General Course Information

English 420: Sociolinguistics

Required Texts

Recommended Text

Harnack, A., & Kleppinger, A. (1997). Online! a reference guide to using internet sources.

New York: St. Martin's Press.

 

The second half of the class will be more specifically concerned with the social consequences of language variation and people's attitudes towards variation. Topics in the second half of the class will include the educational problems of language minorities, especially Hispanics, bilingualism and bilingual education, the relationship between language, society and cognition, the relationship between socio-economic status and the development of literacy (see bibliography), the language deficit hypothesis and the issue of making English the official language of the United States.

Requirements
All students are required to fulfill three requirements during the quarter: the writing of five short essays, a final exam, and a class project or term paper.

First, students must write reponses to five shortessays.html. Each of these essays is associated with a chapter of the textbook by Wardaugh. These essays are not long and will essentially be student responses to certain topics and issues in sociolinguistics.

Second, students may participate in a class project that requires them to work with an international student enrolled on this campus. However, students who do not wish to participate in the project may write a term paper instead. I have supplied a list of possible topics and instructionsfor writing the term paper.

The final requirement is the completion of a comprehensive objective examination. The exam will cover all three textbooks, the lectures, and the additional readings. Students who do not complete the readings  will do poorly on the examination. Study questions for the test are available in WebCt, and because they are very similar to actual questions on the final, students should complete all of them. The dates for turning in all class requirements are found in the class schedule).

Final grades in the course will be based upon the grade distribution in the table below.

As indicated in the table above, the short essays and final examination will each be 30% of the final grade, and the paper or project will constitute the other 40%. Students may calculate their own final grades by filling out a grading guide.

Communicating with the Instructor
I have scheduled four hours of office hours per week for students, but I realize that many students have problems meeting with their instructors at specific times. Therefore, I actively encourage students to send me messages if they have questions about the content of the course. The questions should be as specific as possible and relate directly to the material being studied. More general questions should be asked during the class.

If you enjoy this course, the minor in linguistics might be for you.

October 11, 2002: Last date to withdraw without a "W" being recorded.
November 12, 2002: Last date to withdraw for a serious and compelling reason.