I've got a busy few weeks ahead, what with a trip to Estonia, Neil starting his new job and the onset of study... so I thought it would be good to get ahead a bit. I've managed to do all the reading and activities for Part 1 of my course (7 parts in all) and although it's all quite theoryish at the moment, I have found it really interesting.
This first module is in applied linguistics, which is basically about investigating real-world problems where language is a central issue (Brumfit 1995). That seems to cover quite a large area. There's obviously the side connected to English as a second/foreign language, which I love thinking about. I think there are other angles that interest me too though. I'm trying to work out whether the argument for/against synthetic phonics fits in here - it depends whether learning to read/write is classed as a problem worthy of investigation or not. Also, earlier in the week I got a proofreading job from Finland, which brought up some of the very complex issues involved in language translation.
At the end of the module, I have to conduct my own research and I'm already pondering what area that might be in. The emergence of Finnglish in bilingual Finns is a strong area of interest. There's something ever so beautiful about the Finnish language and I still love to study it when I can. The reality is though, that we're unlikely to ever move back there, so from a work perspective, there's no reason to research it. Synthetic phonics, however, is likely to form part of my future work life, in one way or another. Teaching English as a second language - I love it but the pay is really quite bad. So who knows? It's a good job I've got all year to formulate my thoughts and come up with a research proposal.
No comments:
Post a Comment