Courses

Students examine and evaluate various theories of testing in ESL. Methods of testing grammar, speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills are introduced; criteria for ensuring reliability and validity are explained and then used by students.

This course is designed to enable students to design appropriate programs and course sets for ES/FL programs. In addition to examining general English programs, the course focuses on English for Specific Purposes and, in particular, needs analyses and custom course design.

This course introduces the students to the rudiments of linguistic and sociolinguistic survey. The focus is on purpose-driven language survey design and appropriate subsequent reporting of the findings. Consideration is given to current issues in social science research such as the ethics of sampling, and statistical significance of sample populations.

This course introduces students to theories of second language and second culture acquisition. Students develop and evaluate self-directed strategies based on personal learning styles. Practical experience in the above topics is gained by working with a speaker of a non-Indo-European-language

Prepares linguists and literacy workers to guide speakers of an unwritten language to develop an orthography that will accurately represent the sound system of the language, be acceptable to the speakers of the language, and be easily learned for reading and writing the language. This includes consideration of both linguistic and sociolinguistic factors, and representation of non-segmental features such as tone. Although the focus is on alphabetic scripts, non-Roman scripts, including syllabic and logographic, are also considered.

An exploration of the language ecology of speech communities around the world. Students engage with both theory and practice related to topics such as multilingualism, language shift, language reclamation, language advocacy, and language policy. Students will conduct sociolinguistic research, communicate research findings, and make practical applications to the language-use goals of speech communities.

Provides a theoretical and practical basis for analyzing the semantics of the lexicon, managing a lexical database and producing dictionaries for a variety of audiences including the local community, translators and linguists.