Skip to main content

Module

SEL3012 : Immigrant Second Language & Literacy Acquisition

  • Offered for Year: 2020/21
  • Module Leader(s): Professor Martha Young-Scholten
  • Owning School: English Lit, Language & Linguistics
  • Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus
Semesters
Semester 2 Credit Value: 20
ECTS Credits: 10.0

Aims

This module focuses on the population primarily of adolescent and adult but also child second language learners who acquire a new language as the result of immigration. The module looks at how these differ from well-studied foreign language learners whose main source of input is the classroom. Here the social factors which affect learners' acquisition are considered.Issues covered include L1 influence and use of linguistic mechanisms across the lifespan regarding acquisition of morphosyntax/syntax, phonology and the lexicon, the development of literacy, particularly by those who immigrate without formal schooling and native language attrition as the result of bilingual language use.

Outline Of Syllabus

Overview of the module
The context: immigrants in the UK and elsewhere and ESOL provision; the two SLA paradigms and their relation to immigrants’ language and literacy

Part I: Language
Lectures
2.       Linguistic competence (SEL2086 review: morphosyntax, syntax, phonology, the lexicon
3.       Research on adult immigrants’ morphosyntax, syntax, phonology, the lexicon
4.       Cognitive factors: metalinguistic knowledge; working memory
5.       Procedural/implicit/acquired knowledge vs. declarative/explicit/learned
Seminars:
•       Form four-to-six person teams; inventory of what students already know about immigrants in
Newcastle, in the UK and elsewhere
•       Oral reports from teams on their proposed learner population
•       Data analysis exercise focusing on identifying learned and formulaic language
•       Learned vs. acquired linguistic knowledge and tasks for data collection

Part II: Literacy
Lectures
6.       We only learn to read once: educated adults’ L2 reading; children’s biliteracy
7.       Student presentations: Knowledge of a different writing system
8.       Children’s and low-educated adults’ decoding and comprehension development
9.       Extensive reading and the Simply Cracking Good Stories project
10.       Student presentations: the learner population and each student’s essay topic
Seminars
•       Trying to read in unknown languages
•       Beginning decoding: Trying out the Dutch or the Finnish DigLin software
•       Evaluation of children’s early readers vs. books for beginning adults
•       Writing Simply Cracking Good Stories (two seminars)
•       In place of seminars, individual meetings with students on their essays

Part III: Language and Literacy
Lectures
11.       The Great Divide
12.       Working memory and processing
Seminars
•       Students present their study results for feedback from peers (penultimate week)

Teaching Methods

Module leaders are revising this content in light of the Covid 19 restrictions.
Revised and approved detail information will be available by 17 August.

Assessment Methods

Module leaders are revising this content in light of the Covid 19 restrictions.
Revised and approved detail information will be available by 17 August.

Reading Lists

Timetable