Need thesis ideas
Need thesis ideas
As part of the Honor's Program I'm required to write a thesis with the aid of a professor and which I will eventually present to a panel of experts from my local area. As my area of specialty is French and Spanish secondary education, my thesis needs to revolve around those subjects. It must also be an area of original research. Anyway, I'm torn for ideas.
A few I've been contemplating are:
The effectiveness of curriculum which teaches basic phonetics over unit chapters versus that which teaches basic phonetics as a prerequisite to grammatical study. Possibly also designing a curriculum for teaching French and Spanish phonetics at the secondary level.
Something within the category of second language acquisition of vocabulary or second language acquisition of idiomatic expressions (which is in itself quite vague).
I'm open to suggestions and/or advice narrowing down the topics I have above. Second language acquisition is something of a well-researched field so finding areas in need of original research is tricky.
A few I've been contemplating are:
The effectiveness of curriculum which teaches basic phonetics over unit chapters versus that which teaches basic phonetics as a prerequisite to grammatical study. Possibly also designing a curriculum for teaching French and Spanish phonetics at the secondary level.
Something within the category of second language acquisition of vocabulary or second language acquisition of idiomatic expressions (which is in itself quite vague).
I'm open to suggestions and/or advice narrowing down the topics I have above. Second language acquisition is something of a well-researched field so finding areas in need of original research is tricky.
Re: Need thesis ideas
Does it have to strictly relate to your major? My major is "Global Studies" or International Relations in normal people speak, but I can make a conlang for my Honors Thesis.
http://superculden.angelfire.com
- roninbodhisattva
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Re: Need thesis ideas
This one personally sounds more interesting to me, though it is vague.Viktor77 wrote:Something within the category of second language acquisition of vocabulary or second language acquisition of idiomatic expressions (which is in itself quite vague).
Re: Need thesis ideas
The Cycle of Violence in North American Modern Language Education
Re: Need thesis ideas
Ehh.... are French and Spanish really the best case studies for an overview of this? Both of them have pretty friendly phonologies for Anglophones. If your major was, say, Arabic or Zulu secondary education then it'd be a different story. As is, though, I don't think it's a question even worth asking.Viktor77 wrote:The effectiveness of curriculum which teaches basic phonetics over unit chapters versus that which teaches basic phonetics as a prerequisite to grammatical study. Possibly also designing a curriculum for teaching French and Spanish phonetics at the secondary level.
"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be said, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
– The Gospel of Thomas
– The Gospel of Thomas
Re: Need thesis ideas
More anglophones study French and Spanish than study Arabic or Zulu.Xephyr wrote:Ehh.... are French and Spanish really the best case studies for an overview of this? Both of them have pretty friendly phonologies for Anglophones. If your major was, say, Arabic or Zulu secondary education then it'd be a different story. As is, though, I don't think it's a question even worth asking.Viktor77 wrote:The effectiveness of curriculum which teaches basic phonetics over unit chapters versus that which teaches basic phonetics as a prerequisite to grammatical study. Possibly also designing a curriculum for teaching French and Spanish phonetics at the secondary level.
More to the point, there are certain things that we take for granted because we're on a linguistics forum that heavily discusses such things, but to a monolingual teenager with no linguistic background or interest whatsoever who more likely than not is only taking the class because it's required for graduation, the phonology may not be as "friendly" as you think. It isn't a matter of "Indo-European vs. non-Indo-European" here; it's a matter of "English vs. non-English".
You actually do need to think about the fact that they might not pronounce final <e>'s in Spanish words, or that <v> is /b/, or all those other sort of things, and must consider the fact that it won't initially make sense to them.
MI DRALAS, KHARULE MEVO STANI?!
Re: Need thesis ideas
Yea, that was where I was coming from. And yes, it must relate to my major otherwise I would do it over geographical population change in Detroit.bulbaquil wrote:More anglophones study French and Spanish than study Arabic or Zulu.Xephyr wrote:Ehh.... are French and Spanish really the best case studies for an overview of this? Both of them have pretty friendly phonologies for Anglophones. If your major was, say, Arabic or Zulu secondary education then it'd be a different story. As is, though, I don't think it's a question even worth asking.Viktor77 wrote:The effectiveness of curriculum which teaches basic phonetics over unit chapters versus that which teaches basic phonetics as a prerequisite to grammatical study. Possibly also designing a curriculum for teaching French and Spanish phonetics at the secondary level.
More to the point, there are certain things that we take for granted because we're on a linguistics forum that heavily discusses such things, but to a monolingual teenager with no linguistic background or interest whatsoever who more likely than not is only taking the class because it's required for graduation, the phonology may not be as "friendly" as you think. It isn't a matter of "Indo-European vs. non-Indo-European" here; it's a matter of "English vs. non-English".
You actually do need to think about the fact that they might not pronounce final <e>'s in Spanish words, or that <v> is /b/, or all those other sort of things, and must consider the fact that it won't initially make sense to them.
And wow, this was bumped from a long time ago haha. I almost forgot I ever asked it.
Re: Need thesis ideas
Those are not issues of phonetics.bulbaquil wrote:You actually do need to think about the fact that they might not pronounce final <e>'s in Spanish words, or that <v> is /b/, or all those other sort of things, and must consider the fact that it won't initially make sense to them.
"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be said, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
– The Gospel of Thomas
– The Gospel of Thomas
Re: Need thesis ideas
A reconstruction of Proto-Salish. Not that you can do it, but we will want to read it.
- roninbodhisattva
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Re: Need thesis ideas
SECONDED AND THIRDED.dhokarena56 wrote:A reconstruction of Proto-Salish. Not that you can do it, but we will want to read it.
Re: Need thesis ideas
Sorry, but if I was to reconstruct anything it would be Proto-Northern Tungusic.roninbodhisattva wrote:SECONDED AND THIRDED.dhokarena56 wrote:A reconstruction of Proto-Salish. Not that you can do it, but we will want to read it.
- roninbodhisattva
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Re: Need thesis ideas
SECONDED AND THIRDEDViktor77 wrote:Sorry, but if I was to reconstruct anything it would be Proto-Northern Tungusic.roninbodhisattva wrote:SECONDED AND THIRDED.dhokarena56 wrote:A reconstruction of Proto-Salish. Not that you can do it, but we will want to read it.
Re: Need thesis ideas
Has there ever been anybody nutty enough to posit the existance of Proto-Salish-X, whatever X is?
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Re: Need thesis ideas
I've been working on a theory of Proto-Vasco-Salishan.
Re: Need thesis ideas
"I have proven, to my knowledge, that Proto-Rotokas-Salish does, in fact, exist, based on such Greenburgian pairs as
putakuitovakudoku 'mother' vs. smq'xhlhgeqxnc'h 'laundry'
or
butukadaka 'tree' vs. tlh'tnekq'xhkshmlh 'bird'."
-Viktor's Ph. D. dissertation
putakuitovakudoku 'mother' vs. smq'xhlhgeqxnc'h 'laundry'
or
butukadaka 'tree' vs. tlh'tnekq'xhkshmlh 'bird'."
-Viktor's Ph. D. dissertation
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Re: Need thesis ideas
I'm currently having a discussion with someone on Nostratic-L who seems to believe in Uralo-Salish (or something along those lines, hard to tell)…dhokarena56 wrote:Has there ever been anybody nutty enough to posit the existance of Proto-Salish-X, whatever X is?
This is about the Uralic word for "cloud" normally reconstructed as *pilŋi or *pilwi, which he seems to think would be better reconstructed *pelʲkχenʷχʷi (whether in PU or in Proto-Uralo-Salishan, I cannot tell).(…) I do not posit compounding or suffixation for fëlhöö \ fëlleg , simply
variation from 2 complex clusters. Appr. * pelYkXenWXWi > * pelYkeXWi > fëlhöö
, * pelYkXenWXWi > * pelYXeÑWi > fëlleg . The middle syl. was lost in most.
The changes in * usYXYaLYÑWa \ usYXYaRYÑWa > * sYyälNWa \ sYxYarNWa 'sunny'
(or sim.) > Hu sárga 'yellow' , Fn selvä 'clear' , etc. , might be due to L/R
alt., so I won't use them for what might be expected of -lN- here.
The same type of variation is seen medially in * asYXYunXWin > sYyäNWi \
sYXYuXWni \ sYyün?il \ etc. 'tendon/sinew/string/twine/hair' > Fn suoni , sää ;
Hu ina- , szöv- , etc.
The same type of variation is seen in Salishan :
* sXkW'iLY't*Y's-qWán*YXW > -nXW > -ÑXW > -Ñ?W in Kl sxW?i?c'ë´sëÑ 'hammer' ,
but -n*YXW > -yXW > -yw in Kl sxWi?c'ësáyu 'hammer'
* sXkW'iLY't*Y's-qWán*YXW > -nXW > -n?W in Kl sxWc!ë´qWën 'awl/piercer' , but
-n*YXW > -yXW > -yw in Kl sxWcë´!qWëyu 'awl/piercer / bit and brace'
* sXkW'iLY't*Y's-qWán*YXW > -nXW > -ÑXW > -mXW in Kl sxWkW'qWë´m 'axe' , but
-n*YXW > -yXW > -yw in Kl sxWq'a?Xë´yu 'clam fork' ; -n*YXW > -l*YXW > -l*Y?W >
-l? > -l' in Saa s^q'ëXel's 'clam fork'
In short, Poe's Law.
Not actually new.
- roninbodhisattva
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Re: Need thesis ideas
There's a 'serious' linguist who posited Algonquian-Salish (or Algic-Salish), I'm pretty sure? But I can't remember who.
Re: Need thesis ideas
Ah, the humanities...My major is "Global Studies" or International Relations in normal people speak, but I can make a conlang for my Honors Thesis.
Re: Need thesis ideas
Okay, but they are the issues of teaching learners how to pronounce the words and phrases of the language they are learning in a way that closely approximates that of a native speaker, and despite the similarities between English, French, and Spanish phonologies that stem from the fact that they are all Indo-European languages, the way you relate phoneme-grapheme correspondencies as well as phonotactic, prosodic, and allophonic rules to your students makes a big difference in how 'foreign' they will ultimately sound to those they speak to.Xephyr wrote:Those are not issues of phonetics.bulbaquil wrote:You actually do need to think about the fact that they might not pronounce final <e>'s in Spanish words, or that <v> is /b/, or all those other sort of things, and must consider the fact that it won't initially make sense to them.
In my personal experience, I found school-level language instructors to be far too hesitant to give overviews of the phonologies of the languages they are teaching. Of course, this stems in part form the fact that I, with an interest in linguistics, am well-versed enough in relevant terminology to welcome such an overview, whereas fellow students may not be. Nonetheless, I find it ridiculous and frankly undermining that I went through three years of French instruction, grades 4 through 6, withough the nariest clue that tu and vous do not, in fact, rhyme. Moreover, French learners usually have the notion, and a step-by-step approach to pronunciation does too little to discourage this, that the language they are learning was specifically designed so that there would be as little correspondance between sound and writing as possible. I think Yiuel once mentioned that in Quebec even, when teaching native speakers to read and write, the current pedagogy encourages students to memorize words as "indivisible" units whose pronunciation cannot be otherwise predicted. This is exactly how second-language learners are tempted to do things and, as Yiuel said then and I repeat now, it does not work. French does have regular rules from which one can predict pronunciation from spelling--although almost never the other way round--and these are the rules that must be introduced to learners at the very start of their foray into both the written and spoken language (which will be around school-age for native speakers and immediately for L2s). Sure, they won't grasp all the rules or know exactly how to apply them in all situations, but at the very least they'll be intoduced to the concepts: which graphemes tend to represent which phonemes, and that there are such things is liaison and enchaînement.
Anywhom, back to the question of the research topic, while French and Spanish may not, strictly speaking, be the best languages to focus on when expounding the intricacies of teaching second-languages learners how to talk (from an English viewpoint), there are enough non-linguistics-savy learners out there to make it a worthwhile topic.
Re: Need thesis ideas
Wow you totally just gave me my topic for my thesis! I want to explore creating an education-friendly curriculum for teaching straightforward French phonetic rules! Spanish may be put aside in my thesis as schools already use such a program for it, but for French AFAIK schools use the method of individual word memorization that Yiuel described. I believe there are technical terms for these in psychology, phoneme verses whole-word learning or something to that effect. The curriculum changes all the time with studies constantly pointing to the benefits of one method over the other than suddenly vice-versa. Still, it would be an interesting, albeit not completely unique, thesis idea.Sevly wrote:Okay, but they are the issues of teaching learners how to pronounce the words and phrases of the language they are learning in a way that closely approximates that of a native speaker, and despite the similarities between English, French, and Spanish phonologies that stem from the fact that they are all Indo-European languages, the way you relate phoneme-grapheme correspondencies as well as phonotactic, prosodic, and allophonic rules to your students makes a big difference in how 'foreign' they will ultimately sound to those they speak to.
In my personal experience, I found school-level language instructors to be far too hesitant to give overviews of the phonologies of the languages they are teaching. Of course, this stems in part form the fact that I, with an interest in linguistics, am well-versed enough in relevant terminology to welcome such an overview, whereas fellow students may not be. Nonetheless, I find it ridiculous and frankly undermining that I went through three years of French instruction, grades 4 through 6, withough the nariest clue that tu and vous do not, in fact, rhyme. Moreover, French learners usually have the notion, and a step-by-step approach to pronunciation does too little to discourage this, that the language they are learning was specifically designed so that there would be as little correspondance between sound and writing as possible. I think Yiuel once mentioned that in Quebec even, when teaching native speakers to read and write, the current pedagogy encourages students to memorize words as "indivisible" units whose pronunciation cannot be otherwise predicted. This is exactly how second-language learners are tempted to do things and, as Yiuel said then and I repeat now, it does not work. French does have regular rules from which one can predict pronunciation from spelling--although almost never the other way round--and these are the rules that must be introduced to learners at the very start of their foray into both the written and spoken language (which will be around school-age for native speakers and immediately for L2s). Sure, they won't grasp all the rules or know exactly how to apply them in all situations, but at the very least they'll be intoduced to the concepts: which graphemes tend to represent which phonemes, and that there are such things is liaison and enchaînement.
Anywhom, back to the question of the research topic, while French and Spanish may not, strictly speaking, be the best languages to focus on when expounding the intricacies of teaching second-languages learners how to talk (from an English viewpoint), there are enough non-linguistics-savy learners out there to make it a worthwhile topic.
Re: Need thesis ideas
what a conceptViktor77 wrote:I want to explore creating an education-friendly curriculum
Re: Need thesis ideas
I just got everything all set with my French profesor, so I'm hoping that within a semester's time I will be able to do my thesis on this French method of colorizing IPA sounds of French phonology to teach them to youth.
Re: Need thesis ideas
Yeah, but the major required me to study abroad, so I was basically first in line for scholarships through the school for it. Otherwise I don't know that the major means anything, seeing as there's only one other school in the country with a major under the name of "Global Studies".Beli Orao wrote:Ah, the humanities...My major is "Global Studies" or International Relations in normal people speak, but I can make a conlang for my Honors Thesis.
http://superculden.angelfire.com
Re: Need thesis ideas
So I now have two ideas and I just need to choose one soon:
1). Teaching French phonetics through a method called color-coded phonemes. It avoids the IPA and ultimately I would design a mini lesson which could be taught before major language instruction.
2). Developing a mini lesson in general rules of grammar. Don't worry those who believe I have a terrible understanding of grammar, I'd work with an English professor. The idea is that students learning a foreign language lack an appropriate general grammatical knowledge which makes language learning difficult. If you can't break down English, how can you break down Spanish?
1). Teaching French phonetics through a method called color-coded phonemes. It avoids the IPA and ultimately I would design a mini lesson which could be taught before major language instruction.
2). Developing a mini lesson in general rules of grammar. Don't worry those who believe I have a terrible understanding of grammar, I'd work with an English professor. The idea is that students learning a foreign language lack an appropriate general grammatical knowledge which makes language learning difficult. If you can't break down English, how can you break down Spanish?
Re: Need thesis ideas
Hmm… doesn't French have about ten or so vowel sounds? That might get unwieldy. I don't actually see a problem with French pronunciation… it's writing what you heard that's tricky, not reading what you've written. Also, you'd have to make sure that the colours are accessible to those who are colour-blind.Viktor77 wrote:Teaching French phonetics through a method called color-coded phonemes. It avoids the IPA and ultimately I would design a mini lesson which could be taught before major language instruction.
Perhaps you could do a corpus study of gender errors between English and Spanish learners writing in French, looking at whether Spanish learners are more likely to calque their own L1's gender onto French nouns than English speakers. Of course, such a corpus would have to exist.