Undergraduate - UnitATS3665 - Language endangerment

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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6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

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

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	Linguistics
Offered	Clayton Second semester 2015 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Simon Musgrave

Synopsis

The unit introduces students to the key issues in language endangerment. It examines historical and contemporary assessments of linguistic diversity and language endangerment within the broader framework of the loss of biological and cultural diversity. It reflects on a wide range of issues, including factors in assessing speaker fluency and the degree of endangerment, symptoms and causes of language shift, and changes in domains of language use and patterns of language transmission. General principles and issues are embedded within case studies from a range of regions and language families. The seminar combines lectures with group discussion of key concepts guided by focus questions.

Outcomes

On completion of the unit students should have:

gained familiarity with the significant aspects of the rapidly growing field of language endangerment research and practice
have an understanding of, and an ability to apply, key terms, concepts and theoretical models relevant to a wide range of language endangerment settings
developed the ability to critically evaluate assessments of language endangerment.

Students should be able to:

demonstrate an understanding of the historical development of language endangerment research
analyse the key factors in assessing language endangerment and speaker fluency;
evaluate alternative explanations for language variation
interpret theoretical frameworks developed and utilised by researchers in the field
apply key concepts to new sets of data.

They should also be able to:

formulate research questions
utilise appropriate methodologies to conduct independent research
present their results in discussion forums in small groups (on campus)/on line discussion (off campus), and in written exposition (including planning, arguing on the basis of evidence, and documenting), and
engage in team work and critical academic discussion of information and argument.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 65%
Exam: 35%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 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.