Main points:
- Each week, students are asked to complete a mini research task online, before posting on the week’s discussion forum to explain what they have found out.
- The task relates directly to the weekly topics, thereby providing additional content knowledge and the opportunity to explore ideas in more depth.
- Provided that they post before the deadline, they are given the credit for the task (0.5% per week), and the quality of contributions is not assessed. The assumption is that students will complete the activities in order to acquire the credit, thereby having to visit the required sources, and therefore hopefully gaining something from the activity even with minimal investment.
- The primary purpose of this component each week is to instil an understanding of why we search for ideas, but there are a number of other practical objectives: keeping students on track with the course schedule, discovering some specific sites and sources that linguists use for research, and consolidating their knowledge of the weekly topic.
- The types of source that students are directed to move from populist sources about language ... to technical sites that house primary linguistic data ... to academic databases that contain secondary sources about language. The progression from one type of source to another is heavily scaffolded by the weekly activities, constantly reinforcing the idea that RESEARCH is primarily about looking for things that are of interest of relevance to the task at hand.
In Week 2, students are asked to find a Youtube clip, podcast episode or blog post about language, and post the link on the discussion forum with a comment about why they liked it. Since the weekly theme is ‘becoming a linguist’, the task helps the whole class discover a wide range of language-related issues in the real world, as well as practical resources that will support them in their studies in linguistics. Students are given a list of sites that they might like to explore, but they are free to post a link to any resource of their choosing.
Blogs about language
Suggestions: Choose your favourite language-related blog from those below. What do you like about this one? Or choose one particular blog post that grabbed your attention and provide a direct link to this post. What made you choose this post?
All things linguistic
The language log
Superlinguo
Language on the move
Language: A feminist guide
(Also see Craig Alan Volker's monthly column via the Language Toktok Facebook group - below)
Video channels
Suggestions: Choose your favourite language-related channel from those below. Or choose one particular video and provide a direct link. Explain your choice.
Virtual Linguistics Campus
The Ling Space
NativLang
Also check out TED Talks and search for some language-related topics
Podcasts
Suggestions: Have you ever listened to a podcast before? Do you find these ones interesting? Are they easy to follow? Can you pick a favourite? Or choose one episode that you would recommend to others.
Talk the talk
Lingthusiasm
Lexicon valley
Five minute linguist (listen via iTunes)
Facebook groups
Suggestions: If you are on Facebook, please do join the first group because it's set up specially for USP linguistics students and we sometimes post practical information there too, as well as interesting links. In fact, if you want to share your recommendations for podcasts, blogs etc. with other linguistics students, you could also post about them on Facebook!
Language matters in the Pacific (USP linguistics)
Language & Linguistics in Melanesia
Language toktok
Linguistic Society of Hawai'i
Accessible academic sites
There are some other academic sites you might like to check out. They provide simple overviews of new research or summaries of technical topics that are written specially for students. Try some of these:
Digests by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL)
The conversation (search for ‘language’ or a more specific term such as ‘multilingualism’ or ‘translation’)
Suggestions: Choose your favourite language-related blog from those below. What do you like about this one? Or choose one particular blog post that grabbed your attention and provide a direct link to this post. What made you choose this post?
All things linguistic
The language log
Superlinguo
Language on the move
Language: A feminist guide
(Also see Craig Alan Volker's monthly column via the Language Toktok Facebook group - below)
Video channels
Suggestions: Choose your favourite language-related channel from those below. Or choose one particular video and provide a direct link. Explain your choice.
Virtual Linguistics Campus
The Ling Space
NativLang
Also check out TED Talks and search for some language-related topics
Podcasts
Suggestions: Have you ever listened to a podcast before? Do you find these ones interesting? Are they easy to follow? Can you pick a favourite? Or choose one episode that you would recommend to others.
Talk the talk
Lingthusiasm
Lexicon valley
Five minute linguist (listen via iTunes)
Facebook groups
Suggestions: If you are on Facebook, please do join the first group because it's set up specially for USP linguistics students and we sometimes post practical information there too, as well as interesting links. In fact, if you want to share your recommendations for podcasts, blogs etc. with other linguistics students, you could also post about them on Facebook!
Language matters in the Pacific (USP linguistics)
Language & Linguistics in Melanesia
Language toktok
Linguistic Society of Hawai'i
Accessible academic sites
There are some other academic sites you might like to check out. They provide simple overviews of new research or summaries of technical topics that are written specially for students. Try some of these:
Digests by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL)
The conversation (search for ‘language’ or a more specific term such as ‘multilingualism’ or ‘translation’)
The following week, students are asked to search the online or print archives of national media outlets in their own countries, looking for any stories or commentary about language, again sharing their findings on the forum with an explanation about why this is an important issue in their country, and an English translation if necessary. Again, this relates to the weekly topic of public beliefs about language. The idea behind these first two weeks is to get students socialised into the practice of searching for information and evaluating and explaining what they find, using populist sources that should be accessible and of genuine interest, thereby reducing the ‘academic load’ typically associating with learning to do research.
In Weeks 4 to 7, students are directed to explore more technical linguistic sources. In the first of these four weeks, they are asked to search the Ethnologue, a database of the world’s languages. In order to earn the credit, they simply have to post something of interest that they discover on the site.
In Weeks 4 to 7, students are directed to explore more technical linguistic sources. In the first of these four weeks, they are asked to search the Ethnologue, a database of the world’s languages. In order to earn the credit, they simply have to post something of interest that they discover on the site.
They are given a series of suggestions to help them navigate the site, and particularly encouraged to look up the entries about their own country and languages, focusing on things such as the number of languages listed, or their numbers of speakers, as well as anything they disagree with. Some students simply copy something superficial from the site, while others appear to reflect quite deeply on things that surprise them. The idea is that the more invested students will take the opportunity to explore the linguistic situation in the Pacific in more detail. Meanwhile, nervous students are likely to read through other people’s posts before completing their task, so it is hoped that they will at least be exposed to the ideas of some of these more invested students.
The following week, when the topic is languages and dialects, students are directed to a series of linguistic archives of primary data, accessed through the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC). Again, their task is to search for information in or about their own language, or dialect of that language, before posting on the forum to say what they had found. Some of the archives are quite hard to navigate, and students are reassured that it’s fine to post about challenges they faced gaining access to any information or primary data. They are encouraged to comment on what they have found surprising, what they disagree with, and how they feel about the fact that the majority of archival material has been collected by European linguists, once again building up their abilities to critically evaluate what they find.
In Week 6, they are directed to the etymology tools of the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary, to explore words that have entered English from Pacific languages, and to find out whether any word entered English on the day that they were born. This ‘birthday challenge’ has been created by the OED to teach users how to use some of their site's search functions more effectively. One purpose is to explore the weekly topic of language change in more detail, by exploring borrowing into English. Another is to introduce students to the additional functions of an online dictionary, such as information about etymology, which they may not yet be aware of.
Finally, in Week 7 – in which the topic is spoken, signed and written languages – students are asked to research one English word of their choice using each of: Youglish, a video search tool that demonstrates different pronunciations of the word in authentic contexts in different varieties of English; ASL-LEX, a visual database of American Sign Language that demonstrates the phonology, lexical properties, frequency and iconicity of different ASL signs; and Compleat Lexical Tutor, a concordancing tool that produces usage results based on a number of corpora of written English. The aim is to expose students to a range of technical sites, some of which can be quite fiddly to use independently, using a very simple task that will just teach them the basics of how the sites work. To gain the credit, they simply have to post a quick summary of what happened when they tried to search for their word on the three different sites, again with it being acceptable to say that they were unable to access some features or find their chosen word.
After the semester break, the ‘exploring ideas’ tasks move to more academic sources. By this stage, it is expected that students will have developed the skills needed to search and evaluate effectively, using reasonably simple topics. They are therefore now ready to learn how to apply these skills when using library databases and search engines to find academic texts. It is hoped that students will now approach the task of looking for secondary sources with genuine inquisitiveness, the ability to evaluate what they find, and sufficient robustness to persevere through unsuccessful searches if they can’t find what they’re looking for first time.
In Week 8, students are preparing for a group oral presentation about one of four topics. Their ‘exploring ideas’ task is to post one link each from a web search on the forum that they think is relevant to their group's oral presentation topic, saying why this provides useful information for their presentation, and explaining why they think they can trust this source. To support this task, a short video on ‘responsible google searching’ is provided, in which the lecturer talks through searching for sources via a regular google search, clicking on links such as Wikipedia, Google Scholar and a series of other search results, and commenting on the search results. General sites such as Wikipedia are encouraged for quick access to a new concept, but its features such as the editing history are explored on the video so that students get to see how easy it is for members of the public to edit, and how it would be quicker to use another site than to check the validity of a Wikipedia entry.
In Week 9, the university's library search tool is introduced. The task is similar, in that students have to locate a source that they think will be relevant for their upcoming assignment, posting the bibliographic reference on the discussion forum along with a couple of sentences to explain why this source is useful. This is to help them prepare for an annotated bibliography as part of their final essay plan. Again, the activity is supported by an instructional video available on the USP library website that illustrate how to search the catalogue.
Finally, in Week 10, rather than learning to search for any new sources, students are asked to revisit the discussion forum from the previous two weeks to select a source that another student has recommended. They are not allowed to copy the original student's comment about the source, but should conduct their own evaluation. They are given a checklist to guide them:
Who wrote it?
Why did they write it?
Is it neutral?
Does it seem accurate and reliable?
Is the information up to date?
The following week, when the topic is languages and dialects, students are directed to a series of linguistic archives of primary data, accessed through the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC). Again, their task is to search for information in or about their own language, or dialect of that language, before posting on the forum to say what they had found. Some of the archives are quite hard to navigate, and students are reassured that it’s fine to post about challenges they faced gaining access to any information or primary data. They are encouraged to comment on what they have found surprising, what they disagree with, and how they feel about the fact that the majority of archival material has been collected by European linguists, once again building up their abilities to critically evaluate what they find.
In Week 6, they are directed to the etymology tools of the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary, to explore words that have entered English from Pacific languages, and to find out whether any word entered English on the day that they were born. This ‘birthday challenge’ has been created by the OED to teach users how to use some of their site's search functions more effectively. One purpose is to explore the weekly topic of language change in more detail, by exploring borrowing into English. Another is to introduce students to the additional functions of an online dictionary, such as information about etymology, which they may not yet be aware of.
Finally, in Week 7 – in which the topic is spoken, signed and written languages – students are asked to research one English word of their choice using each of: Youglish, a video search tool that demonstrates different pronunciations of the word in authentic contexts in different varieties of English; ASL-LEX, a visual database of American Sign Language that demonstrates the phonology, lexical properties, frequency and iconicity of different ASL signs; and Compleat Lexical Tutor, a concordancing tool that produces usage results based on a number of corpora of written English. The aim is to expose students to a range of technical sites, some of which can be quite fiddly to use independently, using a very simple task that will just teach them the basics of how the sites work. To gain the credit, they simply have to post a quick summary of what happened when they tried to search for their word on the three different sites, again with it being acceptable to say that they were unable to access some features or find their chosen word.
After the semester break, the ‘exploring ideas’ tasks move to more academic sources. By this stage, it is expected that students will have developed the skills needed to search and evaluate effectively, using reasonably simple topics. They are therefore now ready to learn how to apply these skills when using library databases and search engines to find academic texts. It is hoped that students will now approach the task of looking for secondary sources with genuine inquisitiveness, the ability to evaluate what they find, and sufficient robustness to persevere through unsuccessful searches if they can’t find what they’re looking for first time.
In Week 8, students are preparing for a group oral presentation about one of four topics. Their ‘exploring ideas’ task is to post one link each from a web search on the forum that they think is relevant to their group's oral presentation topic, saying why this provides useful information for their presentation, and explaining why they think they can trust this source. To support this task, a short video on ‘responsible google searching’ is provided, in which the lecturer talks through searching for sources via a regular google search, clicking on links such as Wikipedia, Google Scholar and a series of other search results, and commenting on the search results. General sites such as Wikipedia are encouraged for quick access to a new concept, but its features such as the editing history are explored on the video so that students get to see how easy it is for members of the public to edit, and how it would be quicker to use another site than to check the validity of a Wikipedia entry.
In Week 9, the university's library search tool is introduced. The task is similar, in that students have to locate a source that they think will be relevant for their upcoming assignment, posting the bibliographic reference on the discussion forum along with a couple of sentences to explain why this source is useful. This is to help them prepare for an annotated bibliography as part of their final essay plan. Again, the activity is supported by an instructional video available on the USP library website that illustrate how to search the catalogue.
Finally, in Week 10, rather than learning to search for any new sources, students are asked to revisit the discussion forum from the previous two weeks to select a source that another student has recommended. They are not allowed to copy the original student's comment about the source, but should conduct their own evaluation. They are given a checklist to guide them:
Who wrote it?
- Is the author’s name given?
- Can you see any information about that author (e.g. experience, qualifications)? Follow links to their homepage or institutional website if given. If not, try a basic google search to find out who they are. Ask yourself whether they are qualified to write on that topic.
- If there is no author, can you see the name of an organisation? If so, what kind of organisation is it? Do they make a profit from the information given in the source? Is there any kind of political affiliation? (If an individual or an organisation will benefit in some way from people believing the information given in the source, then you should be careful.)
Why did they write it?
- Who is the intended audience? Is it written for academics? Students? the general public?
- What do you think is the purpose of the source? Does it try to persuade people to do something? To explain some research? To sell something? To inform the public about something?
Is it neutral?
- Does the information seem to be fact or opinion? Is there any propaganda?
- Does the writer seem to be objective?
- Is the language neutral? Or does it seem emotional, stirring, dramatic?
- Is there an organisation behind the author? If so, is this a university (i.e. the author is paid to do research and share this with others), or is it a company that will make money from the information?
Does it seem accurate and reliable?
- Are sources or evidence given for any factual information? Are you able to follow up such sources (references) to check their veracity?
- Can you verify any of the information by accessing other sources, or by using your own knowledge?
- Has the text been reviewed? (Academic articles almost always go through a peer review process before they can be published, which means that other academics have checked their information first. Some internet sources can be uploaded by literally anyone without any review system.)
- Does the source contain any errors or inconsistencies in spelling, grammar or format?
Is the information up to date?
- When was the source written? Is the date given?
- Is the information still current? If not, does that matter? (Sometimes, an older source is still perfectly valid.) If the source covers information that changes regularly, is it kept up-todate?
- If there are any links from the source, are they still functional? Are any broken?