Julia Fernández Cuesta
Inmaculada Senra Silva

Departamento de Filología Inglesa (Lengua Inglesa)
Universidad de Sevilla

Teaching Historical Linguistics in the New Curriculum

Based on the recent research on the teaching of Historical Linguistics in general (and of the history of English in particular) in our Departments of English, this paper intends to give some answers to the following questions:

1. To what extent/Why subjects like History of the English language and Old English should still be taught in our Departments (and at what level). Since most of our students become teachers of English, we try to show how understanding the mechanisms of language change can help the language teacher to improve teaching results.

2. How we should (and should NOT) teach these subjects. It has been repeated that current teaching methods are in many ways outdated. In this paper, we discuss alternative approaches, and how the new technologies (World Wide Webb, Internet) can benefit/improve the teaching of these subjects. ??