Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines · Institute of English studies · Students

Institute of English studies

Institute of English studies

Students

 

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Autumn 2025

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1) Language Policy

English is the language of communication in our Institute. As such, students are expected to use English in class as well as at all events and extra-curricular activities that we sponsor. Furthermore, we urge students to speak English as often as possible outside of the University.

2) Course Attendance

Once enrolled in a course, students are expected to attend regularly. Academic freedom (‘liberté academique’) means that you are free to choose the seminars of your liking; it does not mean that you are free to miss a seminar repeatedly once you have decided to enroll in it. We encourage you to “browse” during the first week of the semester, but regular attendance is expected as of week three. Students with more than three unexcused absences will not receive an attestation or ECTS credit for the course. If you are unable to attend a session, let your teacher know in advance by e-mail or phone. Auditors (i.e. students not taking the course for an attestation or credit) should ask their teacher what requirements apply to them.

This regulation is meant to encourage a professional attitude towards your studies: we would like you to consider your class as a weekly appointment with your teacher and fellow students, and, as in professional life, appointments need to be either kept or cancelled. Also, the course’s overall quality depends upon students’ regular attendance. The learning process is cumulative, and only students who attend regularly can fully profit from and contribute to the course.

3) Course Preparation and Participation

The quality of a course depends likewise on students’ preparation and involvement. You are also expected to do the required reading for all the courses you attend and to participate actively in class. Again, auditors (i.e. students not taking the course for an attestation) should ask their teacher what requirements apply to them.

4) Oral Presentations

Generally, we ask for an oral presentation from every student in every seminar, although there may be some variety depending on the nature of the seminar, the number of students attending, and whether or not you are taking the course for an attestation or credit. An oral presentation, like essays, needs to be original work, and plagiarism will not be tolerated (see next item). Oral presentations require substantial preparation, need to be clearly structured, and should be delivered in fluent and coherent English. You should have good notes to help you during your oral presentation, but you must never simply read out a written text.

5) Plagiarism and related forms of academic misconduct

a) What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism is defined as “the taking of others’ thoughts or words without due acknowledgement.”* This definition applies to electronic as well as print sources and unpublished sources. For the purposes of this document, ‘plagiarism’ will also refer to (i) the copying of other students’ answers in examinations and (ii) the practice of working together in homework assignments which were meant to be done individually. Furthermore, even if plagiarism is unintentional, it will be considered as a serious violation of Institute and University regulations.

*Frederick Crews, The Random House Handbook, 3rd ed. (New York: Random House, 1980), 405.

b) Why is it wrong?
Plagiarism is dishonest because it misrepresents the words and ideas of another as your own. By committing plagiarism, you cheat your source, the instructor, other students and, above all, yourself. Plagiarism is morally wrong, violates academic conduct and is illegal under copyright law.

c) What is the Institute policy on plagiarism?
First-year students who plagiarise will be required to take a written test. This will replace the essay or homework assignment in which they have plagiarised, which will not receive a mark. All students after the first year who commit any form of plagiarism will automatically receive a fail. More severe sanctions at the level of the faculty and rectorat will be applied to students who are caught more than once.
Instructors who suspect a student of plagiarism will consult a second institute staff member before convoking the student. All incidents of plagiarism will be reported to the Institute director who may ask to see the students concerned.

d) What should I do if I feel I was unfairly accused of plagiarism?
Students who believe that they have been unfairly accused should appeal the decision. They can address their grievance either to the Institute director, to another member of the staff or to a member of the dean’s office. Please note that, since all institute students have been repeatedly informed about the plagiarism policy, lack of knowledge of what constitutes plagiarism will not be considered a sufficient excuse.

e) How do I avoid plagiarism?
When writing a paper or presentation, focus on your own words and ideas. When you use secondary sources, learn the proper methods of punctuation and citation. See the links at under “Style sheet / Sample essays / Grading” for descriptions of these methods (which differ for linguistics and literature). Always acknowledge any outside help. Whenever you are in doubt, choose the most cautious option, or ask your instructor for help. If you still do not understand what constitutes plagiarism, ask your instructor to give you examples.

6) AI Policy

Generative AI offers exciting new possibilities; at the same time, it has created significant new problems, including an unsustainable ecological footprint, infringement of copyright laws, the dissemination of unreliable and often biased information, and lack of original thinking.

One way the rapid, unregulated introduction of AI chatbots has disrupted teaching and research at all levels is by facilitating the presentation of someone else’s thinking as one’s own. What has been termed “lazy AI” not only breaks university plagiarism rules; it is also counterproductive, encouraging cognitive atrophy and creating inequalities in the classroom.

Instructors and students are looking for greater trust and transparency around the use of generative AI. As such, the Institute of English Studies has adopted the following policy in line with university guidelines:

  • The Institute Policy applies to all instructors and staff members as well as students, and to research as well as teaching.
  • Instructors can develop their own AI policy if it accords with institute and university guidelines. Workshop leaders need to have a common policy.
  • We believe that basic skills should first be mastered without the use of AI tools as a foundation for future learning.
  • This is especially important in first-year gateway courses, in which the use of generative AI may be forbidden.
  • We also believe instructors and students should stay on top of AI technology, informing themselves on its strengths and weaknesses, and learning how to use chatbots as research and editing tools.
  • Students who, for any reason, do not wish to use generative AI should not be obliged to use it.
  • Instructors are encouraged to integrate in-class oral and written assessments as part of their evaluations.
  • In all linguistics modules, any use of generative AI must be indicated. If used for research purposes, students must cite all outputs following the MLA or other accepted citation guidelines.
  • In all language and literature modules, any use of generative AI must be indicated. If used for research purposes, students must cite all outputs following the MLA citation guidelines. If used for editing purposes, they should hand in an early draft of their work along with the edited final version.
  • Students who do not respect the above policy may be asked to discuss their work in person with their instructor, and eventually to redo the assignment.

7) Essay Revisions, Grading and Deadlines

Academic writing and what you learn from it has as much to do with process as with the final product, so there is nothing wrong with having to revise an essay. Depending on the course, students in the Bachelor program may be asked to revise their essay, but all essays in the BA program will be marked. For more information on what is expected of student papers, please consult the PdF form, “General characteristics by grade of student papers in English.”

8) Stylesheet

As of Winter Semester 04-05, all students should follow the Institute Stylesheet for all written work.

Literature

Linguistics

  • The English Institute Guidelines for Linguistics Assignments
  • The unified Stylesheet for Linguistics

‘Readers’ (i.e. collections of photocopied materials) are used in a number of courses. These will be available (at cost price) during the first weeks of the semester.

In the course descriptions you will see that certain texts are specified as required for certain courses. In addition to these required textbooks, students of English will need to work with reference books throughout their studies. They can be found at the Librairie Payot (Rue du Seyon 2, 2000 Neuchâtel).

Literature reference works

The Norton Anthology of English Literature (Vols 1 & 2) is required in the second- and third-year BA program as well as for the MA.

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, shorter edition (1 vol.) is required in the American literature lectures and for the Branche Complémentaire in American Literature.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms Baldick, C. (OUP 1991) is recommended

The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Encyclopedia-style entries on major authors and works of British literature.

The Oxford Companion to American Literature. Encyclopedia-style entries on major authors and works of American literature.

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Invaluable for its treatment of prosody, verse forms, and the history of poetic movements.

The International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association. Continuously updated at the rate of 45,000 entries per year, the MLA is the most comprehensive bibliography of contemporary criticism and scholarship on literature and linguistics in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. For advanced research, available online. Consult a member of the English Department or library staff for access codes.

Editions and adaptations of Shakespeare. The principal editions of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, covering four centuries of publishing history. Available on CD-ROM in the Salle des Usuels, Bibliothèque de la Faculté des Lettres.

Linguistics reference works

Fromkin, V., R. Rodman and N. Hyams (2006). An Introduction to Language, Heinle, 8th edition.

Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Keith Brown (ed.). 2nd ed. Elsevier, 2006.

The Handbook of Linguistics, Mark Aronoff and Janie Rees-Miller (eds.). Blackwell, 2001.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, David Crystal. Cambridge University Press, 1995.

The Oxford Companion to the English Language, Tom McArthur. Oxford University Press, 1992.

A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, David Crystal. Blackwell, 3rd Edition 1991.

Language reference works

There are many language references works in the library, but, if you have not already done so, you should seriously consider investing straightaway in a comprehensive monolingual learner’s dictionary and a usage manual and/or grammar. We recommend the following:

DICTIONARIES
The Oxford English Dictionary. Completed in 1928, the OED remains the most authoritative dictionary of the English language; it is invaluable especially for its notes on the origins and history of English words. See also The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology.

The New Oxford Dictionary of English – comprehensive one-volume dictionary intended for native speakers of English

The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, the Collins-COBUILD English Dictionary, the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced learners are all reliable and easy to use for advanced learners of English.

The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Encyclopedic Dictionary – as the name suggests, this is the OALD with encyclopedic entries.

The BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations (2nd edn 1997) Benson, M., Benson, E., and Ilson, R. (Benjamins) – very useful for university students developing a feeling for which words habitually go together in English.

Oxford Collocations Dictionary – similar to the BBI, with fewer headwords but much greater detail.

GRAMMAR AND USAGE
Practical English Usage (Oxford University Press, 2nd edn 1995) Swan, M. – strongly recommended for first-year language courses: a comprehensive A-Z of frequent problems in grammar and usage.

English Grammar in Use (Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn 1997) Murphy, R. – upper-intermediate grammar reference and practice, particularly useful if you need to revise fundamental grammar.

A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (CGEL) (Longman, 1985) Quirk, R. et al. – the most comprehensive grammar of modern English. Its detailed discussion often clarifies points only briefly explained in the derived SGE.

A Student’s Grammar of the English Language (SGE) (Longman, 1990) – used in the 2nd-year course “Exploring English Grammar”: an advanced-level abridgement of CGEL.

A Communicative Grammar of English Leech, G. and Svartvik, J. (Longman, 2nd edn 1994)- also based on CGEL and rather easier to use than SGE, but follows the parent work less closely (and so is a less useful introduction to CGEL).

See our page Links for research.

See our page Mobility.

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Contact

Myriam Sester
Collaboratrice administrative
Espace Tilo-Frey 1
2000 Neuchâtel

Bureau 2.S.35

institut.anglais@unine.ch

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