Our social issues class, Language, Society, and Culture uses real life examples pertaining to the complexity of languages in societies to incorporate themes of critical thinking and the accommodation of uncertainty. Described in the USC Course Catalogue, the objective of our linguistics class is to "discourse patterns among diverse social groups in institutional and interpersonal settings; interrelationships among language practices and gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity; social structures and cultural values as reflected in language policies and practices." This social issue class, similar to all Social Issues courses offered at USC, steps away from simply memorizing information and turns to attaining deeper levels of understanding on the part of the students. George A. Thoma’s model “The Perry Model of Intellectual and Ethical Development” supports that a change in focus from solely acquiring large amounts of information to an actual retention and application of said information is present in schooling as students mature and progress to higher levels of learning. Superficially, it may appear as though Linguistics 115 is a course that merely utilizes the skills required to listen to a long lecture and take detailed notes. By exploring deeper into the course syllabus and objectives, one sees that the purpose is quite different than that of the obvious level.
The actual goal of the class is to challenge students to reevaluate the way they view languages and reinterpret how and why certain languages came to be. To apply this objective to the bigger picture involving society and its inhabitants, students utilize skills pertaining to critical reasoning to address problems that are sure to arise in the evaluation of what defines a language.
I think it's great that you put in an excerpt from the USC course catalog - shows that you did research! I definitely agree that Linguistics is not just about facts - the course requires us to look deeper and apply what we learn in the classroom to outside the classroom. Nice job.
ReplyDeleteI like your last paragraph, it does a nice job of summing up your post.
ReplyDeleteI like how you did outside research and brought in George A. Thoma's model that made the blog more interesting.
ReplyDeleteI also like how you made great points about the goals of the course as stated in the catalog, and how you restated the actual goal at the end- that all the ideas that we learn about in class lead to that main goal- reevaluation. Very nice point.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, great job! You clearly did alot of research in responding to the prompt. I really think the quotes you used helped to fortify your points and enhance the overall quality of the post. Also, I really enjoyed how the final sentances of the second paragraph transition so smoothly into your conclusion paragrah - which was very strong in its own right. This post was very insightful and provided alot of credible information. Well done.
ReplyDelete(This post is late because this blogger was not originally in my blog group ... I wasnt sure if I should comment on all the blogs that we were assigned before he/she was put into my group ... so I did anyway)
ReplyDelete- this comment goes with the post directly above it.