Bøger af Marc Hempel

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, RWTH Aachen University (Institut für Anglistik, Amerikanistik und Romanistik), course: Modern and Contemporary American Poetry, language: English, abstract: The current President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, was one of the few, who, in his inauguration ceremony in January 2009, had a poet read an inaugural poem. This delightful tradition that had only been included by three presidents before but that in many ways supports and promotes the art of contemporary American poets was kept alive by Elizabeth Alexander, one of the best-known and most successful recent African-American women poets. Her Praise Song For The Day, despite some sporadic criticism, was a suitable and thoughtful composition for this occasion and it was then that I heard for the first time of Elizabeth Alexander, an African-American poet.Her work and background fascinated me especially because she is a contemporary and her work is so recent and still going on. Therefore, I decided to examine four of her poems in the term paper at hand: Emancipation, Ars Poetica #28: African Leave-Taking Disorder, Race and Ars Poetica #92: Marcus Garvey on Elocution.During my research I had to learn that sadly, there is a significant lack of research and literature on this and other contemporary authors and therefore, this term paper largely consists of my own findings regarding the poems.Due to the reason that her personal background and her life have influenced the poems to a notable extent, I will start off with a short biographical section on Elizabeth Alexander herself and point out further biographical traits while interpreting the poems in their respective chapters. I will finally summarize my findings and present my personal conclusion as regards her way of tackling her topics and her art of writing.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 1,0, RWTH Aachen University (Institut für Anglistik, Amerikanistik und Romanistik), course: Hauptseminar Sociolinguistics, language: English, abstract: The history and wide distribution of the English language ¿ originally an Anglo-Frisiandialect first taken to Southern Britain by Germanic settlers in the 5th century and spoken byonly a few ¿ has been a most remarkable and unparalleled one. Nowadays, English is theworld language, influencing each and every single aspect of the daily and professionallives of millions of people on an international scale.The metaphor of the Global Village often represents the ubiquitous process ofglobalisation ¿ a phenomenon that has shaped the existence of mankind in the last coupleof decades. Communication in all areas is ensured mostlythrough the use of the English language. It is remarkable, though, that English is only inthe fourth place in terms of native speaker ranking and that its proportion is decreasingsteadily.Yet what makes English so important is its use as a lingua franca ¿ an internationallanguage that is used for communication by speakers of different languages. Estimatesclaim that about 1 billion people ¿ that is about one sixth of the world population ¿ have atleast some knowledge of English and in most countries it has become one of the basicnecessities in professional life.Does this development have any influence on the way we as future professionals explore,describe and ¿ above all ¿ teach the English language? Do native speakers still ¿own¿English or is it rather ¿Globish¿, ¿Franglais¿ or ¿Denglisch¿ that should be taught? In thisterm paper I aim to offer some answers to these questions and examine different theories ofteaching English as a global language.I will begin with a short chapter about the global spread of English and continue bydiscussing the difference and competition between traditional language standards and thenew role of English as an international language. I will then briefly describe some featuresof ¿Global English¿ before I will deal with my main point ¿ the future of Englishteaching. Here, I will at first describe the characteristics of the traditional methods ¿English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL) ¿ and thenhave a closer look at two newer models ¿ Basic Global English (BGE) and Content andLanguage Integrated Learning (CLIL). I will conclude this paper by trying to postulate arealistic future of English language teaching ¿ in schools as well as universities ¿ byconsidering a variety of different scientific proposals.