Jeeyeon Lee learned English growing up in India, where she remembers tedious lectures and uninventive teaching methods.
Now a third-year international student, Lee is a member of the inaugural class of the undergraduate applied linguistics major, launching this fall.
Lee hopes to teach English herself someday and to make the process more compelling than her own experiences.
“Reading and writing doesn’t have to be boring. … Teaching language could be done more creatively,” Lee said.
The new applied linguistics major will focus not only on teaching English as a second language, as other applied linguistics programs do, but also on numerous other practical applications of language in society, she added.
These applications are far-reaching and diverse, said Olga Yokoyama, department chair of applied linguistics, including everything from determining linguistic symptoms of certain mental disorders, to examining the effect of language in testing situations for ESL students across the country.
Lee said that the course material in her new field of study would help her gain the skills necessary to achieve her teaching goals.
The new major will be the first of its kind in the nation, Yokoyama said.
There are only two other undergraduate programs in applied linguistics in the country, and UCLA’s new program will be broader in scope than these, Yokoyama said.
Flor Reyes, a fourth-year linguistics and French student planning on entering the new major, said that these real-life applications of linguistics peaked her interest in the program.
“It’s interesting to see the two sides that linguistics has. … Linguistics is more theoretical, but applied linguistics has so much more to do with real-world issues,” Reyes said.
After graduating, Reyes hopes to teach English in the L.A. area as well as complete research in applied linguistics.
The major’s strong community and civic service basis will help students like Reyes to achieve this, said Susan Plann, a professor in the department of applied linguistics who co-wrote a proposal for the new major.
“We knew from the beginning we wanted service learning to be a big part of the new major,” Plann said. “Classes on campus provide an academic background, and the service in the community allows students to apply this background in a hands-on setting.”
Students in the major will volunteer at several high schools in the L.A. area, as well as at a camp for incarcerated minors, Plann said.
There, they might work with students learning to read or tutor students learning English as their second language, Plann said.
“Community service provides our students with a bridge between the university and the large community, thus preparing them for work and life beyond the campus,” she said.
Lyle Bachman, a professor in the applied linguistics department who co-wrote a draft of the major with Plann, said that this interactive service aspect would contribute to the major’s appeal to students.
Bachman said that this appeal was further augmented by the timeliness of the course material.
“A lot of things happening in our country right now are applied linguistics situations,” Bachman said.
Bachman cited the issue of ESL students struggling with standardized tests as well as the growing need for multilingual and multicultural people in the business world as examples of this phenomenon.
“The major has the ability to address issues students are interested in,” Bachman said.
Linda Jensen, a lecturer for the department’s ESL and TESL courses, added that the field of applied linguistics is particularly relevant to a multicultural university like UCLA.
“It’s personal for them,” Jensen said of the many multilingual students studying language and linguistics at UCLA.
While many major proposals are rejected several times and take years to be accepted, faculty of the applied linguistics department were “happy and ecstatic” to see the major pass after only one proposal, Yokoyama said.
“I think this is something the university wanted us to do for a long time,” she said.
The graduate program in applied linguistics is one of the strongest in the country, she added, meaning that undergraduate students will have access to an already established pool of knowledgeable and experienced professors.
“We felt that we had a responsibility to serve UCLA’s undergraduate population,” she said.