I practice several pedagogical principles, whether it be in the linguistics or composition classroom. First, I engage students in learning tasks that not only foster the development of content knowledge but also engage them in the application of that knowledge to real-world data collection and analysis. In doing so, I have students actively research language use and language variation. My second principle is to foster dialect and language diversity awareness and appreciation by having students interact with their local communities, collect data on local language and cultural practices, and then analyze the data to find patterns. A third principal is that I strive to create an exciting collaborative learning environment for my students by providing them with active learning experiences focused on their individual interests.
The Linguistics Classroom
As a teacher in the Linguistics classroom, I implement all three of my pedagogical practices by having students focus on projects centered on local language in the surrounding community to engage them strongly as active researchers of (socio-) linguistic variation. I provide students with one of three types of activities in the courses I teach. In the first type, I have students conduct either dialect surveys or a rapid anonymous survey to obtain their own real-world data and then analyze patterns of linguistic variation. These activities focus on data collection opportunities that not only allow students to learn about local patterns of variation occurring “in their own back yard” but also to focus on the quantitative analysis of that data, so that students obtain a first-hand understanding of the nuanced complexities of social and regional dialect variation. For instance, in my “Sociolinguistics” at Rice, I had students collect data on local variables such as the might could construction and the merger of the vowels in “cot” and “caught,” so that they gain first hand experience with typical variables in Houstonian speech.
A second type of activity provides students with access to a corpus of raw speech data, and they complete an analysis of patterns found in that data. For example, in my undergraduate “Language, Race, and Ethnicity” class at OSU, students transcribed and analyzed clips from the Oprah Winfrey show to learn about code-switching in AAVE and gain firsthand experience analyzing the phonetic and discourse pragmatic features of AAVE that Oprah uses on her show while code-switching. This activity also encourages students to obtain a deeper understanding of racial dialect diversity. Many of OSU’s undergraduates come from suburban Columbus areas that are less racially diverse; they may not have much prior “real world” experience with AAVE use.
A third type of activity has the students interview native speakers of languages other than English in order to analyze various aspects of phonetics. For instance, in my graduate “Introduction to Linguistics” course at NIU, I strove to encourage students are interested in languages besides English to pursue language and variation topics in those languages. This led to me mentoring students to explore research on variation in stop articulation in Spanish; variation in consonant aspiration in Hindi (a topic I have worked on myself previously); variation in consonant palatalization in Lithuanian (also a topic I have worked on); and vowel variation in Spanish, Greek, and Portuguese.
The activities I use foster a deeper appreciation for dialect diversity and heighten students’ appreciation of dialect awareness, as well as stimulating a deeper appreciation of the diversity of phonetic gestures as they are found in languages other than English. This is evident in evaluations I have received from students, where they have expressed their joy and excitement at learning about these topics in my classes. Many colleagues at the various schools I have taught at have also heard me discuss the experiences I have had with teaching about dialect awareness and diversity at conferences and in discussion groups, and when doing so, they have expressed interest in how these activities create dialect awareness and appreciation. Given the interest in these activities, and my strong belief that undergraduate teaching is an important endeavor because of its potential to foster dialect awareness and appreciation, I, along with two of my fellow graduate students at OSU who also use similar activities, choose to write about them several years ago in an American Speech article (Issue 84.2).
As a teacher and researcher, I also attempt to increase dialect awareness and appreciation among the general population. I have taken several approaches to increasing dialect awareness over the years. One has been to write on the topic of patterns of social and dialect awareness in Language Files, the introductory textbook written and edited by OSU graduate students and faculty and used by many linguistics programs around the world. In the 10th edition, I ghostwrote a significant revision to the regional and social dialects chapter (Chapter 10), with the specific aim of making regional and social dialect variation research more accessible to an undergraduate audience. My chapter also fosters appreciation of social dialect diversity via contributions covering Lumbee and Chicano English, two dialects that had not been included previously. In attempt to increase dialect awareness and appreciation among the general public I appeared on a Columbus local news segment dedicated to dialect variation trends across Ohio. More recently, I also discussed my ongoing research on dialect diversity in Chicago through interviews featured in articles published in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, and Belt Magazine in 2015 and 2016. In 2016, I was also interviewed about my work by Chicago radio legend Garry Meier on the Garry Meier Show Podcast. These interviews fit with my goal to expand the classroom environment beyond the doors of the university classroom.
The Composition Classroom
As a teacher in the Composition classroom, I simultaneously implement all three pedagogical practices in the papers and research projects whenever possible. For example, I have students write research papers on topics of personal interest, and I strive to help them develop college-level research skills by teaching them to find and use academic sources. In Composition I, my students write research-based persuasive papers on language-oriented topics they find interesting, such as whether English should be the official language of the United States or whether African American Vernacular English (AAVE) should be used in the classroom for instructional purposes.
In Composition II, I have students develop an entire research project around topics in their major fields of interest, or that allow them to pursue takes on thematic topics that draw on relevant research conducted in their own major. I teach students to develop a research project from start to finish that begins with critical articles summaries and a research proposal for a topic of their choice, culminating in a 10-source, 10-page research paper with a presentation. Throughout the process, I have students collaborate and interact with content through class discussions, collaborative journaling via Blackboard, and extensive peer review of each other’s work at various stages during the drafting process. I also provide students one-on-one mentoring by holding writing individual conferences with them, usually at least twice a semester.
Beyond these activities, I also strive to make my teaching more engaging to the students by discussing my ongoing research in Linguistics. For example, the work I am conducting collaboratively with linguist Richard Cameron of University of Illinois at Chicago documents how the “Chicago accent” of U.S. English has changed from the mid-1800s to today, My students in Illinois seemed to really enjoy the focus on local dialect my work has. In this way, I try to effectively model how academic research works in “real life.” I also attempt to combine elements of my training in Linguistics and Composition by having students write papers in my linguistically thematic Composition II courses where they investigate topics of their own personal interest in the research areas of “Language and Gender” and “Language and Race.” Students enjoy these projects greatly, as they explore aspects of the analysis of language use that they find both interesting and exciting. They also enjoy comparing and contrasting this material with research I discuss via lectures in class.
David Durian's Linguistics Web Site 