LaGuardia Community College of the City University of New York is named for Fiorello H. LaGuardia, New York City’s New Deal mayor, who inspired a city of immigrants. Located at a transit hub that links Queens, the city’s most ethnically diverse borough, with the world center of finance, commerce and the arts, the college provides access to higher education and serves New Yorkers of all backgrounds, ages and means.
The Education and Language Acquisition Department (ELA) at LaGuardia Community College is a multidisciplinary liberal arts department which houses programs in Teacher Education, Modern Languages and Literatures, Linguistics, and Academic ESL. The department takes the College's goal of internationalizing the curriculum very seriously. The lively exchange of ideas in the areas of theory and pedagogy among the language, literature, and education faculty has allowed for the creation of enriched educational experiences for students which recognize students' inherent strengths and heritages and prepares them for success in an increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse world.
The ELA department offers heritage language (105-level) courses, which are designed for heritage speakers of non-English languages – those who were born in or came to the U.S. at early age and learned a non-English language at home or in their local community. Research and our experience show that these heritage language students are fluent in oral language, but they are unable to take full advantage of their bilingual ability due to the limited knowledge in formal language, especially the written form of a high register language. Our heritage language courses help students improve their heritage language fluency in a high-register setting, such as writing formal reports, conducting business negotiations, and discussing social and political issues in structured arguments. The heritage language course will help students develop their bilingual skills to be more competitive in the job market and/or in a workplace.
To learn more, visit the LaGuardia Community College website.
