Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Fall 2011: ENG 442 Course Description

We are planning on offering a section of ENG 442: Topics in Linguistics with the topic of Second Language Acquisition in the fall. It will most likely be offered during the TTh 9:30-10:45 time slot. For Linguistics minors, the course could satisfy the core requirement or an elective in Categories II or III. English majors and minors could use the course for their required linguistics course, and other students could count the course as an upper-division elective.

The course description is included below:

This course will focus on both former and contemporary approaches to how humans learn a second (or third) language. Discussions will include a range of languages (no knowledge of a second language assumed). We will examine the nature of language, multilingualism, heritage language acquisition, the roles of the first and second languages in second language acquisition, formal approaches, typological and functional approaches, language processing, socio-cultural views of second language learning, and the psychology of second language learning.

If you are interested in the course, please e-mail Chris at samsc@sfasu.edu in order for him to find out if the course topic has enough student support to run.