ELT621 CHILD LANGUAGE AND CORE COGNITION
| Course Code: | 8200621 |
| METU Credit (Theoretical-Laboratory hours/week): | 3 (0.00 - 0.00) |
| ECTS Credit: | 8.0 |
| Department: | English Language Teaching |
| Language of Instruction: | English |
| Level of Study: | Graduate |
| Course Coordinator: | Assoc.Prof.Dr. DUYGU SARISOY |
| Offered Semester: | Fall and Spring Semesters. |
Course Objectives
By the end of this course, students will:
- Acquire the basic terminology and background to think about the nature of human core conceptual and linguistic knowledge,
- Become familiarized with the theories of conceptual and linguistic development,
- Be able to apply a critical stance towards various theoretical accounts assessing their proposals from a cross-linguistic perspective,
- Be able to synthesize different theoretical viewpoints,
- Be able to conduct independent research into topics on the linguistic encoding of concepts.
Course Content
What is the nature of human conceptual knowledge? How do children gain mental representation of the world? Are there any core concepts functioning as precursors to language acquisition? What might be such candidate core concepts(e.g., objects, agents, causality, goals, events, quantity, numerosity, space, time)? How do children attain this core knowledge? How do these core conceptsinteract with language development? How do we encode conceptual representations in different languages? How do children establish the mapping between the world and their language? What might be the mechanism of conceptual enrichment? What is the function of language in the enrichment of the human conceptual representations? How do children reason about the world? What kind of domain-specific (linguistic) and domain-general abilities guide children in their categorizing, inferencing, and reasoning abilities? The course aims to review the current state of the art regarding these questions and provide a forum for evaluation of different accounts from a cross-linguistic perspective.
Course Learning Outcomes
Students, who passed the course satisfactorily will be able to:
- Use the basic terminology and background to think about the nature of human core conceptual and linguistic knowledge,
- Compare the theories of conceptual and linguistic development,
- Demonstrate a critical stance towards various theoretical accounts assessing their proposals from a cross-linguistic perspective,
- Synthesize different theoretical viewpoints,
- Conduct independent research into topics on the linguistic encoding of concept
Program Outcomes Matrix
| Level of Contribution | |||||
| # | Program Outcomes | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 1 | demonstrate awareness of theoretical and applied knowledge about contemporary approaches, methods and techniques and use this awareness effectively in practice for various educational settings. | ✔ | |||
| 2 | synthesize, critically assess, and improve theoretical and practical findings on contemporary research. | ✔ | |||
| 3 | evaluate the existing instructional procedures, methods and techniques and make suggestions to improve new ones. | ✔ | |||
| 4 | carry out studies with a scientific point of view in order to meet the educational needs in national and international contexts with the aim of making contributions to the field. | ✔ | |||
| 5 | demonstrate the necessary skills to conduct independent research with scientific research methods and share research findings at academic meetings or other settings both orally and in written form. | ✔ | |||
| 6 | evaluate national and international instructional materials, exams and programs and design new ones. | ✔ | |||
| 7 | analyze innovative theories, applications and tools, and conduct research to suggest new ones. | ✔ | |||
| 8 | investigate the cultural differences and similarities that can be found in countries where English is spoken as native, second and foreign language, and use this knowledge to improve national English learning and teaching practices. | ✔ | |||
| 9 | analyze the theories and applications about the acquisition of English language as a second and foreign language and applied linguistics, and use this knowledge in relation to English language teaching and learning. | ✔ | |||
0: No Contribution 1: Little Contribution 2: Partial Contribution 3: Full Contribution