Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Graduate School of TESOL
Developing Bilingualism (Fall 2007)
Course Policy
Overview: This three-hour-per-week course is designed to provide students with a course in issues and practices related to the development and/or enhancement of bilingualism and the theoretical underpinnings of this rapidly developing area of language research. 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 of language development and enhancement this semester. In this course, we will be looking at ways of developing bilingualism (or aspects thereof) 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, but should be interesting. The course is also designed with no prerequisites. Students who have previously taken the Second Language Learning Theories or Intro. to Linguistics classes will find some of the ideas here a bit easier to grapple with, but the material is approached from the point of view of a beginner to the field.
*Mohanty, A.K. (1994). Bilingualism in a multilingual society: Psychological and pedagogical implications. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.
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 languages are really used and work, 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 (2nd 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(s).
-Kecskes, I and T. Papp. (2000). Foreign language and mother tongue. Mahwah, NJ.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
This short book is all about cross-linguistic transfer and how it can be effected.
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 rather simple and hopefully engaging case study on bilingual development.
-Caldas, S. (2006). Raising bilingual-biliterate children in monolingual cultures. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
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.
-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: Following the immersion model, students are expected to conduct all course work in English. This means writing, note-taking, and discussion should primarily be in English. Korean should be used appropriately as a means of enhancing and integrating understanding, not as a way of avoiding English.
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 they 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 (November 1st). 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: Haengpa Faculty Building 206
Telephone: 2077-7761
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: