English Linguistics

Catalog description

This course aims to meet part of the requirement for PDE's ESL Program Specialist certification and the course is an introduction to the study of language and principles of linguistics. The objective of this course is to explore the basic components of language mostly from an ESL teacher's perspective and gain a better understanding of the challenges and strengths ESL students have in learning English as a new language. In particular, students will develop knowledge about the language sound system (phonetics and phonology), the form of words (morphology), sentence structure (syntax), word and sentence meaning (semantics) as well as pragmatics (contextual use of language). Students will also explore other topics and issues related to linguistics, such as how language is applied in social situations in different cultures (Sociolinguistics), how languages change over time (historical linguistics), and how languages are learned (language acquisition) and taught (pedagogy and applied linguistics).