1. Evaluating State-Approved Language Arts Teaching Materials: This is required of all students entering the Multiple Subject Credential Program, including graduate students.
2. A project related to Teaching English as a Second Language: Required of students taking the class for the TESL Certificate.
3. A project on a topic within general linguistics, to be arranged between the student and me: Available only to students taking the class solely for the Linguistics Minor.

If you are a Multiple Subject candidate AND are doing either the TESL Certificate or the Linguistics Minor, you still must do #1.
If you are doing both the TESL Certificate and the Linguistics Minor, it would be best for you to do a TESL-related project, but if you can make a good case for doing a different project, we can discuss it.

Brief descriptions of each project type:

1. Evaluating State-Approved Language Arts Teaching Materials: You will compare parts of a set of language arts teaching materials approved for use in the State of California with the linguistics-based recommendations for teaching methods given in class and in the readings. You will choose a skill and grade level: early literacy (grade 1 or 2 only); vocabulary (grades 4 and above); grammar (grades 5 and above). Materials developed by several publishers are available in the Teacher Resource Center on the 2nd floor of Kennedy Library.
2. A project related to Teaching English as a Second Language: Some possible projects include researching the relative success/failure of Proposition 227, which replaced bilingual education programs in most schools with a 1- to 2-year "sheltered immersion" program; collecting spoken or written samples of language from a non-native speaker of English, and analyzing the sample for expected errors as predicted by various theories of L2 acquisition; research a specific country which you have specific plans to travel to for the purpose of teaching English; study motivation in L2 acquisition through a survey of Cal Poly students taking various levels of foreign language classes at Cal Poly.
3. A project on a topic within general linguistics: There is a wide variety of possibilities for such a project. Ideally, it should be an analysis of real language data that you collect, but we can discuss other options. If you're in this category, start thinking about particular areas of linguistics that are of interest to you so that we have a starting point for brainstorming a project.

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