Description

Participants will be introduced to all of the issues in language teaching generally. There will be lecture followed by discussion in seminar style. Many people assume that English as a foreign/second language is very difficult to learn. Of course it is difficult, but all natural human languages have their challenges and can only be judged relative to which other language English is compared to. There is a great body of research that has been done into the task of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). To some extent the course will look at English versus other common language backgrounds. This is a process referred to as "comparison and contrast." The most typical learners we encounter locally are native speakers of Spanish so some class time will be looking at what that means to us as teachers. As for our native language, most of us know the basics but there is very much more to consider in this profession. Many people want to volunteer in programs that teach ESL and it is widely assumed in America that nearly any native speaker of English is somehow equipped to teach it. This class will raise your skill level. It will survey teaching methodologies (including those featured on the World Wide Web), sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, phonetics/phonemes, pronunciation strategies, a review of English grammar including little appreciated topics such as phrasal verb behavior, tag questions, modal verbs, and more.

Activity Category

Language & Culture

Location

SLO-RM 3412

Instructor

John Walsh