 The Applied Linguistics concentration prepares students to teach on the college level in the United States and abroad and to conduct original research. Many students choose to focus on an important area of Applied Linguistics, the application of second language acquisition theory to teaching and research, particularly in English as a Second Language. The degree also prepares students for researching the pragmatic linguistic needs of specific environments (such as educational, legal, medical) and for consulting for the multicultural workplace.
The Applied Linguistics concentration prepares students to teach on the college level in the United States and abroad, to conduct original research, and to meet the discourse-oriented and pragmatic linguistic needs of the working world (e.g., translation; multicultural demands at work because of linguistic differences).
The curriculum offers courses in Linguistics and E.S.L., including English Phonetics and Phonology; Second Language Acquisition, Bilingualism, and Bidialectalism; Dialectology; E.S.L. Grammar; Language and Literature; Syntax; History of the English Language; Discourse Analysis; World Englishes; Sociolinguistics; Neurolinguistics; E.S.L. Reading; E.S.L. Writing; Seminar in Applied and Theoretical Linguistics; and Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. These courses explore areas such as linguistics and composition, language and gender, articulatory and acoustic phonetics, phonetic transcription, teaching English pronunciation to speakers of other languages, and differences between first and second language acquisition. At least three linguistics and three E.S.L. courses are taught each semester.
These courses emphasize language universals and the specific character they assume in various languages, regional and individual dialects and between stratified levels of society; the social, cultural, and linguistically pragmatic differences of English compared to other languages; and cross-cultural interpretations of the indirect discourse through speech-act theory and the maxims of the cooperative principle. The student thus becomes more sensitive both to generalizations about language, but also to specific, contextually driven variations. Students may teach English abroad in the Czech Republic, China, and Japan. Several students have presented papers at professional conferences such as The Southern Conference on Linguistics, NWAVE, Tennessee TESOL, and International TESOL.
For more information:
Admission
Degree Requirements
Faculty
Further ESL/Linguistics concentration info
Intensive English for Internationals
Graduate Courses in ESL/Linguistics
Summer Program in Pilsen, the Czech Republic
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