Postgraduate - UnitAPG5702 - Bilingualism

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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12 points, SCA Band 1, 0.250 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Postgraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	Linguistics
Offered	Clayton First semester 2015 (Off-campus)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Anna Margetts

Synopsis

This unit provides an introduction to a range of theories of bilingualism and how bilinguals make use of their languages across a range of setting and societies. It explores these issues from a range of perspectives, such as different types and degrees of bilingualism, the different roles played by each language in bilingual societies, the properties of bilingual speech, the bilingual brain and educational and other social policy for bilingualism. A key interest is also the ways in which theoretical stances inform our understanding of bilingualism and social policy, and the ways in which research into bilingualism can help inform wider theories of language acquisition, processing and use.

Outcomes

At the conclusion of the unit, students will be able to:

explain how various scholars define the term bilingualism and the implications of this for research findings
undertake linguistic analysis of bilingual speech
identify and articulate factors which contribute to language maintenance and shift
evaluate the effectiveness of bilingual education programs and other social policies for bilingualism
use library and web resources to research current and emerging issues in the field, and
conduct a major research project on an area of bilingualism or bilingual development of interest to the student.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 100%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 288 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Anna Margetts

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Applied linguistics

Prerequisites

Two of the following units APG4698, APG4346, APG4020, APG4735, APG5046, APG5042, APG5047, APG5043.