International Network for Educational Linguistics as a Discipline (INFELAD)

[Ronald Kephart]

>Would you be interested in joining an International Network for
>Educational Linguistics as a Discipline (INFELAD)?

I think I might, but I have a question. Do people see Educational
Linguistics as primarily about language teaching/learning, or is
there room for other issues?

I have in mind especially the lack of science-based knowledge about
language that I see, every semester, in the students in my intro to
linguistics class. They've spent 12 years in things like "language
arts," but all they know is whether to write its or it's, or that
"double negatives make a positive," or that AAVE is "just slang." In
other words, most of what they know is either about the writing
system or simply fantasy. Is this a forum to tackle issues like this?

Ronald Kephart
Associate Professor
English and Foreign Languages
University of North Florida
Jacksonville, FL USA
http://www.unf.edu/~rkephart/