Course Description

College level teaching is one of the primary occupations of linguists, beginning in graduate school and beyond. It is also crucial to the ongoing vitality of the field, serving as the primary venue for recruiting future generations of linguists, given that linguistics courses are not generally taught before college. In recent years, the field has started to attend to pedagogical concerns; this course builds on this new scholarship to provide concrete pedagogical training in linguistics to emerging scholars. In particular, the course seeks to deepen students’ understanding of how pedagogical choices and course design can advance justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.

The course will cover topics including: student-centered pedagogy and accessibility, pedagogical theories, nuts and bolts of lesson planning and teaching techniques, as well as course design and assessment. It is designed to be of interest to students working across areas of linguistic specialization and to be accessible to all regardless of their level of experience with college-level teaching. By the end of the course, students will be conversant with current issues in the scholarship of teaching and learning in linguistics, and will have developed concrete materials for teaching and for the development of a teaching portfolio.

Area Tags: Pedagogy, Course Design, Scholarly Teaching, Lesson Planning, Equity and Inclusion, Professional Development

(Sessions 1 & 2) Tuesday/Friday 9:00 – 10:20

Location: ILC S413

Instructors: Lynnette Arnold & Iara Mantenuto

Dr. Lynnette Arnold is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UMass Amherst, having earned her PhD in Linguistics from U.C. Santa Barbara. Her research explores the power of language in contexts of migration in the Americas, with a focus on how communication participates in care. Her book manuscript explores how transnational Salvadoran families use everyday conversations to facilitate, enact, and signify cross-border care. With her research and teaching, Dr. Arnold aims to advance social justice through a deeper understanding of language, and has worked to develop community engaged pedagogy and practice in the field.

Dr. Iara Mantenuto is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics and the Program Coordinator for the Masters in Teaching of English as a Second Language at California State University Dominguez Hills in California. She is from Italy, and she earned a Ph.D. in Linguistics from UCLA. Dr. Mantenuto’s research focuses on documentation, revitalization, reclamation and morphosyntactic analysis of understudied languages – in particular Teramano (her heritage language) and San Sebastián del Monte Mixtec. Her research also explores teaching of linguistics and focuses on the creation and implementation of pedagogical techniques that can be used in language revitalization and reclamation contexts.