Lindsay Erica Dennison
English Language Teacher
MA TESOL Courses
Spring 2014- Introduction to Corpus Linguistics
Course Description:
This course explores the lexical element in language and looks specifically at corpus and related on-line tools and how they might be used to enhance the teaching of language as a predominantly lexical entity to EFL learners. In essence, this three-hour-per- week course is designed to provide students with a course in issues and practices related to the teaching and development of EFL vocabulary focusing on corpus and other computer assisted tools. Although the goals of this class are practical, there will be some theory involved centering mostly on aspects of lexis/vocabulary. In this course we will be taking the widening viewpoint that vocabulary is the central component of language and that teaching language should revolve around different aspects of vocabulary and how they interact with and shape other aspects of language. This is most fitting here because it is through extensive study of corpus that linguists can observe these connections in real language use. Further, it is from corpus use that teachers can help their students better understand real language use Thus, we will learn how to use this corpus-based approach as a tool for helping our students learn English better.
Spring 2014- Teaching Reading
Course Description:
This course aims to develop teachers’ abilities to teach reading. With this aim, the course first explores different theoretical perspectives underlying second language reading, before introducing various instructional reading interventions. In addition to exposure to numerous exemplary reading practices, students will have many opportunities to try out specific teaching techniques.
Fall 2014- Discourse Analysis
Course Description:
This three-hour-per-week course is designed to provide students with instruction and practice for the development of knowledge related to the teaching of spoken forms of language. We will be doing this by looking at speaking from a discourse perspective. Discourse analysis studies the relationship between language use and the contexts in which language is used and is therefore well suited to a course focused on spoken, situated language use. In essence, this course will be a practically-minded overview of the macroskill of speaking and how we as teachers can best deal with and develop the microskills our students need to be better speakers of English. This course provides an overview of what speaking is as a particular type of language use and seeks to develop skills on how we as teachers can help our students develop as speakers of English.
Fall 2014- Sociolinguistics in Language Teaching
Course Description:
This course explores how language is learned and taught within the complex interaction between individual cognition and the social contexts that thinking occurs. To examine the distributed mind in situational contexts, some of the topics to be covered in this course include: ecological, sociocultural, activity, and complexity theories of learning; as well as examinations of how identity and community impact language use and learning.
Spring 2015- Human Learning and Cognition
Course Description:
This three-hour-per-week course focuses on the brain, its structure and mechanisms, in particular in how they relate to how people learn regarding memory and language. The course has two main areas that are to be covered. The first of these is the learning and memory component. The second component revolves around brain structure and functioning as it relates specifically to language. Here we will be looking at different elements of language and how they can be explained through theories of brain structure and functioning. In effect, we are looking for ways in this course to tie together the brain, memory, and language in a holistic, principled way.
Spring 2015- Theoretical Foundations of Call
Course Description:
This course explores a range of related theoretical perspectives underlying the use of technology in foreign language teaching and learning. These theoretical perspectives are loosely defined as “sociocultural,” and include studies in the area of new literacies, in addition to research in computer-assisted language learning guided by sociocultural theory. A main focus of the course is how language and literacy skills are constructed as social practices in computer-mediated spaces, such as online communities and social networks.
Fall 2015- English for Specific Purposes
Course Description:
Proponents of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) argue that for successful language learning to occur, the curriculum, pedagogy, materials and assessments should focus on contextualized use rather than on fragmented examples of correct sentence level usage, as in General English (Brinton, Snow & Wesche, 2011). Since ESP requires teachers to be familiar with both the functional language as well as the content of the specific instructional area, content-based instruction (CBI) is an important perspective to consider when teaching ESP, and will also be dealt with in this course. In ESP and CBI, the content is what dictates the selection and sequence of language items to be taught, rather than vice versa. Thus, teaching is viewed in a new way, from the perspective of truly contextualizing the lessons by using content as the point of departure. Hence, in ESP and CBI, the learner and his/her interests and context are truly at the center of the curriculum, materials, pedagogy and assessment.
Fall 2015- Computer Mediated Communication in Language Learning
Course Description:
This course explores the linguistic characteristics and language learning affordances of computer-mediated communication (CMC). This exploration includes text-based and oral, synchronous and asynchronous environments and is guided by ideas related to, among others, affordance, instructional conversation, task-based language teaching, and intercultural communicative competence. The course is designed to prepare pre- and in-service teachers with the theoretical and practical knowledge and skills to integrate CMC into their teaching practices.
Spring 2016- Practicum 1
Course Description:
This three-hour-per-week course has as its main component the running of a detailed Action Research project to be conducted individually by the Practicum participants within their own teaching setting, or in pairs as part of the Sookmyung English in Action class teaching team. It is requirement of the practicum that each participant teaches a class throughout the semester. The Action Research project requires them to reflect critically on their own teaching situations and implement substantive changes to their own teaching situation. In doing so, participants will get a chance to critically reflect on their own teaching situation and will also find ways of enhancing their own teaching.
Spring 2016- Practicum 2
Course Description:
This three-hour-per-week course has two main components. The first of these is the reflective component. We will be using the reflective journals and videos taken during the teaching of the participants’ courses to reflect on our own individual teaching practices as well as on elements of in‐class language learning. Reflection is one of the key elements for further developing teaching skills in in-service teachers and as such is used as a way of getting teachers to develop skills which enable them to become autonomous in their own development as teachers. The second component of this class revolves around the design and creation of a teaching portfolio. Here we will be working individually and in groups to create a portfolio that highlights our training, skills, and achievements as teachers. An important part of this teaching portfolio, which will be handled for the most part in the sister course (Practicum I), will be an action research project. In this way, this course is seen as a real-world review for the comprehensive exams and a practical application of all that has been learned in the entire TESOL MA program.
