Problem sets

If you are unable to attend class, homework may be delivered to the Teaching Fellow Office — 621 Commonwealth Avenue, room B08 — before class on the date it is due.  Alternatively, you may arrange to have another student turn in the assignment for you in class.  You are advised not to miss any homework assignments unnecessarily (so that you plan ahead for an emergency or extraordinary circumstance: on such an occasion, you can take advantage of the fact that the two lowest scores will be dropped.) 

Students are encouraged to work together on homework assignments; however, each student is required to write up the solutions independently. If you have worked with others on a particular assignment, please state that you have and list their names at the top of the first page.

Explanation of journal assignments

The idea of the journal is to encourage students to be aware of the use of language in daily life.

Acceptable file formats:  plain text, Word document, pdf.

Each journal entry is limited to one page. Your journal entry might include any of the following:

Observations or comments related to some live occurrence, in English or another language (from conversation, television, radio, movies, classes, etc.), that relates to the concepts that have been covered in the class to date.

These may relate to instances of: linguistic usage (e.g., pronunciation, word or sentence structure, differences between languages and dialects, mixing or switching between languages or dialects, child language, language disorders, etc.); or attitudes or beliefs about language (e.g., regarding rules of prescriptive grammar, or stereotypes about the qualities of particular languages, or the origins or histories of particular languages, or the superiority of one dialect or langague over all others, or the way language influences thought, etc.).

Reaction to an article or online publication concerning language and linguistics.

Comment that results from reflection about class materials and introspection related to the use of language.

IMPORTANT:  You should relate all observations explicitly either to our class discussion or to specific parts of the textbook, recommended readings, or if you like, to other sources, print or otherwise, that you were able to find concerning the issue you are discussing.  The sources you mention should be identified explicitly and completely!    Example:  As Professors Mary Jones and James Smith wrote in their 2006 article, “Fascinating things about linguistics,” Journal of whatever, Vol. 2, pp. 123-145…

Journal entries (with date included) should be brief, but clear and concise.  Each will be evaluated based on the thoughtfulness of the entry, the clarity with which it is written, the initiative that has been taken in pursuing a line of thought (for example, you are encouraged to do a bit of research to follow up on your observation), and the extent to which it is explicitly connected to class lectures or readings. 

By the end of the semester, you will have written 6 entries.   Extra credit will be awarded for a good variety of types of observations. 

Where might you find inspiration?  The Web has lots of interesting materials.  There are also many sites online that contain various types of reflections on language.  See, for example, http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/.   You’ll find a list of language-related blogs on that page, as well as on this one (which has other interesting links, as well): http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/.

For research links, go to this page: http://ling.bu.edu/resources/research.

Submitting journal entries

1. Link your BU account to the CAS Course Share file server by filling out this form [no later than January 25]:  http://www.bu.edu/computing/accounts/ad/cas
    
   
2. Follow these instructions http://www.bu.edu/geddes/lab/course/pdf/courseshare.pdf to connect to the RS_COURSES volume, where you will see the folder entitled “LX250 A1 - Intro to Linguistics [Neidle]”, which contains a folder with your name.  Please deposit a test file into your folder no later than February 1.
    
3. Each journal assignment should be uploaded, by the due date, to that same folder.  Any electronic entries submitted after the due date will not be counted.  Please anticipate that there may be circumstances that make it difficult to access the server.  It is advised that you submit the journal entry a day in advance to avoid any such last-minute difficulties.
    
4. Please label each assignment as follows:  “yourlastname-journalnumber”.  So, if your last name is Murphy, your first journal entry would have as its filename “Murphy-1” and your second entry would be “Murphy-2,” and so on.
    
5. You should also submit your journal entries in hard copy on the dates indicated on the syllabus.

The top 5 journal entries each week will be posted here.