Like many of the other departments at Plymouth State University, the English department is adding more majors and minors to its roster. On top of the existing Writing, Literature, and Teachers Certificate (5-12) Bachelor?s of Arts degrees, there is a new Contract Major and Film Studies major.
The Contract major gives an English student the opportunity to blend together two options like writing and literature into one major, making a sort of interdisciplinary English major. Film Studies offers students the chance to study film from an English perspective approaching movies with a literacy interest. The new majors have been considered another opportunity for the English department to grow along with the University with the coming of the new academic year,
Along with the adding of two majors to the department , some new minors have been added. Two linguistics minors have been added to the department?s repertoire : Applied Linguistics and a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).
New classes are being added to the English department, like Psycholinguistics and Language Assessment and Language Teaching, while some are being changed because of the new minor. Modern English Grammar has been replaced by Intro to English Linguistics and the Semantics has been dropped all together.
?Adding applied linguistics to the English department is responding to a very critical need in education?, says Dr. Gaye Gould, the assistant professor of English and head of the committee responsible for bringing the minor to Plymouth State.
The Applied Linguistics minor is a 15-credit degree, requiring five or six courses in linguistics, while the TESOL minor is 18. The TESOL minor also has a unique feature for English teaching certificate majors. A normal five-year teaching certificate degree can get double certificated if a TESOL minor is earned.
An English teaching certificate combined with a Linguistics minor can be compared to a Masters of Education on job applications. Opportunities such as working abroad and having a better chance of getting a job after college are more frequently afforded to people who have linguistics experience. Linguistics courses are usually offered in Grad School, but now available to undergrad students. Plymouth State is the first school in the New Hampshire to offer Linguistics courses at a undergrad level.
Although the two minors have not been approved by the New Hampshire Department of Education they are planned to be effective by next fall. The minor requirements for both are going to be available to take for the coming spring semester. If you have any questions about the new linguistics minors contact Dr. Gaye Gould at gegould@mail.plymouth.edu or questions about the new majors contact Dr. Arthur Fried at afried@mail.plymouth.edu.
*The following are courses not listed in the 2003-2004 academic catalog but are available to take during the Spring 2004 semester.
Sociolinguistics: (EN2820) This course examines language and society, analyzing and exploring how the individual speaks differently based on their gender, ethnicity, age, social class, level of education, written register, and linguistic imperialism. It also implies theory on teaching first and second languages in ESOL fashion.
Psycholinguistics: (EN3820) This course covers the concerns of language acquisitions and the ways in which the brain receives and produces language. It covers the nature of first and second language development and the role of language in cognitive development.