 Hi, I hereby invite you to take part in our free, massive, open online course, Linguistics 201, The Structure of English. The class for everyone who is interested in English language studies, in linguistics or in both. The content of this class has been developed on the basis of the comprehensive grammar of the English language, written by Sir Randolph Quirk and his colleagues, Sydney Greenbaum, Jan Svartvik and Jeffrey Leach. It is thus a class equivalent to many traditional grammar classes offered within teacher and BA programs with a focus on present day English. If you want to become an English teacher. So if you are in any of these scenarios, the content of this class is an indispensable backbone of your teaching efforts, even if you are already on such a job. Well and if you are on a BA program, you need such a class to set the basis for further classes in syntax. Well and for both and for all other participants, we hope to have made the class as interesting as possible. With two steps, you can access your class. First you should create your free account on the Virtual Linguistics Compass. Well and then, and for many of you this may already apply, they have an account on the VLC, you can log in with your personal data and then you have two options. You can either register for the Massive Open Online Course Linguistics 201 via the Registration Office or you will, if you have already registered, you will straightforwardly see your class on your personal VLC start site. Well and here, a simple mouse click suffices in order to lead you to the interactive class start site. Here it is, this is what it looks like. On the class start site, you have access to some class related links and you will find a hyperlink to the message board, the forum where you can discuss problems with your classmates. The core of the class are the 13 units where the first one, the class preliminaries, informs you about some general aspects of the class and about the principles of studying online on the Virtual Linguistics Campus. In addition to this, you will find helpful routines that find out whether your computer is configured correctly and whether the submission of worksheets, the backbone of our testing principles is successful. For this reason, we recommend to go through the class preliminaries very carefully, especially if you're a first time user of a class on the Virtual Linguistics Campus. The remaining units exhibit the content of this class and if you wish, you can retrieve an overview of each unit by means of a click on one of these information symbols and this even works if you're not logged in to the Virtual Linguistics Campus. So you can actually see what's in a unit of a particular class. Let us now look at the content of the class traditionally referred to as the class syllabus. The class is subdivided into three parts. After an overview of the main principles of grammar and the analysis of English sentences with its main categories and functions, we will discuss the central syntactic categories and functions of present-day English in detail. That is, we will look at verbs and nouns, their integration into phrasal categories and their use within elements of clause structure. These units constitute the core of the class. The final unit is an extra, something which is often neglected in such a class, the orthography of present-day English. I'm sure you like it because it also includes a discussion of hyphenation and punctuation. Even though many of you might not be first time VLC users, let me now nevertheless explain what it means to study online on the Virtual Linguistics Campus. Well, it simply means go through each e-learning unit at your own pace. Study the virtual session. Use the guiding questions which you always find in the main menu of a virtual session. Watch the corresponding e-lecture videos which you can also independently access via our YouTube channel and optionally use the tests in the interactive tutor, which you also find in the main menu, to check your knowledge. Well, and if you wish, you can discuss further problems using the class-related forum, which is open for all registered users of the class. Finally, you might want to know what you have to do in order to get a qualified class certificate. Well, certification is simple. As in all our massive open online courses, all participants will receive a certificate for regular and active participation, the so-called statement of participation issued by the Virtual Linguistics Campus. You have to regularly participate and you have to submit a few worksheets. If you want more, you have to invest more work and maybe even a small amount of money. But what you will be given in such a case is something special and unique in the world of massive open online courses. For a small fee of 45 euros, you will receive this qualified statement of accomplishment issued by Marburg University in conjunction with our Virtual Linguistics Campus. This certificate will include your precise grade and a complete list of all the tasks you successfully submitted, including the workload of the class. To be given such a certificate, we want you to do the worksheets. One for each unit. We want you to regularly participate and if the overall score of all the worksheets is 60%, you will be given the option of either receiving a standard statement of accomplishment or if you want to pay this small amount of money, you will be given this specified statement of accomplishment, a graded statement of accomplishment and the choice can be taken on the class start side. It's a simple mouse click. And you can take this choice during the entire activation period of the class using, as I said, this option on the class start side. And if you change your mind, you can always reset your decision. So these are the three options. Statement of participation, statement of accomplishment and graded statement of accomplishment for a small amount of money. So we invite you to join us in our linguistics 201 massive open online course, the structure of English. As soon as the class has been activated, you will be contacted by the VLC team. The rest is up to you. So on behalf of my team, let me thank you for your attention and enjoy your class.