Letter for Parents

January 25, 2011

Dear Parents and Guardians of Linguistics Students:

Your child is about to start a very different sort of class.  For the first time in the United States, Linguistics is being offered as a high school elective course.  Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and, up to now, it was a course reserved for study at the college level.  But discussion about language is important, fascinating, and relevant to all people, and so this course seeks to create a classroom of curious students looking to know more about the languages they speak and the languages that others speak, have spoken, and will speak.

In this course, students will be introduced to major subfields within Linguistics:

• Phonetics (the study of the sounds of language)
• Morphology (the study of the parts that make up words)
• Syntax (the study of the rules that govern sentence formation)
• Historical Linguistics (the study of how languages change and evolve over time)
• Sociolinguistics (the study of how language functions in society and works to shape and reflect identity)
• Language Acquisition (the study of how babies acquire first languages and how children and adults acquire second languages)
  
  By the end of this course, students should be able to:
• Identify several myths that people commonly believe about language and explain the facts behind the myths
• Transcribe sounds using the International Phonetic Alphabet
• Describe how sounds are produced by the human anatomy
• Break down the number of morphemes in a given word
• Give examples of how English uses root words from Latin and Greek to form a large number of words
• Discuss the various dialects of English spoken in the United States
• Summarize key events that occurred in the history of the English language
• Explain how professional linguists gather data in the field
• Discuss opinions on contemporary language issues by several famous essayists
• Look at a data set from a foreign language and begin to explain grammatical rules that are governing the patterns they see
• Discuss the role of language within different groups in society, looking at how gender, age, class, ethnicity, and region affect speech characteristics

Supplies students need for this class are:

• Binder (2 inches minimum)
• Notebook
• Looseleaf
• Highlighter
• Post-it notes
• Pens and pencils, White-out

In this class, I am looking for students to be mature and intellectually curious.  I expect students to pay careful attention to each other and to me.  I expect students to come to class every day with their materials, homework, and a readiness and enthusiasm to learn.

Students will be reading excerpts from college-level Linguistics textbooks.  Students will be watching video clips and exploring Linguistics-related websites.  Students will be doing class presentations, both formal and informal.  Students will be asked to record their observations about language daily in the back half of their notebooks and will select one of their daily language observations as the topic for a final research project and presentation in the second half of the course.

Grades in this course will be weighted 50% Classwork and Homework and 50% Essays, Projects, and Quizzes.  The final exam for the course will be worth 25% of the semester grade.

I am excited to work with these pioneering high school students in Linguistics this semester!

Sincerely,
Suzanne Loosen
(414) 393-5823
loosensa@milwaukee.k12.wi.us