Span 345: Bilingualism in the Spanish Speaking World
This course will explore the nature of bilingualism, focusing on its psycholinguistic and linguistic aspects. Students will examine the most important concepts and research questions in both areas. In addition, the class will focus on bilingualism in the Spanish-speaking world and in the United States. By the end of the course, students will have broadened their knowledge of the latest issues in bilingualism, and they will be able to apply new concepts in the completion of a variety of tasks. In the course we studied what it means to be bilingual and the different kinds of bilinguals that exist. We talked about the brain parts that were involved in language and cognition. We also learned about language acquisition in children but most importantly we talked about the different types of bilingual education systems that exist. Throughout the semester we were asked to come up with questionnaires for bilinguals and monolinguals and to come up with a topic for our investigation. We decided that as a group we would interview a total of 12 people on their views of bilingualism. As our final project we had to put it all together and write a paper on our results.
This class was extremely helpful for me since it is what inspired my capstone project topic. In this class we had mentioned a field trip to a local dual immersion (bilingual) school but sadly we didn't have the opportunity to go so I was always curious as to what the school was like and how it worked. I did some research about the school and fell in love and I was extremely happy when I realized I could do my capstone on the school.