Research-Oriented Teaching of English Sociolinguistics at the Graduate Level:
A Case Study from the University of Mannheim
Julia Davydova (Mannheim, Germany)
Abstract
(English)
This
paper addresses the questions of how research-oriented teaching in
the field of linguistics can be conducted at the university level and
what ensures a successful implementation of a research-oriented
teaching method. In so doing, it reports on the development and
implementation of a teaching concept in the field of sociolinguistics
conducted at the University of Mannheim (Germany) in the summer term
2015. The paper is rounded off with a discussion of methodological
strategies ensuring a success of a research-oriented teaching concept
in class.
Keywords: Research-oriented
teaching, methodological implementation, sociolinguistic fieldwork
Abstract
(German)
In
diesem Aufsatz wird erläutert, wie die Universitätslehre im Bereich
der Linguistik forschungsorientiert gestaltet werden kann. Ferner
wird untersucht, welche didaktischen Methoden für diesen
Einsatz am besten geeignet sind. Vorgestellt wird ein
soziolinguistisches Unterrichtskonzept, das im Sommersemester
2015 an der Universität Mannheim (Deutschland) entwickelt und
implementiert wurde. Es ergibt sich darüber hinaus eine
Diskussion über Methoden, die sich im Unterricht als erfolgreich und
für Studierende gut geeignet bewährt haben.
Stichwörter: Forschungsorientierte
Lehre, didaktische Implementierung, soziolinguistische Feldforschung
1 Introduction
Research-oriented
teaching has become an essential strategy pursued in the system of
higher education in Germany (Langemeyer & Rohrdantz-Herrmann
2014) and elsewhere in the world (e.g. Jiang & Luo 2011). More
and more German universities offer research-oriented programmes
providing students with an opportunity to acquire the essentials of
conducting scientific research, thereby preparing them for a career
in academia.1
Such programmes already exist at the University of Munich, the
University of Heidelberg, the University of Bochum, and Karlsruhe
Institute of Technology (all located in Germany). State-of-the-art
examples from current research are used to familiarise students with
the fundamental principles of the scientific method.
Research-oriented teaching is furthermore viewed as a basic strategy
to accelerate students’ learning curve.2
That said, the question arises how research-oriented teaching in the
field of linguistics can be conducted at the university level and,
more importantly, what ensures a successful implementation of a
research-oriented teaching method?
The
main goal of this article is to present a research-oriented concept
of teaching English linguistics at the graduate level. More
specifically, a description of and reflexions on the graduate
level course titled Mastering the art of doing
sociolinguistic fieldwork taught in the
summer term 2015 at the University of Mannheim (Germany), are made.
The course was primarily motivated by the need to develop a teaching
concept that would allow graduate-level students to become actively
engaged in a research project and, thus, to learn how to conduct
independent empirical research in the field of sociolinguistics. The
topic of sociolinguistic fieldwork offered a remarkable opportunity
to achieve that goal. In what follows, a case study illustrating a
development and a subsequent implementation of a
research-oriented teaching concept in the field of sociolinguistics
is presented.
2 Postdoc Project
The author of this paper
is a linguist trained in the field of variationist sociolinguistics.
In the framework of a current research project, the use and
perception of linguistic innovative features by two distinctive
types of non-native speakers, i.e. those speaking English as a
second language (ESL) and those speaking English as a foreign
language (EFL), is explored. The language features in question are
located within the system of English quotative marking and are
illustrated in the examples (1) to (4):
Examples:
(1)
She said,
‘We’re gonna be late!’
(2)
And we were like, ‘That’s not our problem!’
(3)
And I thought, ‘My God, I am never gonna finish this!’
(4)
And we were standing there and she (zero marker),
‘Have you
bought the tickets?’
The system of quotative
marking has been described as the one undergoing rapid real-time
change in native-speaker English, particularly as a result of
incremental, yet fairly swift expansion of the innovative
quotative marker be like,
which is perhaps best described as a youthful feature, an under-forty
phenomenon, originating from the United States, that is now in
wide currency in the English-speaking world. Much is known about the
way in which quotative be like
is put to use and perceived by native speakers of English (see
Buchstaller 2014 for a comprehensive overview). Extensive previous
research prompts the following questions:
- How is this innovative feature appropriated on the level of language use and language perception by non-native speakers?
And
more importantly:
- What is possible in the L2 acquisition of language variation in terms of language production and language perceptions?
While
addressing these issues, two academic communities are explored:
students from Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi) and
students from the University of Mannheim (Germany). The main research
goal of the project is to establish similarities and differences in
the use of innovative features, such as quotative be
like, by speakers of indigenised and learner
English and to ascertain how these relate to the patterns attested in
native-speaker English. Furthermore, speakers’ perceptions of the
innovative variant are explored, as these have been shown to
determine the mechanism that governs language variation and,
ultimately, language change (Labov 1966: 2001, Labov et al. 2011,
Campbell-Kibler 2005 / 2006, Fridland et al. 2005).
Throughout
her sociolinguistic career, the author has gained a fairly extensive
experience of conducting sociolinguistic fieldwork documented through
three data collection trips to Jawaharlal Nehru University (New
Delhi), collecting sociolinguistic data on learner English in
Hamburg (Germany) and in Bryansk (Russia). Furthermore, she collected
sociolinguistic data at the University of Mannheim (Germany). The
central idea was, then, to introduce course participants into
the current research project and to demonstrate the techniques of
conducting sociolinguistic fieldwork. In so doing, students were
shown how empirical research in the given field can be
conducted, their role as collaborators rather than mere student
participants being highlighted.
3 A Research-Oriented Course in Conducting Sociolinguistic Fieldwork
3.1 Sociolinguistic Fieldwork as a Topic for University-Level Teaching
Gathering
empirical data on language is the key
ingredient in doing (variationist) sociolinguistics. At the same
time, the sociolinguistic field methods and data-related technologies
have become more and more sophisticated (Schilling 2013: 1). It is
therefore no surprise that a lot of effort has been undertaken by
sociolinguists to document these technologies, thereby uncovering the
mysteries of conducting sociolinguistic fieldwork to students of
linguistics. Schilling (2013) is one admirable example. The textbook
provides an overview of the major data-collection methods (surveys,
interviews and participant observation), while at the same time
giving the reader a plethora of practical advice on how to become
integrated in the community one studies. This book turned out to be a
very useful reading assignment, which helped students become
more aware of the issues discussed in the classroom and practised
outside of it.
An
exercise-based course in conducting sociolinguistic fieldwork is not
an entirely new enterprise. Similar courses have been conducted at
other universities world-wide. A course in linguistics titled
Research
Excursion / Experiential Learning Course
taught by Sali A. Tagliamonte at the University of Toronto (Canada)
is a notable illustration. The major idea of this course is to
familiarise students with the major sociolinguistic tool of data
collection, i.e. the sociolinguistic interview, through
participation in a fieldtrip to a rural area in Ontario. The
course engages students “in work that is firmly rooted in the
community, and embeds learning in an optimal synthesis of teaching
and research”.3
The course thus provided students with an opportunity to contribute
to the ongoing project on language variation and change in Canadian
English conducted at the University of Toronto.
The
course in sociolinguistic fieldwork conducted at the University of
Mannheim (Germany) was broader in its focus as it allowed students to
practise the wider spectrum of sociolinguistic data-collection
methods: (i) participant observation, (ii) sociolinguistic interviews
and (iii) sociolinguistic surveys. While responding to the major
current needs of the field, the course thus aimed at making a
contribution to research-oriented concepts in higher education
teaching.
3.2 The Target Audience
The
course titled The target audience
was designed for students enrolled in Master and Bachelor programmes,
and required some preliminary knowledge of linguistics. However,
because of its explicit focus on practical tasks and
learning-by-doing activities, knowledge of linguistics was not
as stringent a requirement as it would have been for other
courses in sociolinguistics. The main theoretical concepts students
needed to follow this course were discussed in class. These were
motivated young people interested in learning more about language and
in doing linguistics. This circumstance contributed to establishing
very positive in-group dynamics right from the start and seemed to
have a beneficial effect on other students who were still unfamiliar
to the instructor.
The
course consisted of three main parts; the course syllabus is
presented in Figure 1:
Fig. 1: The structure of the course:
Mastering the art of doing sociolinguistic
fieldwork (University of Mannheim,
spring 2015)
In
the first step, students were introduced into sociolinguistics as a
field of study and familiarised with the major data collection
techniques. They learned to assume different perspectives on the
object of sociolinguistic inquiry and to differentiate between speech
communities, social networks and communities of practice. Students
were also introduced into the major ethical criteria guiding
sociolinguistic fieldwork. Finally, they received a comprehensive
overview of the chief data collection method employed within
sociolinguistics, i.e. the sociolinguistic interview.
In
the second step, they were asked to complete two main fieldwork
assignments, which consisted in (i) carrying out four
sociolinguistic interviews and (ii) recruiting ten participants for
an online survey. Both assignments provided students with
an opportunity to gain practical experience in doing sociolinguistic
work. All these fieldwork tasks were subsequently discussed in class.
Students’ shared their experiences with each other, first in groups
and then in plenary. They were encouraged to talk not only about
their successful moments but also about their failures. Their task
was to discuss and critically assess all of their experiences, good
or bad, and to try to understand how things could be done better next
time.
The
third part of the course focused on data-preparation and
data-processing techniques. On the one hand, students learned how to
extract tokens from spontaneous speech data, relying on the system of
English quotative marking for illustration. On the other hand, they
gained insights into constructing an online survey tapping into
learners’ perceptions of quotative be like.
3.3 Sociolinguistic interviews
Since
conducting sociolinguistic interviews was the major fieldwork
assignment in this course, an explanation is necessary here. A
sociolinguistic interview is a mode of spontaneous data elicitation
that provides the analyst with a unique opportunity to observe
community members. Its major goal is to produce large quantities of
speech data rather than the use of specific linguistic forms. The
sociolinguistic interview is a special technique aiming at
steering informants’ attention away from language and placing
emphasis on their involvement with a story (Schilling 2013: 93). As
such sociolinguistic interviews approximate natural conversations,
they may involve either one participant (one-on-one interviews) or
two participants (dyadic or peer-group interviews). Yet, the crucial
difference between sociolinguistic interviews and natural
interactions is that the former lack very long pauses and sporadic
conversation. Sociolinguistic interviews are typically centred on
specific topics called conversation modules.
Some of these topics are of universal interest, whereas others are
pertinent to the community studied. It is important for the
interviewer to be able to offer topics for conversation that
would be of genuine interest to his or her informants. Selecting
appropriate topics for the sociolinguistic interview is therefore a
complex task. A
lot of preliminary research into the community, including participant
observation, is necessary in order to understand which topics would
bring the sparkle into the informant’s eyes and which topics should
be avoided at all cost so as not to provoke any inappropriate
reactions. Informants are generally encouraged to tell stories and
even “to go off on tangents of their own” (Schilling 2013: 94).
It is believed that animated narratives eliminate, or at least
minimize, the so-called observer’s paradox,
a sociolinguistic concept used to describe informants’ persistent
focus on their own speech once the recording device has been turned
on.
Conversation
modules consist of a series of questions, some of them more general
and all-inclusive, whereas others are more specific and
experience-related, as demonstrated in Chapter 5 (also Tagliamonte
2006: 37-49). The task of the researcher is to determine in the
course of the data collection which questions work best, i.e. evoke
most interest and thus elicit the most spontaneous
responses from the informants.
Examples:
(5)
Conversation module: Family
- Do you generally feel that your family have influenced your life?
- Have you ever played tricks on your brothers / sisters? Do you have a story to tell?
- Has your brother / sister made you laugh till you ‘drop dead’?
- Do you have a fun story to tell from one of the last family celebrations?
The researcher also needs
to make sure that he or she contributes to the conversation only
minimally and yet do so in a manner that is natural and polite. The
reason why the interviewing sociolinguist should aim for a very
modest contribution to the overall interaction is because (i) he
or she might inadvertently provoke informants’ beginning to use
specific linguistic features that they would not normally produce and
(ii) his or her own speech cannot be further evaluated; in other
words, it is useless to the analysis of data.
It
must have become clear by now that conducting a sociolinguistic
interview is a fairly complex task, requiring a lot of careful
planning, close attention to details as well as constant practice.
One of the main goals of this course was to familiarise
participants with this major sociolinguistic data collection method,
thereby allowing them not only to master their knowledge of
sociolinguistics but also, more importantly, to hone their
sociolinguistic skills and wisdom.
3.4 Changes Introduced in the Course of the Teaching Experiment
The
original structure envisaged for the course seemed to have worked out
quite well. There were two main adjustments that had to be introduced
in order to give the course a sharper focus. It had initially been
planned to introduce students to the statistical analysis of language
data but it had then been decided against it as this would have
taken too much time. In fact, one could teach an entire course on
this topic and, indeed, such a course is a logical next step in
constructing a curriculum for teaching English sociolinguistics.
The
second change that was introduced in this course was to invite Sarah
Maurer, one of the instructor’s former students, to report on her
Masters’ thesis (Maurer 2014), focusing on the data collection
techniques she had implemented in her project. The main idea behind
this adjustment was to let students learn not only from their
instructor, but from one of their peers, who had just successfully
accomplished a fairly sophisticated research project. Titled
Investigating non-native speakers’ cognitive
and affective reactions toward World Englishes in a business context,
Maurer’s project was very much in line with one of the key themes
of this course – language attitudes and perceptions. Maurer brought
in a superb knowledge of the subject, coupled with an acute interest
in the topic she had been researching. More importantly still, Maurer
showed the students attending the course (i) how to plan, organise
and carry out a pre-study for a sociolinguistic experiment and (ii)
how to construct a sociolinguistic experiment, using an online survey
platform. Her talk was filled with a plethora of useful tips and
examples, and students were encouraged to ask her questions fostering
their understanding of the main practical steps involved in
conducting a sociolinguistic experiment. Maurer’s presentation was
a great success.
3.5 Focus on Practice
The
major innovative benefit offered by this course was its explicit
focus on hands-on exercises rather than on theoretical discussions.
Students thus had an opportunity to practise participant observation,
an important data collection method that allows a researcher to gain
“an insider perspective while preserving a measure of outsider
detachment through long-term involvement in the community of
study” (Schilling 2013: 113). They furthermore practised how to
introduce themselves into the community of study by writing up
introduction speeches and preparing introduction flyers. This
exercise prepared them for a main activity during which students
ventured out into the community. Their task was to go to a designated
café in small groups, immerse, observe the situation for a while,
and then approach a person whom they considered a suitable informant
(i.e. a student from the University of Mannheim), strike up a
conversation and secure an appointment for a sociolinguistic
interview. They learned how to write their own schedule guides and
how to construct questions for a sociolinguistic interview. They
conducted their own sociolinguistic interviews and subsequently
learnt how to extract data from them. Last but not least, they
practised constructing their own short online surveys, using the
limeservice platform4
as an example.
3.6 Credit Point Requirements and Learning Goals
The course described was
an innovative format. Thus, coming up with a set of credible
evaluation requirements and explaining those to students was a main
key to success. As courses of this type had not been taught before at
our department, it was essential to make very clear to students at
the very outset of the course what exactly was expected from them.
That said, the instructor came up with a very detailed list of
explanations for the credit requirements for this course which
included
- recruiting ten participants for the online-survey;
- conducting four sociolinguistic interviews;
- writing an anthropological diary, and
- making a presentation of the anthropological diary at the end of the term.
The first two assignments
gave students an opportunity to gain some experience in
conducting sociolinguistic fieldwork. The main purpose of the last
two assignments was to make students assess their own work by
reflecting on their fieldwork performance. They were encouraged to
think about successful aspects of their sociolinguistic experience.
Moreover, they had to analyse those aspects of their work that went
wrong or needed improvement. It had been made very clear from the
start that negative experiences would not result in a downgraded
assessment of their performance as the process of learning and
accumulating experience was the focus of this course. Students were
thus instructed to provide a critical assessment of the situation in
which they found themselves as researchers. The questions that
students used as a heuristic device for the assessment of the
successfulness of their fieldwork assignment were the following ones:
1. What did I Iearn from this fieldwork assignment?
2. Is
there anything that went wrong during the
fieldwork assignmentt?
3. Is
there anything I could have done at that moment to
prevent it and
how can I do better next time?
Students were also
specifically instructed to document the insights they obtained
from a specific field assignment (e.g. language use, people’s
behaviour, data-collection related stories or fun episodes) and to
comment how this insight might be helpful to them in the future. The
reason why such observations are crucially important is that they
help the analyst to understand the community members and the kind of
language that they speak. This, in turn, allows the researcher to
refine the research question and the ensuing hypotheses. It may also
help him or her understand the sociolinguistic profiles of speakers
living in the community and the kind of data that the researcher
needs to procure. Overall,
these four term assignments aimed at honing students’
sociolinguistic skills (i.e. the know-how of collecting data) and
abilities (i.e. strategic thinking). Last, but perhaps not least, one
of the learning goals of this course was to let students work on
and, if necessary improve, their social skills, which are of direct
value in a job-related context.
As
writing an anthropological diary was an innovative task that students
had never been assigned to before, special care was taken to ensure
that students could exchange their preliminary results in class with
their fellow students and receive the instructor’s feedback. This
procedure reassured students and also gave them a chance to ask all
remaining questions they had with regards to writing an
anthropological diary.
3.7 Instructor’s Positioning and Students’ Role
Throughout
this course the instructor highlighted her role as a senior colleague
interested in the professional and personal growth of her junior
peers rather than a lecturer supervising the class or fieldwork
assignments. She furthermore viewed students as collaborators who
contributed to the ongoing research project, emphasizing their
collaborators’ role by asking them repeated questions related to
their fieldwork assignments, inquiring into their opinions and
sharing her own experiences of doing sociolinguistic fieldwork.
4 Results
4.1 Evaluation of the Course
The effectiveness of this
course was measured with the help of two anonymous surveys tapping
into students’ general attitudes toward the course and the lecturer
(see Kromrey 2001 for a critical discussion of this evaluation
method). The surveys were carried out twice: six weeks after the
course began (mid-term evaluation) and during the penultimate session
(end-term evaluation). The survey employed is an instrument
developed at the University of Mannheim that allows for both
quantitative and qualitative assessment of a teaching product. Since
the summer term 2015, the survey has been an obligatory tool
evaluating instructors’ efficiency in class by the School of
Humanities at the University of Mannheim. The survey includes
questions that inter alia
inquired into:
- the instructor’s methodological skills,
- a general rating for the instructor,
- a general rating for the course, and
- how these ratings compare to all other courses at the University of Mannheim. The relevant results of the mid-term evaluation are presented in Figure 2:
Fig.
2:
Mid-term
evaluations of the course in sociolinguistic fieldwork:
Overall
results
The
quantitative evaluations were substantiated by students’
qualitative statements. Students emphasised the usability of the
hands-on approach upon which the course hinged (“I like the
practical hands-on exercises”, “hands-on exercise very useful”)
and commented on the instructor’s personal involvement (“Thanks
for sharing your passion for sociolinguistics with us! This is really
motivating!”).
The
final evaluation provided a further diagnostic tool of the overall
usability of this course for students’ academic development (Figure
3):
F
Fig. 3: Final evaluations of
the course in sociolinguistic fieldwork:
Overall results
These
quantitative results indicate students’ overall content with the
course, its methodological implementation including the instructor’s
performance. The findings are substantiated by students’ personal
comments (“Different course format (i.e. fieldwork, focus on
practical activities) = good! Very friendly and motivated teacher”,
“hands-on exercises were very helpful – learned a lot for other
courses. Thank you!”). Many students furthermore commented on the
helpfulness of writing an anthropological diary as a global activity
for this course (“diary was a good idea”, “I really like the
idea of an in-term diary”).
4.2 Students’ Self-Reflections on their overall Progress in the Course
In
this course, students were encouraged to reflect on their progress in
conducting sociolinguistic fieldwork, to document that progress
in their diaries and to present the results of this process in a
presentation at the end of the term. The learning goals of these
activities were twofold:
They
encouraged students’ active engagement with the main course
activities through the critical analysis of their sociolinguistic
labours.
The
tasks students were asked to perform fostered the development of
their metalinguistic skills and cognitive thinking as students had to
reflect upon the sociolinguistic interviews that they conducted,
including a general analysis of the informants’ speech. More
specifically, they were instructed to pay close attention to the
linguistic features that the informants used in their speech,
including the innovative quotatives be like,
e.g. And I am like, ‘What are you doing
here?’.
These
tasks yielded some highly interesting qualitative data offering
insights into what students thought they learnt from the course,
thereby highlighting the main ingredients of doing sociolinguistic
work that were meaningful
to them. In what follows, the main findings stemming from the
descriptive analysis of this data are reported.
To
begin with, some students found it useful to create mind maps
depicting the social networks in which they were involved and to
position themselves within those networks. These reflexions
apparently provided them with a better sense of the sociolinguistic
structures underpinning their everyday lives and their own place
within those structures:
Fig.
4:
Social
networks. Social networks (Tamara Ivanova, Anthropological
Diary,
Diary Entry 01; 20.02.2015)
Many
students commented on the importance of the task involving the
practice of finding contacts in the community. They felt that the
task spurred them to cross their “comfort zone”, contributing to
their skills of being an “effective communicator”. Some
students also reported that this task taught them “self-confidence”.
This task therefore seems to be particularly beneficial for
introverted students, helping them to overcome their inner
barriers and, as a result, the fear of being rejected. This task also
seemed to have taught them spontaneity and personal as well as
intellectual flexibility.
One of the fieldwork
tasks encouraged students to practice ing their peers spontaneously
in the street or in public places in order to secure a
sociolinguistic interview. One student came up with a set of
rules, a sociolinguistic know-how for making contacts on site, which
is listed here:
- Always approach a potential participant with a smile: it will bring you far;
- Stay patient, confident and explain your request several times, if necessary;
- Approach the group slowly, do not interrupt if people talk, smile and listen carefully for a while. On noticing their first response, smile, introduce yourself and explain succinctly but clearly why you have come over;
- Your goal is to communicate that yours is an important project making a contribution to the academic community and the outside world;
- It is furthermore important to communicate that the talk is most likely to become an enjoyable experience. In other words, while contributing to the ongoing sociolinguistic research, the informant will also have a meaningful personal experience;
- Make your potential informant feel respected and appreciated and, perhaps even more importantly, special and wanted;
- It is important to not feel dejected once you get a rejection. Ask a person, if they know someone who might be helpful. Stay open and positive at all times. Do not lose your nerves!
- Change the place of recruitment if necessary.
(Sebastian
Hoffmann, Anthropological Diary, Diary Entry 06; 23.03.2015)
Some students mastered
the task of participant observation and became quite adept at
spotting the ‘right’ people in the community by, for instance
singling out group leaders, i.e. people who are likely to provide the
researcher with further contacts. The course members came to the
conclusion that this is how a group leader can be determined: you
approach a group of people and address them with a request for an
interview. The person with an immediate reaction is most likely the
person who might assist the researcher in securing further
informants. It appears that group leaders are the people who are used
to being in charge of the situation and feeling a certain amount of
responsibility not just for their immediate peers but also for
the larger world.
Many students realized by
and by what exactly makes a sociolinguistic interview a real success.
Some of the students’ observations are presented below:
- Making a joke makes an informant become more relaxed, thereby minimising the observer’s paradox, i.e. a phenomenon of informants’ observing their own speech;
- The observer’s paradox weakens over time of the interview; the longer the interview, the weaker the observer’s paradox is;
- Eliciting stories tapping into informant’s personal experiences, both happy and sad, almost eliminates or at least significantly reduces the observer’s paradox.
Some students also
reported that they learnt to be more cognizant of their own body
language and their own speech styles as they mastered the task of
securing informants for a sociolinguistic project. One cohort of
students reported that they had become more attuned to the task of
conducting sociolinguistic interviews, having learnt to overcome
their exuberant and chatty nature, and actually put informants first,
paying close attention to their verbal needs and signals. Others
learnt to notice the differences in speech registers produced by
different questions. Their observation was that, surprisingly, the
most formal responses were elicited by the question inquiring into
parents’ influence. Many students learnt to pay close attention to
the use of quotative markers, including the use of quotative be
like, in their informants’ speech.
Approximately
one third of the population group (N: 4) also figured out their own
ways of giving back to the community (Schilling 2013: 268), the
principle that requires that the researcher should, in some
ways, become involved with the community he or she studies,
contributing to its well-being (also Labov 1982). Bearing this in
mind, many students followed the principle of
mutual assistance by offering their peers
participation in future studies or university related projects. Some
students offered recordings of the interview as some participants
were quite willing to obtain samples of their own speech. Some simply
offered sweets and coffee, a strategy that seemed to work remarkably
well.
Quite a few
students found the data extraction
exercise particularly useful as it helped them understand how
spontaneous language data can be organised in a sustainable manner.
The following excerpt from the anthropological diary briefly
illustrates this point:
Example:
The
excel sheet was really efficient and I have saved the one we used in
seminar so that I have a template for designing something similar
should I need it. I always think of numbers and money when it comes
to excel but it turns out it is great for linguistics too! (Mark
Müller, Anthropological Diary, Diary Entry 12, 01.05.2015)
All the students
participating in this course learnt about the importance of
obtaining an informed consent from their informants. Procuring
an informed consent from people who supply researchers with
invaluable data is important as it ensures the informants’
anonymity, instructs them about the project and grants them access to
the researcher after the interview. Furthermore, students
mastered the organisation of something as
complex as a sociolinguistic interview, having learnt how to
write a schedule guide for an interview, how to choose a place and
how to prepare an informed consent.
5 Discussion and Conclusion
A
teaching concept that illustrates how research-oriented teaching can
be conducted in the field of sociolinguistics at the university
level has been presented here. In the following, the methodological
strategies that ensure a successful implementation of such a concept
in class will be discussed.
First
and foremost, the main ingredient of a successful implementation is a
clear teaching concept, including teaching goals. The students
participating in this course knew right from the very start that they
were going to learn how to collect survey data and work with
spontaneous speech. They also knew that the classroom discussion
of the major data collection techniques was to be grounded in the
analysis of the innovative linguistic feature – in this case,
quotative be like. The
tangible teaching goals thus envisaged a clear direction in which
students and the instructor were moving as well as the final
destination.
Secondly,
it was made explicit at the very beginning of the course that
students were to contribute to a genuine sociolinguistic project by
securing spontaneous speech and survey data. It could be found that
the idea of becoming part of genuine academic research was inspiring
to numerous students. Many students seemed to be highly motivated by
the idea that they were contributing to an ongoing sociolinguistic
research in a meaningful way. Highlighting the importance and
value that a researcher attaches to his or her project thus seems to
be an important factor that stimulates the students’ degree of
involvement with the course and, ultimately, with the project. One of
the reasons this course turned out to be a success was that many
students were convinced that they were involved in doing something
meaningful and of value.
Another
reason why this course was very well received by students was that
they were the right target audience. Having acquired some knowledge
of linguistics, including sociolinguistics, students were
looking for ways that would show them how to
do sociolinguistics so that they could implement this new knowledge
while working on their own projects. This course seems to have come
at the right time. That said, students who are just beginning their
study of linguistics would most probably have been less suited for
this course.
While
participating in this course, students were not only accumulating
further knowledge; they were learning some practical skills as well.
These skills are of two types: technical (they learnt how to extract
and code data, and how to construct an online survey) and social
(they honed their interactive skills as a result of this course). The
strong emphasis on practical application was, indeed, very appealing
to many participants.
Overall,
this teaching experiment has demonstrated that research-oriented
teaching of English sociolinguistics can be conducted quite
successfully at the university level provided that the basic
methodological prerequisites as specified above are taken into
account. More importantly still, a research-oriented teaching concept
seems to work out particularly well if instructors not only teach but
also try to learn from their students.
References
Buchstaller, Isabelle (2014).
Quotatives. New Trends and Sociolinguistic Implications
[Language in Society]. Malden [etc.]: Wiley Blackwell.
Campbell-Kibler, Kathrin (2005).
Listener perceptions of sociolinguistic variables: The case of
(ING). Unpublished PhD dissertation. Stanford, California:
Stanford University.
Campbell-Kibler, Kathrin (2006). I’ll
be the judge of that: Diversity in social perceptions of (ING). In:
Language in Society 37: 637-659.
Fridland, Valerie, Kathrin Bartlett &
Roger Kreuz (2005). Making sense of variation: Pleasantness and
education ratings of Southern vowel variants. In: American Speech
80: 366-387.
Jiang, Lerong & Ruwei Luo (2011).
Research-oriented teaching mode and the reform in education of
marxism principles in modern information environment. In: S. Lin and
X. Huang (eds.) CSEE 2011 Part IV, CCIS 217: 133-137.
Kromrey, Helmut (2001).
Studierendenbefragungen als Evaluation der Lehre?. In: Engel, Uwe
(ed.) Hochschulranking. Zur Qualitätsbewertung von Studium und
Lehre. Frankfurt am Main / New York: Campus.
Labov, William (1966). The Social
Stratification of English in New York City. Washington,
D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Labov, William (1982). Objectivity and
commitment in linguistic science: The case of the black English trial
in Ann Harbour. In: Language in Society 11: 165-202.
Labov, William (2001). Principles
of Linguistic Change. Volume 2: Social Factors. Oxford,
U.K.: Blackwell.
Labov, William, Sharon Ash, Maya
Ravindranath, Tracey Weldon, Maciej Baranowski & Naomy Nagy
(2011). Properties of the Sociolingistic Monitor. In: Journal of
Sociolinguistics 15(4): 431-463.
Langemeyer, Ines & Ines
Rohrdantz-Herrmann (2014). Forschungsorientiertes Lehren – eine
Bestandsaufnahme am KIT. A+B Forschungsberichte Nr. 13.
Schilling, Natalie (2013).
Sociolinguistic Fieldwork. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Tagliamonte, Sali A. (2006). Analysing
Sociolinguistic Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1 See, for instance, http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/research/youngresearchers/research
_oriented_teaching/welcome_research/; https://www.en.uni-muenchen.de/stu
dents/degree/research_orient_teaching/index.html; 23-09-2016
2 http://www.rd.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/ifsc/teaching/index.html.en;
23-09-2016
3 http://individual.utoronto.ca/tagliamonte/teaching.html;
01-06-2015
4 See
https://www.limeservice.com/de/; 22-05-2015
