 Welcome to the Virtual Linguistics Campus PMOOC, Linguistics 202, History of English, our permanent free online offer for everyone who is interested in the development of English from Proto-Indo-European and before until today. Before you start, it is important to know that without a solid background in linguistics and in particular in phonetics, there is no point in doing this PMOOC. Our recommendation is to do our classes Linguistics 101 and Linguistics 102 beforehand. If you satisfy these prerequisites, fine. And you can access the class as usual. Log in with your personal data to find the class on your personalized VLC start site under your current classes on the Virtual Linguistics Campus. On the class start site, you have access to several class-related links. For example, the bibliography, the link section, or links to the social media, for example, to the Facebook group associated with this class. Furthermore, your class is a permanent MOOC, but how does a PMOOC work? Here are the central principles of this permanent online course. Central to our PMOOCs is the idea that you have access to all units of a class at any time. However, if you wish, you can also define your own fixed rhythm using the class timer. Let's say you want to go through the class on a weekly basis, then select the 7 days rhythm. If this is too short for you, go for the 10 days rhythm. If it's too long, select, say, a 4 days rhythm. Please note that the rhythm is just a guideline for you. It marks the unit you should work with in red and makes available the practical solutions in time. Whenever the red marker moves on, you will see these clickable symbols on the practical sheet. But note that, of course, you are free to change your rhythm whenever you like and you can always override it at any time and access any unit of your choice and the components within it. Let us now look at the content of Linguistics 202. The class is subdivided into three central parts. In order to understand the development of English, we will first look at the central principles of reconstructing and classifying languages. The second part is devoted to the discussion of the developmental phases of English and their central linguistic aspects. Special emphasis is laid on early modern English phonology, including a detailed discussion of the great vowel shift, one of the most influential sound shifts in English. The remaining part looks at recent developments with a final focus on present-day English orthography. And our teaching and learning concept? Well, studying online on the virtual linguistics campus simply means go through each unit at your own pace, make use of as many VLC options as possible. For example, if you don't know what to do, use the advice options on each unit start site or contact your peers via the class-related forum or via our Facebook group MOOC Linguistics 202. And if you want a certificate, here are your options. The simplest option is the statement of participation issued by the virtual linguistics campus. You will receive such a certificate for regular and active participation, including the submission of at least one worksheet and for free. Once you have successfully submitted a worksheet, you will be eligible for such a certificate and can open it by hitting the Open Statement button. The second option is the statement of accomplishment, also for free and issued by the virtual linguistics campus. To be given such a certificate, we not only want your regular participation, but we also want you to do the mastery worksheets, our electronic tests, one for each unit. And we want you to achieve an overall score of all the worksheets of at least 60%. A simple click on the Open Statement button and the certificate is yours. If you want to obtain a graded statement of accomplishment, select Yes down here. This most advanced option of certification includes your precise grade, the workload in hours and a complete list of all the tasks you successfully submitted. This graded statement of accomplishment is issued by Marburg University in conjunction with the virtual linguistics campus and it involves a fee of currently 45 euros. Once you have satisfied the conditions and have decided to obtain such a certificate, you first have to open the invoice and transfer the money to Marburg University. And once your payment has been accepted, you can download your personal graded statement of accomplishment via a mouse click. Well, that's it. In case you have more questions, do not hesitate to ask us. For example, in our Facebook group. The rest is up to you. Thanks for your attention and see you soon.