Effective: 2024-05-01

Course Description

The course outline below was developed as part of a statewide standardization process.

General Course Purpose

ENG 200 familiarizes students with the scientific study of human languages, including the major linguistic areas of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. This course provides students with the tools of linguistic analysis and argumentation that are the basis of a number of areas of study, including applied linguistics.

Course Prerequisites/Corequisites

Prerequisites: ENG 111

Course Objectives

• Critical Thinking
• Formulate arguments and hypotheses that demonstrate the core linguistic principles of equality, creativity, universality, and the evolutionary nature shared by all human languages.
• Apply their developed skills in linguistic analysis and argumentation to the realm of first and second language acquisition and other interdisciplinary domains such as neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics, and computational linguistics.
• Written Communication
• Apply their developed skills in linguistic analysis and argumentation to the realm of first and second language acquisition and other interdisciplinary domains such as neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics, and computational linguistics
• Scientific Literacy
• Describe linguistic data using the specialized terminology corresponding to the subdisciplines of morphology, phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
• Analyze linguistic data extracted from five distinct levels of examination: phonemes, morphemes, words, sentences, and discourse units.
• Civic Engagement
• Formulate arguments and hypotheses that demonstrate the core linguistic principles of equality, creativity, universality, and the evolutionary nature shared by all human languages

Major Topics to be Included

• Intro to language study
• Discuss and compare language myths and facts to enhance understanding of language and language use.
• Phonetics
• Use the International Phonetic Alphabet to both transcribe speech sounds and transliterate their orthographic representations.
• Compare and contrast the articulatory features of different speech sounds.
• Phonology
• Analyze and identify phonological patterns in different languages.
• Construct phonological rules to account for observed phonological processes.
• Morphology
• Analyze and classify morphemes in a given set of words.
• Identify and explain the functions of different morphological processes.
• Compare and contrast the morphological structures of different languages.
• Syntax
• Analyze and diagram sentence structures for different types of sentences.
• Compare and contrast sentence structures in different languages.
• Identify and explain the syntactic functions of words and phrases in sentences.
• Semantics & pragmatics
• Analyze and interpret the meaning of linguistic expressions in different contexts.
• Apply pragmatic principles to resolve ambiguities and convey implied meanings.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of different pragmatic strategies in achieving communicative goals.
• First & Second Language Acquisition
• Analyze language samples from children at different stages of development.
• Identify and explain common patterns and errors in child language acquisition.
• Compare and contrast first language acquisition across different cultures or environments.
• Evaluate the role of social and cognitive factors in child language development.
• Compare and contrast the features of first and second language acquisition.
• Identify and explain the challenges and strategies involved in second language learning.