Course Contents

Week 1 • Key concepts and issues in sociolinguists • The study of language as used in speech communities • Speakers and styles Week 2 • Language and dialect (regional dialect, social dialect) • Style, registers and belief Week 3 • The difficulty in defining ‘standard’ English • The global spread of English • World Englishes, English as a Lingua Franca and implications for ELT Week 4 • Language variation and change/Language variation: social and regional • Language attitudes and change. • Language and gender Week 5 • Diglossia • Endangered languages/language death • Pidgins and Creoles. Week 6 • The role of sociolinguistics in ELT • The functions of language in society Week 7 • Ethnography of communication, Politeness, Acting and conversing. Week 8 • Language planning and policy Week 9  Introduction: key concepts in Psycholinguistics  The processes of first and second language acquisition Week 10  Stages in Language Acquisition o First Sounds/ First Words/ The two-word stage/ Longer utterances ~ infinityo Week 11  Theories of language acquisition o Imitation theory/ Reinforcement theory/ Analogy theory/ Innateness theory/ Critical age hypothesis  Relations between cognitive development and first and second language acquisition  Bilingualism and cognition Week 12  Individual and situational variables in second language acquisition  Is language specific to humans?  Language and the brain Week 13  Language Autonomy  Broca's Area/Broca's aphasia/ Wernicke's area/Wernicke's aphasia/ Jargon aphasia  SLI: Specific Language Impairments  Split-brains Week 14  Vocabulary storage  Language development and bilingualism  Language processing/Written language Week 15  Understanding speech /Language Production  Meaning and comprehension  Reading Processes Week 16 FINAL EXAM

Course Synopsis

The aim of this module is to introduce students to key themes in sociolinguistics and their relevance to language education especially English language teaching and learning. It endeavors to raise awareness of sociolinguistic issues relevant to language teachers, and to provide a general theoretical framework to aid the analysis of language teaching contexts. It introduces methodologies of sociolinguistic research, which can be taken forward in the research methodology module. It also complements the module on linguistic theory. This module provides structured opportunities for participants to reflect on the factors that affect language learning and the nature of the learning process, with particular reference to second language learning in Pakistan and the implications of the resulting insights for their own teaching. This subject sets out to help participants understand the psychological processes involved in both first and second language acquisition besides the relations between general cognitive development and language acquisition.

Course Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the sociolinguistics component of the module students will be able to: • Understand the principle theoretical issues in sociolinguistics • Apply the theory to their own contexts, especially, educational contexts • Feel confident about analyzing teaching and learning contexts • Discuss the important sociological issues within these contexts • Offer suggestions and solutions to matters arising from these situations. • To develop understanding of the relationship between language and the processes of the brain and mind. • To develop detailed knowledge of basic sub-fields of psycholinguistics, including: the biological bases of language (language & the brain), speech perception, the lexicon, sentence processing, discourse, speech production and language acquisition. • To examine the methods used in psycholinguistic research and to interpret the types of results these methods have uncovered. • To understand basic language production and perception data and how these data have contributed to the development of the major theories in psycholinguistics. • To introduce and explore the major theories in the area of psycholinguistics. • To explore specific issues in psycholinguistics might be examined experimentally.