Workshop: Sociolinguistics for Beginners: Language and U.S. Education
Time: Thursday, Nov. 4, at 11:00 a.m.
Place: Breiseth 106
Is it true that 40% of the school population will speak English as a second language by the year 2030?
The intent of this workshop is to provide participants with a useful and compassionate framework for thinking about issues of ethnicity, class, gender and race as they relate to language debates in U.S. education. Bilingual education? Immersion programs? Study abroad?
This “sociolinguistics for beginners” workshop will help participants examine how societal trends have likely shaped their own personal language learning experiences, as well as their opinions about them. Participants will explore what K-12+ language programs reveal about equity in U.S. education and society, unpack historically dubious claims and find out what the research actually says.
Highly recommended if you’re a language major, education major, or future teacher, parent, or leader in any field!
The workshop will be led by Amy Kuiken. Kuiken came to Wilkes University in 2015 as an adjunct French professor with degrees in French language and general linguistics. In addition to prior American and international teaching experience, she spent a year as a Fulbright scholar researching and teaching English.
Having lived abroad in France, Bulgaria and England (where she earned a TEFL/TESOL certification), and worked with Haitian Creole and Kiswahili speakers, Kuiken draws richly on these experiences to help learners explore concepts of culture and language. Her article A Pedagogy of Guilt: A Freirean Critique of a Hegemonic Ethos in the Foreign Language Classroom was recently published in the journal of Philosophical Studies in Education. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Wilkes University’s EdD program.