Stephen van Vlack

Sookmyung Women`s University

Graduate School of TESOL

Developing Bilingualism (Fall 2005)

Course Policy

Overview: This three-hour-per-week course is designed to provide students with a course in the development or enhancement of bilingualism and the theoretical underpinnings of this rapidly developing sub-field of SLA. A bilingual individual is defined loosely as someone, according to Mohanty (1994) , who has the ability ̋to meet the communicative demands of the self and society in their normal functioning of two or more languages in their interaction with the other speakers of any or all of these languages̋. Based on this definition, we can see that bilinguals do not need to be equally proficient in all their languages and that what really defines them is language use. It is from this perspective that we will look at the issue. In this course, we will be looking at ways of developing bilingualism in our students particularly from a psycholinguistic and what is called a `dynamic approach` to multilingualism. In doing so we will quickly discover that socio-cultural considerations have a large effect on language use and language development, particularly in multilingual systems. In this way we will be taking rather heavy theory and using it to develop practical approaches in language teaching. This course will be rather heavy on the reading, and is seen as being a continuation of the SLA class you took in SMU-TESOL as well the Intro. to Linguistics class.

Objectives: This course has three main goals; (1) to improve the students` knowledge of how the different components of different languages interact in a single brain and single (global) society, (2) to investigate instances of how this is actually applied in educational programs and (3) to get the students to develop teaching perspectives which in which they can use this new knowledge. By the end of the course, all students will have a much better idea of how the language is really used and works, particularly in relation to the use of more than one language system and well as the societal features of language acquisition in general. This knowledge should enable them to carry out more theoretically sound second or third language teaching, particularly of English in Korea.

Texts

Primary Texts:

-Harmers and Blanc. (2000) Bilinguality and Bilingualism (2^nd Edition). Cambridge: CUP.

This is going to be our main text book and we will cover all of its sections.

-Herdina P. and Jessner U. (2002) A dynamic model of multilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

This short book provides a new model for how researchers might investigate language.

Student Presentations:

-Cenoz and Genesee. (Eds.) (1998) Beyond bilingualism: Multilingualism and multilingual education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Summer Reading Text:

Over the summer and before the class actually begins, I would like everyone to read a simple book on the spread of English as global language. This will set the tone for our investigations into `global models of bilinguality.`

-Crystal, D. (2003). English as a global language (2^nd Edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Additional Texts:

In addition to this book, we will have a few other special articles from various sources which I will give you in the form of a reading packet.

-Fabbro, Franco. (1999) The Neurolinguistics of Bilingualism. Hove: Psychology Press.

This is a great little book which very simply and concisely addresses many of the major issues of bilingualism and well as major issues in basic neurolinguistics in a series of short sections.

-Hoffmann, C. and Ytsma, J. (Eds.) (2004) Trilingualism in family, school and community. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

-Nicol, Janet (ed.) (2001) One mind, two languages: Bilingual language processing. Oxford: Blackwell.

This is precisely what the title would allow you to predict; a collection of articles on bilingual processing. Good reading.

-Wei, Li (ed.) (2000) The Bilingualism Reader. London: Routledge.

         This is a collection of articles on the many aspects of bilingualism.

Methodology

English Only: Students must conduct all course work in English. This means all writing, note-taking, and discussion should be in English. Let`s just try to stick to English as much as possible.

Classroom: In the classroom, there will be both direct lecturing and more discussion-oriented activities. Students will be expected to demonstrate that they have done the reading and learned something by taking an active role in the class discussions. There are no clear cut answers to any of these concerns The students need to come up with their own ideas and further questions. In order to do this you need to do the reading. Please, always come prepared or you will be lost in class.

Attendance: Students are expected to attend all scheduled classes. Two or more absences will result in a significantly lowered final grade. Being late twice is counted as an absence. Arriving more than half an hour late is also counted as an absence. Students themselves are responsible for all material covered and assigned in class during their absence. If you are going to be absent and know it beforehand, make sure you contact me as far in advance as possible, but bear in mind that there is no such thing as an excused absence.

Assignments

Homework: The most important homework for this class is to do the reading every week and be ready to fully participate in class. In order to ensure this and to improve the students writing ability, there will be written homework assigned each week. Check the website each week for the homework assignments as well as for summaries and additional information.

Presentations: In addition to regular homework, each student will do at least one presentation during the course of the class. These presentations are principally on multilingual education and come from readings in Cenoz and Genesee (eds.) (1998).

Exams

Midterm: The Mid-term will be due in the ninth week of class (October 28^th). It will be a written paper following three basic options. It generally seen as a rough draft of what will be done for the final project. No problems!!

Final Project: This will be where you get to show creatively how you can use the knowledge acquired in this course in a more practical sense. Basically, this will be a 15 to 20 page paper on some aspect of developing bilingualism. It should be fun and enjoyable. You will be given more specific details later as to the different options.

Grades: Final grades will be based on performance in the following categories.

Homework           25%

Participation         25%

Presentation        10%

Midterm Exam      10%

Final Project       30%

Instructor:  Stephen P. van Vlack

Office:        Sookmyung Professional Center 410

Telephone: 710-7761

e-mail:       [email protected]

P.S. There will also be a complimentary website for this class. I will be posting notes and summaries each week, so make sure you go and look at it. The address is:

http://www.geocities.com/utlaagt