Victoria Muehleisen
(Associate Professor, Ph.D.)
Seminar on Communication:
Seminar on Applied Linguistics
(School of International Liberal Studies)
Office: Waseda Campus Bldg #11
http://www.f.waseda.jp/vicky/classes/advanced/
Learning from various language-learning backgrounds
The main topic of this seminar is to apply linguistic theory and knowledge into actual situations, but what exactly do the students study in the seminar, and what is unique about it?
"Through reading, discussion and group presentations, we mainly study how people learn and teach languages" says Vicky Muehleisen, Associate Professor, who leads this seminar with 17 students. "What makes this seminar unique is probably the students' language-learning experiences. There are two students from China, two from Korea, and one Chinese student who grew up in Japan, and most of the Japanese students have experience in living or studying in other countries such as Spain, U.S. and Canada. Having learned more than two languages themselves, everyone is eager to examine how people are able to learn languages and everybody enjoys discovering effective ways of teaching language to others."
Seri Sun (Korean)Seri Sun, a senior student from Korea, shows her excitement about studying 'code-switching'.
"Code-switching is a branch of linguistics indicating a situation when a person uses more than one language in a conversation. Multilingual people, like myself and my friends in this seminar, often use code-switching. For example, I use English for academic topics, Japanese for casual topics with my friends, and Korean for other daily topics. It is amazing to study this topic (linguistics) while having classmates who have different language-learning backgrounds."
Knowing the interpretation behind the translation
On day of the interview, the class was working in groups to translate a short news article called "'Beer belly' linked to Alzheimer's disease" from the BBC web site. Each group translated an introduction of the article into Japanese, Korean and Chinese, and presented the translations on a whiteboard (photo). After the students explained their translations and compared them, they discussed how they selected the words and phrases they used. One interesting thing they found was that while it was easy to translate the slang phrase "beer belly" into similar phrases in Japanese and Chinese, there was no close equivalent in Korean. The focus of the lesson and the enjoyment is in understanding the reasons behind the different translations and interpretations of the original.
Japanese translation
Korean translation
About the Seminar
This seminar explores ways in which linguistic theory and knowledge can be applied to actual situations, for example, to teaching a second language or to translation. All students in the seminar speak two languages, English and Japanese, and have learned or studied other languages too. Most students have also had some experience teaching a language to someone else. In the seminar, the students look for answers to the questions raised by their own experiences:
- What is the best age to start learning a second language?
- What is the best method for teaching a foreign language?
- How should we translate yoroshiku onegaishimasu into English or Chinese?
Of course, we know that there is no single correct answer, but the fun is in searching for the answers.
Language is something you have been using every day for most of your life, but when you start thinking about it - when you try to teach your native language to someone else, for example - you will probably find that you have no idea how language actually works. The study of linguistics can help you to find out!
Victoria Muehleisen (Associate Professor, Ph.D.)
Many students, including myself, in this class want to become a language teacher, and some of them are already teaching English or Japanese to junior high or high school students, or even to Waseda University students. Join us and explore your opportunities in learning and teaching languages!
Shinichiro Hieida, a senior
- Harley, Heidi. 2006. English Words: A Linguistic Introduction. Blackwell.
- Yamaguchi, Toshiko. 2007. Japanese Linguistics: An Introduction. London: Continuum.
- Lightbown, Patsy and Spada, Nina. 2006. How Languages are Learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harley's book and Yamaguchi's book are great introductions to the basic ideas of linguistics, the former using mainly English examples and the latter using mainly Japanese examples. You can read the books separately or together. The other book in the recommended list (Lightbown and Spada) is an easy-to-understand introduction to the study of language acquisition, written for people who are planning to be language teachers.
Vicky outside the classroom
Yang Limin (Chinese)"Vicky is really a nice teacher! She invited the whole class to her house and had a wonderful party the other day." Yang Limin, a senior from China, says with a big smile.
A party at Vicky's place sounds exciting especially when she lives with four cats! "The class is also planning to take an overnight trip to Nikko this summer. We learn languages through communicating with different people and exploring new environments" Everyone in Vicky's seminar seems to be highly communicative and motivated to discover the mysteries behind linguistics by learning from others inside and outside the classroom.