Topics covered include: approaches to the study of language in its social context; linguistic diversity and societal multilingualism; language planning and policy (with special focus on Singapore); the role of language in social stereotypes and identity; social norms and language choice; speech communities and social networks; the effect of social factors on language variation; and the linguistic consequences of language contact, with particular emphasis on contact languages (pidgins and creoles) and codeswitching.
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Year Taken: AY 19/20, Sem 1
2 in-class quizzes – 15% for first quiz, 30% for the second quiz Individual
Online assignment – 20% Individual
Final project – 25% Group
Class participation- 15% Individual
One lecture + one tutorial per weekAnother core lms mod. The lecturer will set out a textbook (What is Sociolinguistics by Gerard van Herk) which is pretty useful. Read the assigned chapters before class so that you won’t feel lost when the prof conducts his lecture. Also make notes, they will come in handy when you revise for the quizzes. The quizzes are in MCQ format.
For my time, the online assignment required the students to self-study a topic (which will be examined in the final paper) and later on, answer a case study using the concepts learned in said topic. Imo the content is not that hard to understand and the case study is not that hard to do, but it can get tricky because there are many ways to answer the case study.
As for the final group project, we were in groups (of 6? 7? Idk can’t remember) and had to design a blog with sociolinguistics-related content meant to target people who are interested in the field but have 0 knowledge about it. There is no need to start a new web design from scratch (as the blog will be hosted by NTU), but keep in mind that the prof has included aesthetics of the website as part of the grading criteria. Try to not make it too colourful but not too dull as well. You do not need to write everything about the field, but only a section of it.
This review was reposted with the kind permission of Pressing Realities. Originally published at https://pressingrealities.wordpress.com/2020/05/01/ay19-20-y1s1/
June 29, 2021 -
Year Taken: AY 17/18, Sem 1
Grade: A-The professor is interesting. The content is relatively easy to absorb too. However, there were too many components for the coursework. Aim to score for the quizzes even though a quiz would only be around 15%.
15% Quiz
15% Quiz
25% Take-Home Essay
15% Tutorial Participation
30% Poster ProjectThe quizzes were very straight forward. As long as you know the textbook well, you would score. The take-home essay was my very first essay in university. I did not do well for this as I was still using secondary school PEEL format to tackle the 1,500 words essay. This resulted in my essay being very shallow in depth. The essay questions were mainly expository and argumentative, and you just had to pick one. If you want to do well, all I could say is read a lot of journal articles and generate creative ideas for your essay.
The poster project consisted of 7 members per group (this is very typical of Prof.Ivan, who also allocated many members to a group for his other modules too!). This is also the time to see who are the freeloaders and who are the tankers for projects. Mark out the freeloaders and avoid them for projects in future next time. At the end of the semester, our posters were hung up along the HSS office and there were other professors looking at our posters. Overall, it was a fun module.
This review was reposted with the kind permission of aLMSstudent. Originally published at https://ntulmsmods.wordpress.com/2018/07/06/ntu-lms-2017-2018-semester-1/
June 27, 2021 -
As of 2021, this mod was taught by Prof Ivan Panovic. He is a very detailed prof who explains the concepts in sociolinguistics clearly and conducts kahoot tests every few weeks to test our knowledge. The workload is not too bad, it had 2 quizzes and a group assignment when I completed it in Y1.
May 27, 2021
