Help requested for AL syllabus

emil32 · Post by **emil32** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 6:08 am

My university has assigned me to teach a graduate course in the TOESL program entitled "Introduction to Applied Linguistics." I feel overwhelmed at the prospect of teaching AL in a 45-hour course.

Any suggestions as to what you feel are the most important/salient regions of AL to include would be WELCOMED.

Tnx,

Emil

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 3:40 pm

Would this be to students who already have some kind of Linguistics background or are they totally green? And what are the objectives of the course? Is it purely academic or are the students potential language teachers? At 45 hours, a lot is going to depend on what else your students are doing.

emil32 · Post by **emil32** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 4:36 pm

Thanks for the note. The students are in their first semester of MA TESOL training- teachers of tomorrow. The course objectives are to give an overview of AL. The administration has given me the class, which begins May 3, and I'm very worried by the vague mandate: "Skip phonetics and phonology."

As this is a new job, I DO want to be rehired in September, but this course reminds me of the story that Plato was asked to teach all his philosophy while standing on one foot. Not being Plato, I'm beginning to panic.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 5:18 pm

Hmmm. Maybe someone else is doing Phonetics and Phonology...

You might want to go over some theories of Second Language Acquisition, Error Analysis (L1 Interference, false analogies, developmental), maybe some history (Grammar-Translation Method, Audiolingual...).

Hope this helps

wjserson · Post by **wjserson** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 6:46 pm

I'll add my own two cents here.

So the students are ESL/EFL teachers-to-be, and they're taking their intro to linguistics?

I never considered phonetics and phonology to be "applied linguistics" becuase they are usually taught as "theory" (as in, concrete information needed to participate in "applied" projects later). Are semantics, syntax, lexicology and morphology not part of the content either?

Lorikeet · Post by **Lorikeet** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 9:56 pm

So it's really supposed to be Applied Linguistics for ESL teachers? The class I had in Applied Linguistics (many moons ago) was an overview of the area. Unfortunately I don't remember it all now, but it seems there were 6 areas, but I can only remember 3 at the moment: child language acquisition, teaching reading, and teaching esl.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Wed Apr 07, 2004 10:23 pm

I suspect that the reason you don't need to consider phonology and phonemics is that the students will have been given a basic grouding in it long before. Woudl certainly be true of Spanish students, and I suspect it would be true in the Dominican Republic as well.

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Thu Apr 08, 2004 2:44 pm

I agree that you are probably to introduce the faculty of Applied Linguistics to the students. At least, this was what we did in our introductory course. We had an introductory lecture with an overview of the field by the main teacher and then each week, a professor from each course available to us in the future came to give us an hour talk on his/her area. It was invaluable in selecting future courses and getting an overall picture of the field. You often don't know where all this is going to take you and who is taking you there.

The job of the prof of the Intro course was to arrange speakers, to get us into dicussions of what we had learned afterwards and then to give us our first taste of how to set up our final thesis by starting on a search of all availalbe articles on a topic of our choice.

We were taught how to use the library and how to use the Internet and so on in this course. I will forward you the notes from the course so you can see the range of topics.

Each professor assigned a reading beforehand and this was in a course pack we could purchase or use in the library and gave us an introduction into the language of the area even if we couldn't always understand much.

The course was the first time we had met all the people in our section and was also used as a social base in a big university so there were lots of social dues as well - the prof assigned us groups and we supported one another for the whole semester and then afterwards as well. Of course, there were good parties too after classes.

There was also an on-line chat line just for the students to continue what was learned in the class or for questions. We had to keep a journal of our learning and hand that in every two weeks and share it with our group. That brought up the level of writing quickly because some students were excellent written communicators and we all tried hard to keep up. We could get copies of the other student's contribution on line as well so it made another "book" of readings.

This course is where the administration brought in any forms needed or contacted people and so a lot of problems were solved because we had all been through it together, especially for the foreign students.

It was a great course and as our profs always said, they choose the best person for the introductory courses because you are first person that the students will meet in their years of doing their courses. I am sure you will live up to their expectations.

Lorikeet · Post by **Lorikeet** » Thu Apr 08, 2004 3:01 pm

Wow, that sounds like a great course! It reminded me that my applied linguistics course also had some discussions of sociolinguistics. I wonder if people still use that term