Language Learner in Global Perspective

This course provides an overview of language learning and the situation of second language learners in schools. First, we review processes of language learning and the challenges language learners face when they must simultaneously learn a language and learn subject matter in that language. We do this from a socialcultural perspective, exploring language learning as embedded in sociohistorically situated activities. We develop and account of how learning language is also learning culture. Second, we study how these processes vary across cultural contexts. Because language learning is woven into social and historical contexts, processes of language learning and schooling vary around the world. The course develops several case studies from different areas of the globe in order to illustrate how language learning and schooling can intersect in different ways.