Mississippi State University-Meridian Campus will offer its first class in the TESOL program this summer to help area teachers better serve the increasing number of non-English speaking students in public schools.

TESOL is an acronym for “Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Language.” The MSU program offers instruction in means, methods and techniques for teaching English to students whose first language is other than English.

The MSU-Meridian Division of Arts and Sciences is offering the class, “Introduction to Linguistics,” in response to needs identified by the Division of Education, according to Dr. Dennis Mitchell, chair of the Division of Arts and Sciences.

“It will be broadcast via the distance learning network from the Starkville campus Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. until 11:50 a.m. during the first five-week summer term.”

MSU-Meridian’s final summer registration is May 30 and 31, and classes begin June 4.

“Several teachers and students have expressed to us the need to offer TESOL classes because of the increase in the number of limited and/or non-English speaking students in area schools and the availability of teachers who can properly communicate with the students and their parents,” said Dr. George Thomas, chair of MSU-Meridian’s Division of Education. “Spanish is the most common ‘second language’ being used in the schools although there are also other languages. Some of the students who relocated from Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina have fluency in ‘French’ and need appropriate instruction, too.”

MSU awards a certificate for the completion of the 15-credit hour TESOL program, which makes the holder eligible for employment as a teacher of English as a Second Language. Teachers who are trained in the TESOL approaches generally have more job opportunities, Dr. Thomas noted.

Until now, MSU students have had to take classes toward the TESOL certification at the Starkville campus.

This summer linguistics class via the distance learning network will gauge how much interest there is in Meridian for the TESOL program, said MSU English Professor Dr. Scott Crossley, who will be conducting the class.

“If it is successful, then we will extend the program to allow for the full collection of TESOL classes to be available to MSU-Meridian students,” he said.

The “Introduction to Linguistics” class is an introductory course, open to undergraduate and graduate students, that covers the descriptive and historical study of language, linguistic analysis and comparisons, language classification, language in its social and cultural settings, phonetics, animal communication, language universals, corpus and computational linguistics, as well as an introduction to grammar and semantics.

“The program offers students a variety of options to better serve non-native speakers here in our community or an opportunity to travel the world teaching English abroad,” Mitchell said.

To register for the class or for more information, call (601) 484-0100 or 1-800-824-5288.

This article was submitted by Mississippi State University-Meridian Campus.