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The Language Detective: A Course for Young Linguists
Author(s) -
Clark Billy,
Trousdale Graeme
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
language and linguistics compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.619
H-Index - 44
ISSN - 1749-818X
DOI - 10.1002/lnc3.344
Subject(s) - course (navigation) , subject (documents) , linguistics , psychology , mathematics education , pedagogy , computer science , library science , philosophy , engineering , aerospace engineering
This article reports on a residential course, held at the Villiers Park Educational Trust centre in Foxton, Cambridgeshire, which introduces linguistics to students who are in their final two years of school education. Both students and tutors find the course challenging and fun. Students find the experience of developing their own linguistic investigations hugely rewarding. This is clearly indicated in feedback questionnaires and informal discussion at the end of the course. Feedback regularly shows over 95% of responses in the most positive (‘excellent’) category. Tutors find out more about their subject and about the interests and abilities of students at this level. This is, of course, interesting to any teacher for its own sake. We also have a particular interest in developing activities which make connections between linguistics and language study at school and in higher education.