Courses tagged with "HumanitiesandScience" (2)

This course provides an introduction to general semantics—the study of how we transform our life experiences into language and thought. Students will learn how their language habits and behaviors, as well as how they think about and share experiences, are what make them uniquely human. In other words, students will discover the critical, but sometimes subtle distinctions between what happens in their lives and how they talk about what happens. The course will include readings from a wide array of disciplines, such as communication studies, neuroscience, and cultural anthropology. It will also include visual and auditory demonstrations through music and social media, and collaborative interactions with fellow learners. These types of learning experiences allow students to not only learn about more effective language behaviors, but also practice those new behaviors in order to communicate more effectively and appropriately in interpersonal and organizational contexts.

Do you want to sound like a native Spanish speaker? Get started by improving your accent. This course provides a practical introduction to Spanish pronunciation for students at all levels. It is taught in English and designed to provide an auditory and visual approach to learning pronunciation. Students will listen to audio files recorded by native speakers and then record themselves pronouncing the same words or phrases. In addition to playing back both recordings to compare the auditory differences, students will have an opportunity to view and compare visual sound waves of both audio recordings. These techniques will help learners assess and improve their pronunciation. Although it will be necessary to some extent, discussion of theoretical issues will be kept to a minimum with the emphasis being on accent reduction.