Increase Your Wordpower ONLINE

Aims

This six-hour intensive workshop aims at developing the participants’ communicative-rhetorical competence in English (and, by transfer, also in other languages). We will focus on seven rhetorical devices, passed down to us by the classical rhetoricians, and we will use presentations as a testing ground to practice these rhetorical devices in a predictable, monologic communicative situation. The workshop is interspersed with analyses of video clips of authentic speeches, showing us how powerful speakers use our seven rhetorical devices to great effect, and with practical exercises, encouraging the participants to incorporate their newly gained knowledge in their own language use. By the end of the workshop, the participants will have received ample input on how to use the language more vividly, forcefully, and, above all, persuasively. In this sense, the paradigm that underlies this workshop is that, while it is certainly important to be able to communicate the “what” (i.e., at the information level) and the “why” (i.e., at the argumentation level), the “how” (i.e., the language level) is equally – sometimes even more – crucial.

Content

The focus of this workshop lies on the following seven stylistic devices: repetition, contrast, tripling, parallelism, alliteration, metaphor/simile, and chiasmus. Other elements of successful rhetoric and a convincing presentation style – as for instance body language, the use of voice/tone, the difference between oral and written communication, and informal vs. formal language – may be addressed as well.

Methods

The students will practice the abovementioned stylistic devices through a variety of exercises geared toward different learning styles. At the end of the workshop, each student will deliver a two-minute presentation utilizing the newly acquired knowledge.

Target Group

All Doctoral Candidates & Postdocs

About the Trainer

Dr. Paul Skandera is a regular visiting lecturer at the University of Basel, the University of St. Gallen, the Schule für Angewandte Linguistik in Zurich, the Management Center Innsbruck, and the Steinbeis Center of Management and Technology in Berlin. He formerly was Professor of Business English at the Management Center Innsbruck and taught at the Universities of Freiburg i. Br., Neuchatel, Zurich, and Luxembourg, and at the SAP Business School Vienna. He has published widely in the fields of English language teaching and linguistics. Apart from his academic activities, he runs an English language service with customers in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

Workload

6h course attendance

Feature

Once registration is open, applications will be collected for 24 hours and course places allocated by lot. All registrations received after the initial 24h period will be put on a waiting list and assigned on a first come, first served basis.

Course places/places on the waiting list will be confirmed by e-mail. Course registrations can only be canceled before the registration period ends (send an e-mail to grace@unibas.ch). Full course attendance is mandatory. Participants who fail to attend a course without prior notification or withdraw after the registration deadline are subject to a fee of CHF 30. In addition, participants who cancel their course registration at a later point in time, are absent without an excuse or do not attend the entire course will, for reasons of fairness, not be considered for course registration in the following semester and will be removed from other courses offered in the same semester. Please find the detailed regulations on the Transferable Skills Homepage.