understand, at least roughly, the differences between different approaches and the basic analysis tools of each of them.
• Ability to analyse, evaluate and synthetize advanced methodologies for studying the linguistic structure of current English and from a diachronic perspective.
• Ability to acquire and understand the necessary foundations for the theoretical, practical and interpretative approach to literary texts in the English language, as well as the most relevant topics and resources in contemporary English literature.
• Ability to obtain a critical and interpretative vision of the interaction between literature and other disciplinary and artistic discourses.
• Ability to produce oral and written discourses in defined frames of the professional context considering the existence of audience belonging to different cultural and linguistic domains.
• Ability to recognize, analyse and reuse diverse cultural standards in the linguistic areas involved (German, French, Spanish and English).
• Ability to manage professional activities related to multilingual and intercultural communication.