An examination of curriculum and instruction for elementary readers and writers. Includes a focus on materials, instructional strategies, organizational structures, and evaluation. Provides linguistic, psychological and cultural bases of decoding and comprehension; theories that influence practice that facilitate learning to read.

Theory and practice in sheltered content instruction for English learners, national and state education policies affecting ELLs, and the relationship between these policies and second language acquisition theory.

This course will explore innovative ways to teach and learn with new media within and beyond classrooms. Using a socio-cultural lens and media and literacy frameworks, learners will examine the new media that surround us in the digital age and explore ways media are made and shared. Course content will address instructional design, connected learning, and participatory culture. Course projects will provide opportunities for learners to create and collaborate across disciplines using new media and a range of digital tools. Diverse forms of media analysis and production will be addressed along with implications for instruction, assessment and research.

Analysis of reading and writing situations encountered by bilingual and second language learners; phonological, semantic, and syntactic aspects of instruction; materials, and methods of teaching reading and writing in the native language. Graduate-level requirements include an in-depth research paper or other project.

Issues in early childhood education associated with the cultural and linguistic pluralism in the United States; analysis of the interaction of school, community, class, cultural, parent involvement, and family factors in the education of diverse populations. Graduate-level requirements include an in-depth research or theoretical paper or other project.

Socio-cultural factors, second language learning; analysis of theories, practices, and models (dual language, Structured English Immersion, etc.) affecting second language learners; historical, social and cultural influences; relationship of theory to the characteristics and needs of bilingual and second language learners. Graduate-level requirements include an in-depth research paper or other project.

The theoretical and research foundations of literacies are explored related to their significance for activist and critical pedagogies. Based on a broad definition of literacies as ways of thinking and practices used to make sense of the world and to communicate that go across sign systems and disciplines.

A critical exploration of the ways in which language and culture shape, and are shaped by, education in and out of school, particularly related to power dynamics at multiple levels of society.

This course is designed to explore theoretical and applied issues involving language and linguistics. Throughout the course we will examine an array of perspectives. In the light of the readings students will develop original research projects.

Fall 2026 Course Theme: Community-Based Qualitative Research
This class will prepare students to carry out qualitative language research within Spanish-speaking communities outside of academia. Students will learn collaborative approaches in which community members and researchers work as co-investigators to identify and seek solutions to language issues that affect the given community. The course will provide an overview of different qualitative methods including interviews, focus groups, observations, and needs analysis. Throughout the semester, students will apply the concepts learned in class by carrying out original research at a local dual language school.

The topic of the seminar is pragmatics. Pragmatics is the study of language use in different social contexts, and it raises many important questions about language use in different cultures, such as "How can I speak appropriately in a new language?", "How can I be polite (or impolite) when interacting with other speakers?", among many others. Speakers have a variety of ways of communicating their ideas in social interaction. Among many expressions and structures at their disposal, speakers choose particular ones based on the identity they want to project, the identity of their interlocutor(s), and the situation in which the interaction is taking place. Quite often, speakers also convey meaning in indirect ways. In this seminar, we will examine five broad domains: (1) pragmatic constructs and foundational theories, (2) common research methodologies and methods, (3) cross-cultural pragmatics, (4) pragmatics and technology, and (5) pragmatics in specific discourse domains (e.g., legal and medical discourse). Through critical examination of the literature in these three areas, we will refine your understanding of the role of pragmatics in (applied) linguistics research, and some of the common methods of data collection and analysis in this field.