EDUC 250
Second Language Acquisition, fall 2020 (sophomore year)
Course Description
Students examine how humans learn language as well as how they learn more than one language, as is the case for the vast majority of people. Students also explore the factors that enable or hinder language learning and whether bilinguals are smarter. These are just some of the fascinating issues addressed in the course that combines study of theory, fieldwork-based analysis of learner language, and pedagogical considerations, including a focus on both English and World Langauge learners.
Course Content
Rationale
From my original proposal: This course delves into the ways in which children and adults learn a second language. In applied linguistics, there is a high chance of working with individuals who are speaking English as a second language. This course provides a background in the most effective methods to help those individuals as well as ways to improve your own second language, touching on several of my research questions.
Lesson Plan
This assignment was to create a lesson plan, using the Education department template, for a second language instructional session. For the purposes of this assignment, I used a lesson I gave to a college-level student I was tutoring through the Five College Center for World Languages. The link below contains the full lesson plan informed by language acquisition theory and class readings, which I actually carried out with my student.
Literature Review
This assignment was to pick a subject in the academic area of second language acquisition and to examine modern scholarship on the subject, comparing different voices on the subject. This project consisted of two components: one was a longer literature review paper, and the other was a presentation of the same material given for the class. Linked below are both portions of the assignment, the paper and the slides for my presentation.
Takeaways
One of the major misconceptions I had prior to taking this course was that second language acquisition is essentially impossible after the teenage years, and that the adult brain has changed too much to be able to meaningfully retain a new language long-term. However, this course proved that this was incorrect, and that adult second language acquisition is quite possible. I also learned a lot about the motivations behind learning language and how much these influence language learning. Language acquisition theory is quite important to the study of speech pathology, and I took away much of the information about how to promote language learning presented in this course.
Connections
This course was how I became involved with the Language in Media internship under Dr. Jill Watson. The project involved examining language in popular media sources surrounding topics about BIPOC and indigenous peoples. Additionally, the lesson plan I submitted for this course was for an actual job I had at the time. More information about both experiences can be found on the page below.
This course also connected with other education courses I took in its focus on students who are English learners, especially EDUC 245 (Teaching and Learning English Grammar) and EDUC 270 (Exploring Teaching). More information on these courses, which were not explicitly included in my individual major courseload, can be found below.