ATS2676: Sociolinguistics

Scrapbook - 20%
Mid semester test - 25%
Mini research project and group presentation - 10%
Major essay - 45%

Until this year, this used to be a second AND third year unit. THIS IS NO LONGER THE CASE! So if you need to round out your majors and whatnot and you are NOT a first year, make sure that you have the right amount of third year units to get a linguistics major. I believe under the new system it's one of those 'cornerstone' units, but don't hold me 100% to it.

Okay now to the actual unit itself. This was the first year that Melanie took this unit, it was previously taken by Julie Bradshaw. So things might change next semester. I liked the content. It was basically a broad overview of sociolinguistics in general. The first half of the semester looked at more technical stuff, and then the second half of the semester focused on the applied side of sociolinguistics, so stuff like language policy and planning, research, multilingualism, etc. The topics and stuff were set out in a way that made sense and Melanie was mostly good at explaining stuff but sometimes it felt like she was rushing through the content because there was a lot of it.

The mid semester test is taken in class, and it goes for an hour. It's all the stuff from the first half of semester, and it's open book. But I struggled to finish it on time because there was lots of writing involved -- lots of short answer questions and a handful of longer ones.

The scrapbook was weird. Kind of fun as far as assessments go, but weird. You had to find 5 popular media articles (newsapers, magazines, and so on) that talked about sociolinguistic stuff and write a short commentary on it, comparing it to how accurate it is to actual sociolinguistic research. Then you had to chose one of the articles and write a 'letter to the editor' in reply to it. I didn't find it too bad and there was lots of help given with regards to how to do it, BUT the word count drove me crazy because each 'commentary' is only 100 (yes, 100!) words.

Group project was time consuming but there was lots of time set aside to do it in class at least. You had to make a survey about language use, collect data and come up with something interesting to present in week 12 about it, but you only have 3 minutes to present in so time management is an issue there. It's also a bit hard to coordinate if you have a big group but for some reason it was insisted upon that our groups were 5 to 8 people.

The essay is 2000 words and you have all semester to work on it. You can pick a topic out of a pre-made list, or you can make your own topic to suit your own interests, provided you ask permission first. To provide context, I made up my own topic and went with: "Malaysia has recently reversed its policy on teaching Mathematics and Science at school in English instead of Malay. Explain the decision and assess its impact."
The essay has a lot of flexibility so you can do what you want, but it's a pretty stock standard linguistics essay.

Also, no exam, yay! It's a good enough unit as far as linguistics goes and I generally liked it.

Melanie Burns

N/A, there is no exam.

4 out of 5

Yes, because you can also do this unit by distance ed.

The Guidebook to Sociolinguistics by Allan Bell. No, you don't need it because you can get it for free online. You might want it for the mid-sem because it's open book, but to be honest it's not needed, just bring your own notes!

One 2 hour seminar per week.

2014 semester 1

79 (grrrrrr just one more mark!!)