Department of Language and Literacy Education, UBC.

LLED 489b: Applied Linguistics for Teachers
Wednesday, Jan 7 - Wednesday, April 7, 2010
4:30 to 7:30; Scarfe 202

Instructor: Dr. Bonny Norton
Phone: (604) 822-5236
Office PONE 209, E-mail:bonny.norton@ubc.ca
Office hours: Monday and Wednesday, 3-4pm
Olympic Break: Wednesday February 17 and 24
Website: www.lerc.educ.ubc.ca/fac/norton


COURSE OVERVIEW

An introduction to the linguistic foundations of first and second language learning, the course will assist teachers in making linguistically informed decisions about first and second language teaching. The course is not a comprehensive survey of Linguistics, but restricts its topics to those generally agreed to have relevance to language teaching and learning. 489b focuses in particular on language, society, and education:
* Recent theory and research in first language acquisition
* Implications of acquisition studies for curriculum and instruction
* Recent theory and research in second language acquisition
* Linguistic foundations of major approaches to second language instruction
* Relationships amongst language, learning and thinking
* Race, gender, and social groups as factors in educational success: language as mediating role

REQUIREMENTS AND EVALUATION

All assignments are due on the day assigned. Late submissions will be penalized unless exceptional circumstances are explained to the instructor before the deadlines. Please refer to the Department of Language Education Grading Criteria for letter grade/percentage corrections.

Grading Practices (UBC Calendar) "Faculties, department and schools reserve the right to scale grades in order to maintain equity among sections and conformity to University, faculty, department or school norms. Students should therefore note that an unofficial grade given by an instructor might be changed by the faculty, department or school. Grades are not official until they appear on a student's academic record."

ATTENDANCE: (UBC Calendar)
"Regular attendance is expected of students in all their classes. Students who neglect their academic work and assignments may be excluded from the final examinations. Students who are unavoidably absent because of illness or disability should report to their instructors on return to classes." Obtaining a doctor's certificate is advisable.


THEMES and READINGS

Note: All the readings in Themes 2-5 are in the following class text:

Hornberger, N. & McKay, S. (eds) (in press). Sociolinguistics and language education. Bristol:
Multilingual Matters.

THEME 1: First Language Acquisition and the Development of Bilingualism

Cummins, J. (2008). Teaching for transfer: Challenging the two solitudes assumption in bilingual education. In J. Cummins & N. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 5: Bilingual Education, 65-75.
Kubota, R. (2001). My experience of learning to read and write in Japanese as L1 and English as L2. In D. Belcher & U. Connor (eds), Reflections on multiliterate lives (pp. 96-109). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Norton, B. & Toohey, K. (2001). Changing perspectives on good language learners. TESOL Quarterly, 35, 2, 307-322.

THEME 2: Language and Society

Kasper, G. and Omori, M. (in press). Language and culture. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)
McGroarty, M. (in press). Language and ideologies. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds).
Siegel, J. (in press). Pidgins and creoles. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)
McKay, S. (in press). English as an international lingua franca. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)
Lo Bianco, J. (in press). Language planning and policy. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)

THEME 3: Language and Identity

Norton, B. (in press). Language and identity. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)
Higgins, C. (in press). Gender identities in language education. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)
Reyes, A. (in press). Language and ethnicity. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)
Pennycook, A. (in press). Nationalism, identity, and popular culture. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)

THEME 4: Language and Interaction Alim, S. (in press). Critical language awareness. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)
Duff, P. (in press). Language socialization. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)
Kamwangamalu, N. (in press). Multilingualism and code-switching in education. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)
Jaspers, J. (in press). Style and styling. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)
Rymes, B. (in press). Critical discourse analysis. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)
Sidnell, J. (in press). Conversation analysis. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)

THEME 5: Language, Literacy, and Learning

Janks, H. (in press). Language, power, and pedagogies. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)
Kubota, R. (in press). Cross-cultural perspectives on writing: Contrastive rhetoric. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)
Street, B. & Leung, C. (in press). Sociolinguistics, language teaching, and new literacy studies. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)
Vaish, V. and Towndrew, P. (in press). Multimodal literacy in language classrooms. In N. Hornberger & S. McKay (eds)


ASSIGNMENTS

ASSIGNMENT 1: A Personal Reflection on Literacy Learning

Due Wednesday, February 3, 2010; 5 pages, double-spaced; 30% of final grade

Drawing on Kubota's 2001 article and classroom discussions, address the following questions in a narrative essay:
1. How would you describe your own experiences of literacy in your family?
2. In what ways did you see reading and writing modeled?
3. What kinds of reading and writing do you remember from your school days?
4. Think about your own experiences of learning another language. Can you relate to Ryuko Kubota's experiences? Why or why not?
5. If applicable, are your students' experiences as language learners today similar? Different? How?

ASSIGNMENT 2: Class exercise on a chapter from Sociolinguistics & Language Education (no grade)

Working with a partner on a chapter from the class text, construct a series of short classroom exercises based on the themes in the chapter. These exercises will be used in class on the day the chapter is presented and discussed.

ASSIGNMENT 3: Review article on Sociolinguistics and Language Education

Due Friday, April 9, 2010; 10 pages, double-spaced; 70% of final grade

Drawing on your reading of the chapters in Sociolinguistics and Language Education, as well as class discussions, discuss key ideas in the book chapters, focusing on your experiences as a language learner and/or (aspiring) language teacher.