Abstract 5B

Sunday, July 9 3:20pm

De-centering English with ‘language of the day’ in undergraduate linguistics

Ivy Hauser ivy.hauser@uta.edu
Emily Graham emily.grahamwarren@mavs.uta.edu
Erica Dagar erica.dagar@mavs.uta.edu

University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, USA

Undergraduate linguistics courses often prioritize data from prestige varieties of English. Many introductory linguistics textbooks rely on English sentences for teaching syntax and mostly introduce students to English sounds when teaching phonetics. This presentation introduces a method for de-centering English by exposing students to many languages in ‘language of the day’ (LotD) activities. We will cover our implementation of LotD across two undergraduate phonology courses, student and instructor reception, and potential adaptation across subfields and course types.

LotD introduces a language in a short module (10-20 mins) at the beginning of every class. This typically consists of basic demographic information, audio/video of language use, and phonological inventories. We prioritized indigenous and minoritized languages as LotD, with focus on local languages. We also paired LotD with skills-based grading (Zuraw et al., 2019), providing students with opportunities to practice skills for each language. For example, students often transcribed words from LotD to gain points towards their mastery of the transcription skill. While our implementation focused on phonetics and phonology, the format could be adapted to other areas. If selected for a talk, we will include a mini LotD module as an interactive demonstration.  

Including a greater variety of languages in class has been positive for students and instructors. Students had better performance on course skills (i.e. phonetic transcription) relative to prior versions of the same course without LotD. Diversity of languages chosen by students for their final project has also increased. In open-ended surveys, 40% of responding students volunteered LotD as “something that helped my learning” and 20% named LotD as “the best thing about the course”. For instructors, LotD provided a low-stakes way for teaching assistants to gain experience. It also presented self-reflection opportunities, as we were often learning more about the featured languages and communities ourselves when preparing materials.  

Reference

Zuraw, K., Aly, A. M., Lin, I., & Royer, A. J. (2019). Gotta catch’em all: Skills grading in undergraduate linguistics. Language, 95(4), e406-e427.