Goals+and+Objectives

Course Goals

 * Goal: Understand the International Phonetic Alphabet and its use as a tool in language study
 * Goal: Be able to use the standard reference tools for studying language
 * Goal: Understand the social, political, and cultural mechanisms of language change. specifically within the context of English
 * Goal: Explain the differences between synthetic and analytic languages
 * Goal: Describe the conventional stages in the history of the language
 * Goal: Explain the current state of Present Day English and its dialects

Student Learning Objectives

 * Students will Explain the need for the IPA
 * Students will Explain the principles of sound production by the human vocal apparatus
 * Students will Transcribe a spoken passage using IPA symbols
 * Students will Use the American Heritage Dictionary to find the Indo-European roots of English Words
 * Students will Use the Oxford English Dictionary to trace the etymology of and English word from its beginning to present day.
 * Students will Explain how languages change within the society
 * Students will Explain the political underpinnings of the definition of "language"
 * Students will Explain how interactions with other cultures affect the language of one culture
 * Students will Define "inflection"
 * Students will Explain the effect of inflections upon word order
 * Students will Explain how Germanic languages differ from other Indo-European languages
 * Students will Explain the arrival of Anglo-Saxon to the British Isles
 * Students will List the major linguistic features (phonetic, alphabetic, semantic, and structural) of each stage of English
 * Students will Explain how English has evolved from a synthetic language to an analytic one
 * Students will Explain the major linguistic features of Present Day English
 * Students will Describe the major controversies in PDE
 * Students will List and explain the major features of the major dialects of PDE