Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages Minor

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) is a six-course minor that provides essential training for the challenging task of teaching the English language at home or abroad in private language schools, community centers or bilingual programs, and in other contexts that do not require state certification. A minor in TESOL incorporates important pedagogical training that prepares students to teach English with both cultural and linguistic sensitivity. This minor opens doors to opportunities to travel, live, and work around the globe. Students who are interested in TESOL might also be interested in studying linguistics, including areas such as dialectology and forensic linguistics.  While completion of a TESOL minor does not certify students to teach English as a second or foreign language, it does offer undergraduate students numerous professional and volunteer opportunities. TESOL can be combined with any number of majors or minors and enhances students' applications for fellowships such as the Fulbright. The coursework also provides general background for related graduate study and equips students to serve as English language teachers in the United States and in other countries.

As an increasingly interdisciplinary field, Linguistics is closely related to many other academic fields including Autism Studies, Classical and Modern Languages, Communication Studies, Computer Science, Criminal Justice, Education, English, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, and TESOL.  Students of Linguistics often pursue careers as clinical psychologists, educators, information technology specialists, lawyers, linguists, marketing and advertising consultants, social workers, speech pathologists, speech therapists, teachers, translators and interpreters. 

Goal 1: Students will know what the field of linguistics is and understand how language works.

Outcome 1: Identify the main areas of linguistic analysis and analyze relevant examples.

Goal 2: Students will connect linguistic topics to real life.

Outcome 2:  Explain linguistic topics in oral presentations.

Goal 3: Students will understand language differences that exist among speakers of the same and different languages.

Outcome 3: Analyze particular aspects of linguistic beauty and creativity.

Goal 4: Students will understand beliefs about language that exist among speakers of the same or different languages.

Outcome 4: Analyze their own language beliefs as well as those of others.

A TESOL minor consists of six courses (18 credits) including the following:

LIN 101Language and Communication3
LIN 203English Grammar3
LIN 301Teaching Lang at Home/Abroad3
Select three of the following:9
First Year Seminar
Second Lang Acquis & Lrning
Phonetics
Communication in Soc Contexts
Sociolinguistics
Bilingualism & Lang Diversity
Language and Culture w/ Field
Logic
Symbolic Logic
Language and Thought
Language and Meaning
Language and the Law
Sociolinguistics
Intro to Spanish Linguistics
Spanish Phonetics & Phonology
Advanced Oral Communication
Methods for Teaching Spanish
Spanish Dialectology
Lang Contact & Pol in U.S.
Topics in Spanish Linguistics
Topics in French
Topics in Italian
Total Hours18