The Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages and the Second Language Studies Program are pleased to welcome Francis M. Hult for a presentation on Language Acquisition Planning. This talk will take place FRIDAY, MARCH 5 at 3:00PM ET on Zoom. Please register below to receive the Zoom link.
Questions? Please contact
cinaglia@msu.edu DESCRIPTION:
In this talk, I revisit language acquisition planning from a scalar perspective (e.g., De Costa & Canagarajah, 2016; Hogan-Brun & Hogan, 2013; Hult, 2016; Larsen-Freeman, 2018), reflecting on how all educational stakeholders are involved with language planning decisions. In his book Language Planning and Social Change, Cooper (1989) added language acquisition planning as a fundamental type of planning alongside corpus and status planning. The successful management of language form (corpus) and language function (status), he offered, requires careful planning about language learning in order to develop capacities for individual language use in social context.
Drawing on a body of research about what can be characterized as situated language policy and planning (Hult, 2014, 2017; Siiner, Hult & Kupisch, 2018), I explore how language acquisition planning goes beyond curricula to encompass the full range of decision-making by educational stakeholders including teachers and students (e.g., Hult, 2018; Menken & García, 2010), parents and families (e.g., Smith-Christmas, 2016), and other community members (e.g., McCarty, 2011). I use examples from a variety of studies to demonstrate how language acquisition planning is relevant for these different stakeholders. I conclude with suggestions for raising awareness about language acquisition planning in the training of teachers and administrators and in outreach to parents and communities.
BIO:
Francis M. Hult is Professor and director of the TESOL program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). He has published widely in the areas of educational linguistics, language policy, and multilingualism. His recent books include Research Methods in Language Policy and Planning (with Johnson) and Language Policy and Language Acquisition Planning (with Siiner and Kupisch). He is editor of the Educational Linguistics book series for Springer, and together with Ofelia García he edits the Contributions to the Sociology of Language book series for De Gruyter.
