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Late arrival (2024)

Classes start Wednesday, 2 October 2024.

Students who cannot join us in the first week of October because of visa issues are requested to do the following:

    1. Register in MS Teams, using your student account (an e-mail address ending in @st.amu.edu.pl), and follow the information distributed there,
    2. Inform the teacher of each class of the approximate date of your arrival and
    3. ask each teacher what you have to do to follow the content of the class. But do not do that too earlier, around 1.10. is enough.

Class materials and tasks will be available at MS Teams, and some teachers will transmit their lectures in October on that platform. We also provide a group in MS Teams for all first year students with useful information around your studies. You may also use the chat function of MS Teams to contact teachers, just type in their name.

Teachers’ e-mails have the form (without diacritics) Firstname.Surname@amu.edu.pl.

The list of obligatory and elective classes can be found on the page Classes. Attention: don’t write to teachers of elective classes that you are NOT going to take! First year students’ elective classes include one class of the module Methods and Applications (Gesture analysis or Lexicography; it is possible to take both, but the workload will be heavy) as well as a language class (recommended, but not obligatory in the first semester).

When contacting a teacher via e-mail or the chat function in MS Teams, students should always sign the message with their full name. We also appreciate the use of full sentences and punctuation marks and polite adress terms (but not the phrase “I hope this message finds you well”).

We expect you as soon as possible. Please recall that ELLDo cannot be studied remotely, we only provide help for students who join us a bit later (but not after November). We expect late arrivers to be fully informed of the class content and homeworks they may have missed.

Prof. Nicole Nau
Coordinator of ELLDo

What English skills do I need and what certificates do you accept?

ELLDo is not a program in Engish linguistics, but studying ELLDo requires very good skills in reading, listening, and writing English. We expect a level of at least B2 and the willingness to constantly improve skills. You will be required to read and understand academic texts, not only textbooks for beginners, but also academic books and papers in academic journals. Most subjects include written assignments. Last but not least, to get your diploma you have to write a thesis. MA theses at our faculty are between 60 and 100 pages long. They can be written in English or Polish; sometimes another language is possible if a supervisor and a reviewer agree (mostly French and German).

During enrollment, you do not have to submit a certificate as proof of your English skills. It is up to you – if you don’t have the appropriate skills, you will not study successfully.

How can I prepare for the studies?

Although ELLDo is a master program in linguistics, not all our students have studied linguistics or philology in their undergraduate programs.

Students with little or no background in linguistics are recommended to get some basic knowledge before starting the program, and to continue catching up in core areas such as phonetics and morphology during their first year.Here are some recommendations for resources with which you may work on your own.

http://languagesindanger.eu/ A site made by a team at Adam Mickiewicz University (some of them are your teachers in ELLDo). It includes a textbook for young people with no prior knowledge of linguistics in English and Polish (“Book of Knowledge”) – a Turkish version will be available in autumn 2022, and some exercises with which you can explore lesser known languages (“Interactive Map”).

Textbooks for beginners

There are very many introductions to linguistics – browse the Internet and your library catalogue for descriptions and recommendations. The following three examples from Cambridge University Press give an overview of various fields of linguistics and are accessible to “absolute beginners”.

  • Bruhn de Garavito, Joyce, and John W. Schwieter, eds. 2021. Introducing Linguistics: Theoretical and Applied Approaches. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108696784
  • Genetti, Carol. 2018. How Languages Work: An Introduction to Language and Linguistics. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108553988.
  • Yule, George. 2020. The Study of Language. Seventh edition, Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108582889

Open Access:

Some textbooks we use in our classes

  • Litosseliti, Lia, ed. 2010. Research Methods in Linguistics. London; New York: Continuum.
  • Meyerhoff, Miriam, Laurel MacKenzie, and Erik Smachleef. 2015. Doing Sociolinguistics: A Practical Guide to Data Collection and Analysis. Abingdon; New York: Routledge.
  • Velupillai, Viveka. 2012. An Introduction to Linguistic Typology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Also recommended: find some linguistic blogs (for example, here: https://blog.feedspot.com/linguistics_blogs/) or podcasts, for example:
https://lingthusiasm.comhttp://talkthetalkpodcast.com/
https://theworld.org/categories/world-words
https://www.accentricity-podcast.com/
https://fieldnotespod.com/

AMU Welcome Center

Welcome Centre is a point of contact for foreign AMU guests and AMU international students. They are ready to help you with a wide range of practical issues related to your stay in Poznań and studying at our University. Make sure to follow their webpage to find lots of practical information and keep up with many events for AMU international students!

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Email: welcome@amu.edu.pl

It’s not the OED but…

…our students enjoyed making their own dictionary during the class on lexicography. Here are some of the remarkable results:

(Picture: The team of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1915, from the OUP achive, but found here: https://allthatsinteresting.com/oxford-english-dictionary-history)

Where is professor Wicherkiewicz?

This winter semester ELLDo had to start without him: Professor Wicherkiewicz is currently on a research stay in Japan. From July 2018 to February 2019 he is Specially Appointed Professor at the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center of Hokkaido University in Sapporo. His research project concerns writing systems, scripts and orthographies in Central and Eastern Europe from the point of view of sociolinguistics, language contact and language policy. He is giving lectures in Russian and English, for example on Russian Old Believers in Poland (Русские старообрядцы в Польше как периферийное этноконфессиональное (и языковое) микрообщество) and, in an upcoming event, on writing and identity:
Sophia Nov2019 FCoulmas TWicherkiewicz

Program update for 2018/2019

Starting with the academic year 2018/2019, the Faculty of Modern Languages and Linguistics introduces changes in all its MA programs. In addition to their individual programs, all students will have the following kinds of classes in their first year of MA studies:

  • Introduction to economics (lecture and practical class);
  • Introduction to specialized user software; in the case of ELLDo this is desktop publishing programs (QuarkExpress and Scribus). The application of the software will further be integrated into three of the regular classes.

The motivation for these changes is to give students of modern languages and literatures additional knowledge and skills that will be useful in their life outside of academia. The implementation is supported by a grant within the project POWR!.

Find the updated program at our Program overview.

FAQ 2 Do I have to pay for studying ELLDo? (updated May 2022)

For students starting in 2022/2023, the tuiton fee is “0 PLN” – thus, you may study without paying a fee!

Students who started in 2021 still have to pay for their second year. Please consult with us if you want to apply for an individual reduction.

Our university does not offer general scholarships for foreign students.