230004 Language and Education (BS) (SoSe 2014)

The importance of language as a major tool of communication in the educational enterprise seems obvious. Hence the relevance of this course, which does not only deal with languages as such, but also with language forms. In fact, this course gives students insights into languages and language forms used in the educational sector and the types of actions and decisions taken on them by stakeholders such as teachers, school and state authorities, and language experts. The topics discussed include: status of languages in the classroom; types of influence languages have on each other; school slangs (e.g. Camfranglais in Cameroon, Sheng in Kenya); language choices (e.g. indigenous languages, exoglossic languages, pidgins and creoles); educational and societal language choices; individual and societal language choices; language planning; status planning and corpus planning; language policy; de facto and de jure language situations; language, dialect and the school; standard and non-standard forms of language; standardization and codification; the dictionary, its power and its limits.
At the end of the course, students should be able to discuss the types of language situation as well as the issues and decisions relating to language in the educational setting in general, and state the language problems arising in given settings, and the solutions attempted or recommendable.