ITSF4190 - Communicative Practices: Intercultural Perspectives
2 or 3 credits

This is a readings course for students interested in communication in various contexts. Students explore discourse in terms of situated social practice, particularly with regard to intercultural communication (and miscommunication) within and across national boundaries. Through readings and examination of transcripts and videotaped interactions, students compare communicative practices in various contexts: child language socialization, schooling, family and community life, the workplace, print- and multi-media, and the public arena (e.g., political and globalization discourses).

ITSF6125 - Research Issues in Communicative Practices
2 or 3 credits

This course explores research methodologies used in the analysis of spoken, written, and electronic discourse and reviews current directions in the field. Students study selected methods of analysis, which may range from microanalytic approaches such as conversation analysis to macroanalytic approaches such as critical discourse analysis and the ethnography of communication. Their data may represent any context for communicative practice: child language socialization, schooling, family and community life, the workplace, or the public arena such as print and broadcast media.

Students may choose among different forms of discourse such as conversation, narrative, argumentation, e-communication, or interviews. Alternatively, they may examine value orientations such as issues around the use of multiple languages and dialects and the use of language to construct gender, ideology, power, identity or discrimination. To support the efforts of each group member, videotapes, texts, or Internet data are examined conjointly by the class participants.

ITSF4015 - Introduction to Computers, Language and Literacy
2 or 3 credits

This course examines the relationship between computers and various aspects of language use, focusing on ways in which computers can be used to create richer environments for language and literacy development. Students briefly review language-learning theories in order to detect assumptions about language that are embedded in electronic materials. Then, taking a sociocultural perspective, students explore various models of communication and discourse to evaluate software materials and resources on the World Wide Web. The course is open to anyone working with children or adults in the areas of global and cross-cultural communication, first and second language, foreign language, language arts, reading and writing.

MSTU 4049 - Technologies and Literacies
2 or 3 credits

This course examines the role that computers and the Internet play in the construction (writing) and interpretation (reading) of text and other semiotic resources (images, sound). Students explore how these new media alter our notions of text, literacy, and communication. The course sequence includes an examination of: a brief history of writing and writing tools, selected theoretical approaches to the study of literacy, empirical research on the construction and interpretation of electronic text, the convergence of written communication with voice and images, and new written genres and forms of communication that have emerged from these technologies. The Internet is a major source and object of study in this course. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between text and other semiotic resources used with digital technologies-graphics, photographs, video, and voice. Implications for education are discussed throughout the course.

ITSL 4024 - Linguistic Foundations
3 credits

This is a survey course for those who have had little background in linguistic theory and applications. The course is designed for students interested in language issues in this country (e.g., bilingual education, national dialects, the English-Only movement) and in international settings (e.g., language and colonialism, language planning, literacy and development). We examine linguistic systems at the level of phonology, syntax, and semantics, as well as the still evolving search for system in pragmatics/discourse. We address the study of language from two overarching perspectives-biological (selected descriptive and explanatory theories in linguistics, linguistic structures, the bilingual brain and language acquisition) and sociocultural (code-switching, language varieties, language attitudes, literacies, language policy and planning, and language socialization).

Throughout the course, the topics are related to issues in domestic and international education. We examine the effect of learners' linguistic and cultural diversity on schooling, the relationship between linguistic theory and language instruction as well as reading and writing processes, and the dynamics of classroom discourse.