Incorporating Formal Language Analysis in the Language Teacher Curriculum

In this chapter we argue that formal linguistic analysis is an important part of the language teacher’s formation and, given the right approach, can provide a unifying view of cross-linguistic patterns. We describe an undergraduate course taught at a college in New York City which sought to compare phonological, morphological, and syntactic patterns in a wide variety of languages. Seeing both differences and similarities across these often typologically diverse languages through an analytic lens also helps students overcome biases and preconceived ideas about the status of a language while at the same time leading prospective language teachers to a better understanding of minoritized languages spoken in their own homes.