SUMMER 2024
Additional Course Offerings: See Core Curriculum
LEGAL TRANSLATION (CR. 3)
01:940:476:B1:05343
ONLINE, 5/28 - 7/05
Prerequisite or co-requisite: 940:401 and 940:475.
MA and graduate students need to add a G prefix when registering for the course to be counted towards graduation.
ANA SOLIS
Practice in sight and written translation of legal documents, court records, and language of courtroom procedures. Spanish-English and English-Spanish.
LANGUAGE LEARNING AND THE BRAIN (CR. 3)
16:940:578:A1:04377
ONLINE
NURIA SAGARRA
Understanding the bilingual brain: from the lab to the class.
Language plays a central role in human life. Although all normally developing children learn to speak one or multiple languages, language learning is one of the most complex human cognitive abilities. This course examines the relationship between what we know about the bilingual brain and what teaching practices improve language learning.
We will explore questions such as:
How does bilingualism affect the brain? How do bilinguals handle having multiple languages in a single mind? Why do some people learn new languages more easily than others? How do early (pre-puberty) and late (post-puberty) bilinguals process language and how do they anticipate upcoming information? Can adults achieve native-like competence in languages learned after puberty? What linguistic challenges do atypically developing children (autism, ADHD, SLI) face, and is bilingualism really detrimental to them? What teaching practices can help language learners process information more effectively?
The purpose of this course is threefold:
1) to provide educators with a scientific basis for understanding the bilingual mind and how humans actually learn languages,
2) to help them become informed consumers of information about bilingualism and second language acquisition to debunk myths unsupported by science, and
3) to offer them a new lens through which to look at everyday classroom situations to create effective language teaching practices based on solid research.
The course combines lectures with group activities to develop critical thinking, teaching units focused on how to learn and test foreign languages, and in situ practice on developing a portfolio unit. The course is designed for language teachers, other educators, and adult learners who wish to better understand the cognitive mechanisms that underlie the bilingual mind to transform how we teach in the classroom.