Question: Language Awareness Course

[Ali Aghbar]

I teach a language awareness course to American undergraduate students from
various disciplines.  For them, this is the only course about language and
its role in their lives.  I include both topics that deal with language in
its social context and topics that are more restrictively linguistic.  I
will tell you more when I provide a summary of responses.

Here is my question.  If you were to teach a language-awareness course
 provided this is the only such course) to undergraduates, what three topics
would you feel you must include in it?  Also, if you have taught such a
course, I would love to hear how you have handled it. PLEASE RESPOND.

For your information, my students get bored easily, so I would prefer to
include topics, or present them in such a way, that I engage the students in
discussion and discovery and rely less on lecturing.  Also, students prefer
topics with a practical application.  Reading is not a problem.

Please reply to ME.  I will be using the responses (anonymously, of course)
in actual revision of the course and in a conference presentation.  I will
summarize the results for this list.

Ali A. Aghbar, Dept. of English, Indiana U. of PA,  Indiana PA 15705
aaghbar at grove.iup.edu  Phone: 724 357 4937