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The final slew of pictures from my Melbourne trip (mostly really cool architecture and scenery) are up at Cass Down Under.
I have my linguistics class in an hour and a half or so. I HATE this class. But that statement needs to be qualified somewhat. Allow me to elaborate:
I enjoy the lectures, for the most part. Especially if they're delivered by the course convenor, Dr. David Butt (and not even because of the name! Really!) He is extremely enthusiastic and pretty good at getting general, broad concepts across in an interesting way. Little details seem to fall by the wayside, however, which can be confusing and frustrating for a LINGUISTICS COURSE that is purporting to be "introductory". And his co-lecturers aren't as good or fun as he is.
I enjoy the readings, for the most part. They're gleaned from a wide variety of sources and do a good job of making some of the muddy concepts that are introduced in the lectures come across more plainly. Emphasis on SOME OF, because there are still a lot of things that I DO NOT GET, at least not completely.
I HATE the way the course is structured. This can be condensed into several smaller components of things that I hate:
- I hate that the course outline long-winded, obviously TRYING to spell things out to avoid ambiguity and confusion, but it is doing such a terrible job that it actually CREATES total confusion. We're consistently told that we should have done readings that were NOT on the reading list, but were instead among a general list of readings that give no indication as to what should be read when (and is often WILDLY out of chronological order.)
- I hate the tutorial for this class. This is right after the lecture, and is meant to basically be a focus group to work in more detail on stuff we talked about in the lecture. Our tutor has NO IDEA what he's doing. I thought this might be a language barrier at first, as his first language isn't English. That's definitely part of it - he often won't understand the questions we're asking him, or we'll have to repeat a piece of information in several different ways before it comes across. The bigger problem, though, is that he is never given the right resources for the tutorial - we basically spend the whole hour trying to figure out what we are supposed to be doing that week.
- I hate the WORK we're supposed to do for the tutorials for this class. This is supposed to be self-study, but the wording of what we're supposed to do and how exactly we're supposed to link it into the course work is unclear. And thanks to the ambiguities expressed above, I basically feel that whatever I'm doing is pointless, because I have NO IDEA what the outcome is supposed to be, and we will usually barely touch on it in the tutorial.
- I hate the "fieldwork tasks" that we're supposed to do as a major component of the grade for this class. We're supposed to somehow collect language samples (without noting exact wording - WTF?? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO WORK WITH?!) and draw social networks and make diagrams of machines that we interact with and all sorts of things that generally make me feel like a tool. Then we're supposed to link it in with the course work we've been doing - which is, after the *shudder* tutorial, as clear as mud.
In conclusion, I hate my linguistics class. I'm trying to decide whether I'll skip this week's or next week's tutorial, I can get away with missing one more without them getting on my case. I tend to feel SIGNIFICANTLY more confident about this class when I DON'T go to the tutorials.
I have my linguistics class in an hour and a half or so. I HATE this class. But that statement needs to be qualified somewhat. Allow me to elaborate:
I enjoy the lectures, for the most part. Especially if they're delivered by the course convenor, Dr. David Butt (and not even because of the name! Really!) He is extremely enthusiastic and pretty good at getting general, broad concepts across in an interesting way. Little details seem to fall by the wayside, however, which can be confusing and frustrating for a LINGUISTICS COURSE that is purporting to be "introductory". And his co-lecturers aren't as good or fun as he is.
I enjoy the readings, for the most part. They're gleaned from a wide variety of sources and do a good job of making some of the muddy concepts that are introduced in the lectures come across more plainly. Emphasis on SOME OF, because there are still a lot of things that I DO NOT GET, at least not completely.
I HATE the way the course is structured. This can be condensed into several smaller components of things that I hate:
- I hate that the course outline long-winded, obviously TRYING to spell things out to avoid ambiguity and confusion, but it is doing such a terrible job that it actually CREATES total confusion. We're consistently told that we should have done readings that were NOT on the reading list, but were instead among a general list of readings that give no indication as to what should be read when (and is often WILDLY out of chronological order.)
- I hate the tutorial for this class. This is right after the lecture, and is meant to basically be a focus group to work in more detail on stuff we talked about in the lecture. Our tutor has NO IDEA what he's doing. I thought this might be a language barrier at first, as his first language isn't English. That's definitely part of it - he often won't understand the questions we're asking him, or we'll have to repeat a piece of information in several different ways before it comes across. The bigger problem, though, is that he is never given the right resources for the tutorial - we basically spend the whole hour trying to figure out what we are supposed to be doing that week.
- I hate the WORK we're supposed to do for the tutorials for this class. This is supposed to be self-study, but the wording of what we're supposed to do and how exactly we're supposed to link it into the course work is unclear. And thanks to the ambiguities expressed above, I basically feel that whatever I'm doing is pointless, because I have NO IDEA what the outcome is supposed to be, and we will usually barely touch on it in the tutorial.
- I hate the "fieldwork tasks" that we're supposed to do as a major component of the grade for this class. We're supposed to somehow collect language samples (without noting exact wording - WTF?? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO WORK WITH?!) and draw social networks and make diagrams of machines that we interact with and all sorts of things that generally make me feel like a tool. Then we're supposed to link it in with the course work we've been doing - which is, after the *shudder* tutorial, as clear as mud.
In conclusion, I hate my linguistics class. I'm trying to decide whether I'll skip this week's or next week's tutorial, I can get away with missing one more without them getting on my case. I tend to feel SIGNIFICANTLY more confident about this class when I DON'T go to the tutorials.
