Language Description for Language Teaching (P00358)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : EDU-P-LDLTLING

This course aims to give participants a map of the territory of language description suitable to the needs of foreign-language teaching professionals. Exemplification - both of language points and pedagogic issues - will be from a variety of languages. Students are encouraged to contribute examples for discussion and analysis from their own language and their own teaching and learning experience.

Venue: IALS, 21 Hill Place

Entry Requirements

none

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Education, (The Moray House School of Education, Schedule C)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : Semester 1 (Blocks 1-2)

? Contact Teaching Time : 3 hour(s) per week for 10 weeks

? Other Required Attendance : 20 minutes per week for 11 weeks

First Class Information

Date	Start	End	Room	Area	Additional Information
18/09/2007	11:00	13:00			IALS, 21 Hill Place

All of the following classes

Type	Day	Start	End	Area
Lecture	Tuesday	11:10	13:00	Central
Lecture	Thursday	09:00	09:50	Central

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course participants will have:
- acquired a deeper understanding of the nature of language and its role in human thought and human communication;
- learned about different (especially formal vs. functional) approaches to language description and about sources of data for language description;
- explored key topics in phonetics/phonology, morphology/syntax, semantics/lexis and pragmatics/discourse;
- understood the basic principles of the study of language variation, both dialectal and diatypic;
- noticed and reflected on similarities and differences between languages, especially their own target teaching language and English (if these are different), in terms of both structure and use;
- understood the basic principles of pedagogical description of language and worked on a small-scale pedagogical-description task in relation to their target teaching language.
They will be able to
- think analytically and critically about problems of language description for language teaching in relation to their target teaching language
- evaluate published pedagogical descriptions
- produce appropriate descriptions for use in teaching materials, course books, syllabuses, etc.

Assessment Information

1. 2-hour written examination (50%)
2. A small-scale project on a pedagogically appropriate description of some aspect of the student's target language (approx. 3000 words) (50%)