Course Descriptions
APLNG 497 Language Awareness: Classroom and Social Interaction
This course will investigate the basic units of language and provide a framework for understanding English as a language system. It will offer an introduction to linguistics through
analysis of educational situations in which language is an issue. It will explore how pedagogical issues that arise in teaching English can be explained and taught based on linguistic
understandings. The course will be centered around tasks requiring knowledge of linguistics and reflection on its application to second language learning in classroom situations.
WL ED 483 Evaluating Schools’ Performances and Programs with English Language Learners
As an ESL program specialist in your school or district, you may be the only critical advocate for English language learners (ELLs) and their families, both in the school and
community. In this course we’ll examine the many aspects this advocacy entails, including ELL program design, Pennsylvania Department of Education requirements and guidelines,
connecting with families and immigrant communities, and effective language assessment tools and the relationship to content area assessment. The course will serve as an introduction
to the issues at stake and connect you with the resources that will help you turn advocacy into action in your classroom, school, and district.
WL ED 444 Language, Culture, and the Classroom: Issues for Practitioners
How does it feel to be a cultural and linguistic “other”? What is it like to live in a community in which the “rules” of the culture are not familiar to you? As a teacher, how do you
respond to the cultures of your students? This course will offer a framework to help teachers answer some of those questions, to prepare them for their individual experiences in a
culturally different context during their stay in Ecuador, and to foster their development as ESL teachers. We will investigate ways to define and describe culture and the cultural
adjustment process, stereotyping, racism, and classroom strategies for culturally diverse learners. Finally, the course will provide an overview of ethnographic techniques of data
gathering for a field experience in Ecuador.
WL ED 400 Foundations of Language in Second Language Teaching
This course will focus on the language used in teaching and learning school subjects, with a particular focus on academic discourse and how it contrasts with informal
social discourse. It will introduce issues of first and second language development of school-aged children, particularly of literacy as a situated practice and the development of
reading and writing skills in second language children. It will also provide an overview of factors affecting L2 learning. The course participants will explore the L2 language
learning and teaching processes unfolding in the Spanish/Quichua language classes (practical experience outlined below) and their interactions with families and local communities.
APLNG 493 Teaching English as a Second Language
The intent of this course is to guide the course participants through a process of exploring, shaping, and theorizing about the classroom practice of teaching English
to second language learners. The course will include daily lecture/discussion, with a teaching practicum in an ESL classroom in Ecuador. The participants will discuss readings,
observe students and teachers in the classroom setting, and begin to develop their own ESL teaching practices through a supervised practical teaching experience, reflection, and
integration of theory and classroom concerns. The goal is to develop specific abilities to respond to the constantly changing and complex classroom contexts that characterize ESL
teaching in U.S. public schools. A research paper or curricular project will be developed and completed as a final capstone project in the context of this course.
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