Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESL)

This course introduces students to the most current approaches to teaching English as a second language. Drawing on contemporary research, the course will focus on creating optimal learning environments that engage, motivate, and support English language learners through meaningful and age/level appropriate activities. This hands-on course provides practical strategies and ideas for designing and teaching effective language lessons that integrate reading, writing, listening and speaking. Additionally, by participating in the required field experience, students will have multiple opportunities to apply and reflect upon particular approaches, building essential skills as a (future) language educator.

This course explores language as a social form, focusing on the connections between language, culture, perception and linguistic globalization. Against a sociolinguistic backdrop, the course aims to raise students' consciousness to the political, socio-cultural and ethical aspects of the global spread of English. The topics covered will equip students with the basic, critical concepts needed to examine the pros and cons of the internationalization of English worldwide. At a practical level, students will be guided to reflect on and incorporate these concepts in their approaches to teaching English in the US and abroad. Through readings, discussions, international conversation partners, and reflection assignments, students will (re)conceptualize how English is taught as an international language, problematizing the issues related to "Standard English" and "NES/NNES dichotomy." Individually and collectively, the class will deconstruct notions of "one-size fits all" approach to teaching (i.e. English language as a standardized language) and explore pedagogies that take into consideration multiple varieties of Englishes. From start to finish, students will be encouraged to draw on their own experiences, link theory to practice, and collect resources to support their future careers.

This course will guide you in understanding and applying principles of curriculum design and teacher-based assessment. Course readings, assignments and class discussions will guide you through thinking about how to best teach English language learners by adapting a curriculum that has been handed to you (i.e. a mandated curriculum), by building upon existing curricula in your instructional setting, or by creating a curriculum from scratch. In this course, curriculum is conceived of as an instructional process which includes planning, instructing and assessing. A foundational principle of this course is assessment can and should be integrated into instruction. As such, you will learn how to sequence interrelated lessons in response to students' performance on a variety of authentic assessments. You will also learn approaches to environment and needs analysis and will experience how these analyses can inform teaching and curriculum design. Toward the end of the course, the Continua of Biliteracy will be used as an organizing framework that will guide you toward taking a critical stance when reflecting upon the curriculum you have created.