English proficiency level: Intermediate to Advanced.

The course is technology-enhanced; students are required to have an e-mail account and computer literacy.

The aim of the course is to ensure that students acquire the skills, tools and terminology needed to operate in a context of legal innovation in a technologized and globalized world, and enhance students' ability to analyze the language used in legal innovation, based on a functional approach to the English language, and the linguistic competence needed to understand and produce texts that are used in the legal profession.

At the end of the course, students will be able to read and understand specialized texts related to the legal professional practice, write a short report on a case study in English, and give a presentation of a case study in English.

The course aims at providing advanced English legal knowledge and skills required to successfully navigate the most dynamic aspects of innovation in legal services and practice. The language of a legal system will be analyzed in terms of its terminology and phraseology, and the characterizing aspects of English in legal contexts will be highlighted, in terms of collocation, colligation, semantic preference and semantic prosody. The translation of legal texts will raise students' awareness of the stylistics, lexical, grammatical and cultural characteristics of legal language across cultures.

1. (A) A. Krois-Lindner,  International Legal English.  Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011 

ISBN 878-0521279451

2.  (C) M. Chartrand, C. Millar, E. Wiltshire English for Contract and Company Law Thomson Reuters, London, 2009

ISBN 978-1847034465

The course program applies without distinction to all students, who are all considered attending. The study materials and related activities are available on a special platform, on which students will register at the beginning of the course.

• Teaching and learning are organized according to ILV methodology (Information / Laboratory / Verification), which provides informative moments, followed by analysis and reconstruction workshops that allow students to turn theory into practice, and develop reflective thinking on their own learning processes and products.

• At the end of the course, students will have to take a final test with closed-ended questions, aimed at ascertaining knowledge of the fundamental concepts of the specialist language, and work on a project work resulting in a written report on a case study (to be agreed with the teacher ) and its oral presentation in English.

  
  

  During the exam it will not be possible to consult the teaching texts.

  
  

  For the evaluation the following will be taken into consideration:

  
  

  a) knowledge and ability to understand texts (score from 1/30 to 6/30; or: 20% of the total overall assessment);

  
  

  b) ability to make connections between texts (score from 1/30 to 6/30; or: 20% of the total overall assessment);

  
  

  c) ability to apply knowledge (score from 1/30 to 6/30; or: 20% of the total overall assessment);

  
  

  d) autonomy of judgment and critical thinking (score from 1/30 to 6/30; or: 20% of the total overall assessment);

  
  

  e) transposition of the knowledge acquired in terms of professional usability (score from 1/30 to 6/30; or: 20% of the total overall assessment).

  
  

  The criteria a), b), c), d) e) and the values indicated (score from 1/30 to 6/30; or: 20% of the total of the overall evaluation) are purely indicative.

The course will be held in English

English