This course in contemporary Danish literature focuses on Danish literature written after 2000. By reading ecological, realistic, magical-realistic, minimalist, and eksistential literary texts, the students are introduced to the analytical tools of literary studies: interpretation, the sociological/philosophical context of the text, style, genre, etc.

The objective of this course is for students to gain increased comprehensive communication skills in Danish which cover all aspects of competence; listening, reading, speaking, writing (the fifth aspect of competence is “conversing”). The focus will be on Danish culture, traditions and customs in a broad perspective. Systematic work on theme-based vocabularies will be emphasised, as well as training in the usage of aid material such as web dictionaries. The course material will be drawn from all forms of media; newspapers, magazines, short stories, lyrics, radio and television programmes and films.      

The course will concentrate on elementary danish grammar.

Danish phonetics and pronunciation is practised. A part of the teaching is in the Language Lab.

Self-directed studies in Danish is a learner-centred distance course where the learner is in charge of all of the main aspects of the learning process such as objectives, strategies, selection of resources and evaluation. Learners meet with the instructor to set up an individualized instructional plan and participate in weekly workshops in small groups to practice oral and written expression. The evaluation covers all four language skills: writing, reading, oral comprehension and oral expression. Each skill is evaluated in accordance with the objectives of the learner. Learners can also choose how many credits they achieve (2, 4 or 6) and the assessment is completed in accordance with the number of credits.

The course goal is for students to attain an overview of the 20th century Danish literature history and gain knowledge of authors and poets of the period when working with central texts and works. At course end students will demonstrate their ability to review central periods, terms and authors within Danish literature. On basis of literary characteristics students must be able to place the text in literature history and review esthetical trends within the period.

The goal of the course is that the students gain even greater written and verbal communication skills in Danish. Topics in the course will be social issues, politics and history.

Students will be instructed how to quickly and efficiently increase their competency in both spoken and written Danish. Each student will be accommodated according to their level of Danish and their field of interest (e.g. Tourism Studies, Computer Science, Business Administration, Medicine). Students will be acquainted with various types of accessible material to aid them in their studies, dictionaries and all sorts of web material. The focus will be on systematically increasing the students’ vocabularies by tried and tested means which will be instrumental in helping them gain competency in Danish. The course assessment will consist of oral and written assignments over the course of the semester.