EDU 6507 Language Development & Literacy

 

Thursdays, 4:30-7:05 p.m., Peterson 201

 

Spring  Quarter     3/31/05 – 6/2/05

 

 

Text Box: Academic Vision of SPU Seattle Pacific University seeks to educate students to make a difference in the world. Goals include graduating People of Competence People of Character People of Wisdom People of Grace School of Education Mission Statement To prepare educators for service and leadership in schools and communities by developing their professional competence and character within a framework of Christian faith and values. Graduate Student Goals The School of Education seeks to graduate educators who demonstrate Effective Leadership Clear Communication Analytical and Problem Solving Skills Foundational Knowledge and Skills A Positive Impact on Student Learning Professionalism

PROFESSOR:

 

William E. Nagy

Office:  Peterson 309

Hours:  By appointment

Phone: 206 281-2253

Fax: 206 281-2756

Email:  wnagy@spu.edu

 

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

 

This course examines children’s language acquisition, with an emphases on the relationship between oral language development and the development of literacy.  This course is a requirement for the Reading and Language Arts specialization of the Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction, and is also available as an elective to students in other programs. 

 

EMERGENCY PROCEDURES:

 

If it is necessary to evacuate the classroom, we are to re-assemble in the Tiffany Loop.  If this area is inaccessible, the secondary assembly point is in the 5th Avenue Streetscape, that is, the paved area west of Marston-Watson.

 

DISABILITY SUPPORT SERVICES:

 

Students with disabilities need to contact Disability Support Services in the Center for learning to request academic accommodations.  Disability Support Services sends Disability Verification Letters out to all your professors indicating the appropriate accommodations for the classroom based on your disability.

 

 

 

Course objectives:

 

All course objectives are for the purpose of helping students address the four commitments of the School of Education’s Conceptual Framework - competence, character, service, and leadership – and the skills and attributes outlined in the Graduate Student Goals.   The primary goal is to enable teachers to have a positive impact on student learning through a deeper understanding of the nature and sources of linguistic diversity and individual differences in language development, and the relationships between oral language development and the acquisition of literacy.

 

The following are some of the questions that define the content of this course:  How is language development similar to, and different from, other kinds of learning?  How has our understanding of human learning been shaped by theories of language development?  Which aspects of language development are most, and least, sensitive to variations in adult input?  What types of experiences and interactions are most conducive to language development?  How are oral and written language different in their form? functions?  development?  Which aspects of oral language development are most strongly linked to literacy? In what ways is learning to read like acquiring oral language?  In what ways is it different?  What types of preschool experiences promote later literacy development?  What kinds of differences in language development are associated with differences in socioeconomic status or ethnicity? How is learning to read in a second language different from learning to read in one’s first language? What types of instructional activities and practices, and patterns of interaction, foster those aspects of language development that contribute most directly to literacy?

 

Course requirements:

 

Required texts. 

 

Wells, G. (1986)  The meaning makers:  Children learning language and using language to learn.  Portsmouth, NH:  Heineman. 

Biemiller, A. (1999).  Language and Reading Success.  Cambridge, MA:  Brookline Books. 

 

Additional readings will be assigned during the quarter.

 

Written responses to readings.  Each week you are to post a written response to the assigned readings for that week in the Blackboard discussion board for this class.  To receive full credit for a week’s response, it must be submitted no later than 24 hours before the start of class, that is, by 4:30 pm on Wednesday.  The responses may be brief (i.e., 1-2 paragraphs), and can take a variety of forms, for example, a question, an insight, a disagreement with a point made in the assigned readings, a possible application in your classroom, or a way you have already applied something in the readings and found it successful (or unsuccessful).  In any case the response should reflect your attempt to process the reading, and should identify as precisely as possible what it was in the reading (and where it was) that prompted this response.  Several readings may be assigned for a given class session, but you are only required to address one of them in a response.  You are also encouraged to respond to the postings of other students.

 

Attendance and participation.  The success of this class, both for you and for your fellow students, depends on your active participation in class discussion, informed by having studied the assigned readings for each class meeting.

 

Take-home short essay tests.  There will be two take-home short essay tests, each containing 2-4 questions.

 

Projects.   You will complete two short projects during the quarter.  The first will involve collecting, transcribing, and analyzing language samples, and the second will involve some additional analysis of the data collected for the first project.

 

Evaluation:

 

Grades are determined by the following criteria:

 

Attendance and participation in class                 10%

Projects                                                            10% each

Weekly responses to reading                            10%

Short essay tests                                               30% each

 

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY:

 

Students at Seattle Pacific University are expected to demonstrate academic integrity in their work.  Both the students and the instructor have obligations to report and to prevent cheating, plagiarism or other academic misconduct.  Guidelines for how academic dishonesty will be handled are printed in the Graduate Catalog (pp. 25-26).  In this class, no credit will be given for an assignment or exam in which it is determined that the student has copied other students’ work, represented someone else’s work as one’s own without properly citing the author,  or any similar infraction.  If such an occurrence is repeated, no credit will be given for the course. 

 

RESPECT FOR DIVERSITY:

 

Intellectual integrity requires that even though it may at times be necessary to be ruthless with ideas, we must always be not just civil in our discourse, but respectful and gentle with all persons.  This respect is especially important when we communicate about, or across, differences of race, ethnicity, gender, and class.

 

 

PROPOSED COURSE SCHEDULE:

 

 

Week

Topic

Assigned Readings

3/31/05

 

Introductions / Issues in Language Development and Literacy

In class:  Video The Human Language Series, Part Two: Acquiring the Human Language, “Playing the Language Game”

4/7/05

 

Innateness

 

Pinker, S. (1994)   Chatterboxes.  Chapter 2 in S. Pinker, The Language Instinct.  New York: William Morrow & Co.  Inc.,  pp. 25-54.

Wells, G. (1986)  Introduction and Chapter 1 (pp. ix-17)

Hauser, M., Chomsky, N., & Fitch, W. T. (2002).  The faculty of language: What is it, who has it and how did it evolve?  Science, 298, 1569-1579.

4/14/05

 

No class meeting

 

4/21/05

 

Syntactic Development & the Role of Adults in Language Acquisition

Wells, G. (1986)  Chapters 2-4 (pp. 19-65)

 

4/28/05

 

Language in Home and School

Wells, G. (1986).  Chapters 5-6

Labov (1995). Can reading failure be reversed? A linguistic approach to the question.  In V. Gadsden,& D. Wagner (Eds.) Literacy among African-American Youth (pp. 39-68).  Cresskill, NJ:  Hampton Press.

5/5/05

 

Individual and SES differences in language development

Wells, V. (1986).  Chapter 7

Neuman (2001).  The role of knowledge in early literacy.  Reading Research Quarterly, 36(4), 468-475.

 

5/12/05

 

Literacy, language development, and SES, and metalinguistic awareness

Wells, G. (1986). Chapters 8-9

Olson, D. R., (1984).  “See! Jumping!”  Some Oral Language Antecedents of Literacy.  In H. Goelman, A. Obert, & F. Smith (Eds.), Awakening to Literacy.  Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann, pp. 185-192.

Heath, S. B. (1983).  A lot of talk about nothing.  Language Arts, 60(8), 39-48.

5/19/05

 

Properties of Oral and written language

Chafe, W.,  & Danielewicz, J. (1987).  Properties of spoken and written language.  In R. Horowitz & S. J. Samuels (Eds.), Comprehending Oral and Written Language, pp. 83-113.

Snow, C. (1991).  The theoretical basis for relationships between language and literacy development.  Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 6(1), pp. 5-10.  

5/26/05

 

Second Language Acquisition

Cummins, J.  (1994).  The Acquisition of English as a Second Language.   In K. Spangenberg-Urbschat & R. Pritchard (Eds.), Kids come in all languages:  Reading instruction for ESL students, pp. 36-62. Newark, DE:  International Reading Association.

Laufer, B.  (1997).  The lexical plight in second language reading.  In J. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.), Second language vocabulary acquisition, pp. 20-34. NY:  Cambridge University Press.

6/2/05

 

Classroom practices that promote language development

Biemiller A. (1999).  Language and Reading Success.  Cambridge, MA:  Brookline Books.

 

Guidelines for First Project

 

The goal of this project is for the class to collect samples of oral language from a variety of contexts and age levels.  We are especially interested in the language of children between ages 1 and 5, but language from older children and adults will also be useful for comparison, as well as other types of oral language such as television programs, educational and otherwise.

 

For the first project, you are to collect at least two different samples of oral language which represent a contrast involving some variable or distinction relevant to this class.  Here are some possible examples:

  • The speech of two siblings of different ages (or, if you already have the tapes, the speech of the same child at two different ages).
  • The speech of the same participants in two situations -- one involving contextualized language (face-to-face conversation about something physically present) and one involving decontextualized language (e.g., extended description or narrative about something not physically present).
  • The speech of an adult talking with a young child, and the speech of the same adult when talking with other adults.
  • The language used in an educational television program, and the language used in a non-educational program.
  • The speech of a native speaker of English with non-native speakers, and the speech of the same native speaker of English with other native speakers
  • The speech of a bilingual child in each language

 

Use audiotape or a video camera to record the language samples, so you can make sure your transcription is accurate.  Transcribe enough of each sample so that there are at least 100 words from the participant whose speech you are chiefly interested in.  Type the transcription, single-spaced, following the example of the transcriptions in Wells (1986).  Unless you are especially interested in pronunciation, use conventional spellings.  However, the transcription should in other respects represent the spoken language as closely as possible. 

 

Include with the transcription the following information:  Ages and genders of the participants (you don’t need exact ages for the adults),  nature of the setting, and any information about the topic necessary to make sense of the text.  Also, measure the length of the entire transcribed portion in seconds, and calculate the number of words spoken per minute.