Some of you have provided me with very general topics, which is fine—I did not ask for more. So, one element of the presentation will be to refine your topic and to present a better-defined area of inquiry. Otherwise, I will ask you to lay out the issues: reason for planning problem (history, political issue, etc.), objectives, authority (if there is one), steps (being) taken, and conclusions, if any. I will remind you again to keep in mind Spolsky’s tripartite “Practices, ideologies, and management.”
You will further develop your topic for the final paper, which I will ask you to develop in two parts: the first is essentially what is outlined above, that you will be addressing in your presentation. The second part will be more applied: identifying a particular “problem” pertaining to your topic, you will play the role of a policy & planning specialist consultant and develop a policy or management framework, informed by the theoretical basis you have gained with class readings and discussions and by your own research, and apply it to the problem. How exactly you will go about doing that in the context of your chosen topic is something that can be addressed in class discussions resulting from your presentations, as well as in private consultation between you and me.
In terms of resources, one place to start is Spolsky’s volumes from which we have drawn our readings. See the tables of contents at the following links:
• Spolsky, B., ed. (2012). The Cambridge handbook of language policy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Spolsky, B. (2003). Language policy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
There are several other handbooks and the like available through our library website that contain specialized chapters, each of which will then have a good bibliography of recent sources. An even-more-recent handbook is the following:
• Tollefson, J. W., & Pérez-Milans, M., eds. (2018). The Oxford handbook of language policy and planning. New York: Oxford University Press.
Of course, you will likely be looking through journal databases too to find particularly specialized studies.