FLL 326 - Perspectives in Foreign Language Education

three credits
Roles that teacher-student and student-student classroom interaction play in the context of a critical analysis of sociocultural principles of language learning as they relate to linguistic classroom practices, participation structures, and different activity types. Topics include the idea of learning as participation; language as a tool for social action; mind as the joint construction of biological and cultural processes; meditational means; the zone of proximal development; scaffolding and collaborative dialogue; the development of class learning opportunities; the use of content-based instruction to promote classroom discourse; the development of a critical pedagogy; and the idea of teaching as assisted performance. Students are provided the opportunity to use inquiry skills in the development of both theoretical and applied content.