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THINKING LIKE A LINGUIST IN THE COURSE ‘INTRODUCTIONTO GERMANIC LINGUISTICS’

OLENA ANDRUSHENKO, CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

ZHYTOMYR STATE UNIVERSITY

and.olenka@gmail.com

Research background.Linguistics is generally defined as a scientific study of a human language.This central idea should generate in the minds of those, who aspire to mastera profession of a linguist. So, what does the language investigation mean?First and foremost it presupposes analysis of different language levels(phonetics, lexicon, morphology, syntax, etc.) in order to understand the waythey function either separately or as a unity. The task of a linguist in thisrespect is to trace the differences and similarities in conveying a certainmeaning by one or several languages (Barry 2002: 7; Isac, Reiss, 2008). Theaim is complicated by the fact that the rules of language exist within anindividual; therefore, finding objective methods of language analysis is achallenging task. As G.Finch highlights: “In studying linguistics we aretrying to articulate what we already know; we are, in a sense, studyingourselves: the rule book exists inside us” (2003: 8). Thus, one deals withwhat is coded in language units. In one of his interviews a famous Americanlinguist G.Lakoff states: “I study language, including the conceptualstructure underlying it” (Ibanes 1997: 49).

Language can be investigated from two aspects: semantic andphonetic interpretation, i.e. deep and surface structure respectively. Deepstructure is common to all languages and presents a reflection of a form ofthought, whereas surface structures differ in all languages (Chomsky 1995).Modern research is focused on the meaning coded in words, phrases,sentences or entire discourse. There are two main directions in languagestudy: from “form to its meaning” and from “meaning to its form”. Theformer is based on the categories that represent the structure of a certainlanguage, the latter reflects speech activity of an interlocutor, who shapes hisideas into language forms (Mustajoki 2006: 20-21). Despite the selectedmethod language investigation can be done from several perspectives. Thus,linguists may focus not only on language structure but also on the wayculture and history affect different tongues. They also may trace howlanguage and language families evolve, the etymology of words, etc. Others

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can specialize in physical aspects of language, i.e. how speech organs workto produce certain sounds. Another vector of investigation is to study signlanguage, gestures and their role in communicating ides, etc. Hence, being alinguist means language study not only as a structure but beyond it. In termsof Maria Janssen thinking like a linguist presupposes “thinking vertically,focusing on linguistic units as complexes of different types of linguisticinformation bound together instead of thinking horizontally, where thedifferent types of linguistic information are separated into levels” (1999: 65).

The highlighted approaches to language matter come from scholarswho do linguistics, however, for those who only make first steps in thelinguistic sphere the vision of their future profession can be quite differentfrom what it is in reality, and students would rather stick to general publicopinion that “a linguist is just the person who knows a language or teachesit”. In this respect the instructor is faced with the challenge to distinguishlinguistics as a scientific discipline, to select the most effective methods oftransforming students into prospective scholars and observe how thesetransformations occur. Thus, The SOTL project is aimed at answering aresearch question: What happens when students learn to think likelinguists?

Institutional Context:The research was carried out at School of Foreign Philology by ZhytomyrState University, Ukraine, in Introduction to Germanic Linguistics Class,one of the primary courses in professional training of a future linguist-germanist. The peculiar feature is that this used to be a Teacher-TrainingUniversity within a long history of its functioning. Foreign philology majorhas been relatively new one (4 years), in this respect a lot of disciplines inthe curriculum have been retained for teacher’s major.

Another challenge lies in the traditional approach to instruction andthough the system has been experiencing transition stage from the Sovietone, the mode of teaching still remains unchanged. Thus, a peculiar featureof Ukrainian universities is the domination of a teacher-centeredenvironment and reproductive manner of knowledge in a subject. AsC. Nelson and J. Robinson point out teaching has been treated “as a privatematter, grounded in the mentoring relationship between student and ‘expert.’How, then, to change an institutional culture so that teaching becomes opento formative examination and learning becomes a truly common goalavailable for improvement?” (Hunt, Bromage, Tomkinson 2006: 78). In my

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view this could be achieved by means of asking the students to do thesubject rather than simply learn it.

It is also hard to break with practice of organizing the learningprocess; hence two traditional forms of work are retained: lectures andseminars, at the latter the students are proposed to dwell on the informationpresented during lectures. However, as C. Cookman notes practice is veryimportant and usually traditional methods such as lecturing “fails to helpstudents achieve the higher cognitive levels that Bloom identified:comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. <…> Even ifstudents retain everything they hear during lectures it might not be theknowledge they need or it might become outdated by newer knowledge.”(Becker, Andrews 2004: 30). Information is only stored in brain for sometime, however, without thorough consideration and dwelling on the problemit remains passive. The experience shows that piling up for some time theknowledge is hard to apply in the subsequent education. Therefore, we arealways in the process of struggling what is more important to teach studentsknowledge or to teach them skills and competences necessary for theirprofessional identity. In my opinion teaching knowledge only is ratherremote from students’ perception of future major, teaching skills is far moreimportant in identification how the prospective career looks. Moreover, forstudents’ learning rather beneficial is to start at the initial stages of highereducation, therefore I selected a course for the second-year students in myexperiment.

The Course:“Introduction to Germanic Linguistics” is worked out for sophomores whomajor in Philology (English and German languages). It comprises 10lectures, 7 seminars and 38 hours of individual work. The discipline lays thefoundations in Old and Modern Germanic languages’ studies. The main goalof schooling is to mould philological competence in the subject, which is animportant component of historical linguistics. The course also makes abridge into the disciplines taught in the subsequent semesters: History of theEnglish Language, History of the German Language, Country Studies,Theoretical Phonetics, Theoretical Grammar, and Theoretical Lexicology ofthe English Language the main classes in professional training of aprospective linguist.

The course objective requires from the students to face with specificdata, connected with identification of ancient and modern Germaniclanguages, their separation from Indo-European language continuum,

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singling out common and individual features, familiarization with ancientwritten records, learning how to work with glossaries and dictionaries,determination of common and peculiar phonetic, lexical, grammar features.The greater part of work at seminars requires individual thinking, logicalreasoning, independent work, etc. While analyzing the problems set withinthe study the students face universal challenges: 1) an attitude of beingdisposed to thoughtful consideration of problems discussed; 2) knowledge ofmethods of logical inquiry and argumentation; 3) skill to apply the methods(Paul, Elder 2006). The training requires integration of two domains:cognitive and effective. Moreover, the thinker must be guided by universalintellectual standards: clarity, precision, accuracy, relevance, etc., thus, theskills of interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation and self-regulation become essential (Welhburg 2006; Weston 2008). The dilemmaarises: are students able to acquire the universal principles withoutunderstanding what their future occupation is going to deal with and how farare they in this? Another question that remains is what are the best tools tobe used to facilitate this qualified formation? From my perspective the bestway to do it is through group project creation, presentation and defense inclass.

The experiment is set for six sophomore student groups at lectures andseminars (ca. 150 people). At lectures the students are introduced to differentlinguistic approaches, which explain debatable points discussed within thecourse. The role of the instructor in this case is only introduce and show theways of interpreting problems but in no way give his/her vision of a certaintheoretical aspect. At seminars the sophomores are proposed to dwell on oneof the debatable issues as if they were the representatives of a certainphilological school. The work is performed in small groups (4-5 people); thestudents investigate the problem and defend their viewpoints compilingPowerPoint presentations. Those who do not prepare presentations act in thecapacity of ‘judges’ for presenters asking provocative questions (Socratesmethod). Therefore, every two weeks the group faces a problem to beworked on and debated.

Projects:Student groups are proposed six topics for presentations within the

course:1. The problem of Indo-European “homeland”: (a) Kurgan

hypothesis, (b) Armenian hypothesis, (c) Anatolian theory.2. Runic inscriptions and their origin: (a) Mythological theory,

(b) Greek roots, (c) Roman roots.

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3. First consonantal shift and its interpretation:(a) Psychological theory (J.Grimm), (b) Substratum theory(A.Millet), (c) Glottal theory (V.Ivanov, T.Gamkrelidze).

4. The elimination of the category of case: (a) external factors(O.Jespersen), (b) internal influence (A.Millet),(c) grammaticalization (P.Hopper, E.Traugott).

5. The development of future forms in Germanic languages:(a) English, (b) German, (c) Icelandic.

6. The characteristic features of Germanic lexicon: (a) OldEnglish, (b) Old High German and (c) Old Icelandic.

It should be noted that the first four presentations deal more withtheoretical problems, which are debatable in modern linguistics. The aim forthe students not only to become profound in every theory, but they should beable to realize that there is no unanimous viewpoint on every linguisticproblem. The last two presentations concern practical tasks of languageinvestigation, since they embrace work with texts and dictionaries.

SOTL project is aimed at experimenting how decentralized classroomactivities i.e. small group project creation, presentation and debate promoteto coining a prospective linguist. The peculiarity of the methodology lies inthe idea that students cannot understand linguistics clearly without practicingit, my initial hypothesis is that it is often not clear to students whatlinguistics is and what linguists do.

The preliminary research testifies that creating projects promotes todeveloping student analytical skills (Bowel, Kemp 2009; Brockbank,McGrill 2003). I also expect the participation in projects to be one of theways to develop team skills and higher degree of communication as well asbetter understanding the interrelation of language and history within thecourse. As Griffiths and Houston (1996) highlight that “it is within the smallgroup that self-confidence can be improved and teamwork and interpersonalcommunication developed. Still the greatest advantage of small groupprojects lies in the ability to engage students both as learners andcollaborators in their intellectual, personal and professional development(Fry et al 2009: 93; Griffiths, Houston, Lazenbatt 1996).

My initial anticipated claim is the following: group projectscontribute to the formation of students’ identity as future linguists, sincethey are challenged to view a certain language issue as representatives ofdifferent linguistic schools, evaluate the similarities and differences of theapproaches, as well as reflect upon the best method of investigation fromtheir perspective. This shifts students’ vision of their major from philistine to

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more profound one.

Data Gathering Strategies and Methods of Interpretation:Conducting SOTL project presupposes three phases of growth anddevelopment: 1) growth in one’s own teaching, 2) growth in the dialoguewith others about teaching and learning in the discipline, 3) growth in thescholarship of teaching – developing scholarly knowledge with substantialimpact in both disciplinary and institutional settings (Weston and McAlpine2001; Saroyan, Cheryl 2004). Distracting from teaching we need to shift tostudent learning to see what best works for them and in which way. SOTL inthis respect “distinguishes itself from general discussions of “good teaching”by focusing on gathering evidence of student learning (Gurung at al 2009:25).

Methods in every discipline and every particular classroom aredifferent and depend upon educational environment (Lankshear, Knobel2004). To investigate students’ professional insight I decided to chose amixed methodology of quantitative and qualitative data. Qualitativeinformation allows understanding “the why” behind the research question,whereas quantitative data help conduct statistical evaluations and test thehypothesis (Lynne, Barr 2010: 314-315). Since the main aim of the researchis to understand how and why a student viewpoint on “linguistic thinking”changes in the course of interventions predominant are qualitative methods,however in order to point out the significance or insignificance of studentmind modifications I use quantitative methods.

K.McKinney (2007: 71) notes that there is a range of various researchstrategies and methodologies to be used for SOTL work. C.Nelson (2003)outlines five big groups of SOTL work: 1) reports on particular classes (“itworked”, qualitative before and after assessment, quantitative before andafter assessment); 2) reflections on several years of teaching experience; 3)comparisons of courses and of student change across time; 4) non-classroomexperimental work on human and animal learning; 5) synthesis of sets ofextant SOTL work. For my investigation I propose to use the first group ofmethods.

To investigate the entire process of education the two types ofwork are proposed:

In order to study students’ vision of a linguist from the professionalviewpoint they are to write at the first class an anonymous reflective paper,answering the question: “What does it mean to think like a linguist?” Thisissue would help to observe how well students understand their future career

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and how far or close they are in their perception.During the next stage the students are to create group projects (3 for

each student within the course – 5 people in each group) focusing on one ofthe debatable problems highlighted in class (preparation time for each – 2weeks). Afterwards they turn their ideas into a group presentation anddefend it in class. To check how such work contributes to making a linguist,the students are required to write a reflective essay (3 pages), in which theyfocus on the following questions: What did you learn working on theproject…? What did you wish to learn…? (as a future linguist). Whatquestions do you still have concerning the controversial theory discussed?

To see how this work influences students’ identity as future linguists,the last class is dedicated to writing the same reflective paper they wereproposed to during their first seminar.

Weimer (2006) includes such types of quantitative investigations asexperiments with numerical data, which will show how the student thinkingchange in their views of a linguist during the first and final reflective paper.This will help to answer my initial research question. The quantitative datawill be supported by qualitative studies. Among this Weimer (2006)highlights interpretative analysis applied in my investigation to see how thestudents’ views change, how initial and final data vary.

Evidence and Interpretation

1st Reflective Paper:The data were collected from 150 students, however taking intoconsideration that each student mentioned at least several items in their viewof linguistic thinking the number of responses made 341. The data collectedshow that some students are much aware of the matter. Thus, they name thefollowing: “to analyze the language (its structure and functions)”(mentioned in 17 responses), “to be able to predict language changes infuture” (4 responses), etc. Still the first reflective paper testifies that themajority of students have vague idea concerning the professional issue.Thus, on the basis of student data I singled out four major domains, whichrepresent the student answers: Linguist’s profession proper, Generic skills,Foreign language learning and Foreign language teaching.

1) Linguist’s profession proper. The students generally highlightprofessional skills and abilities (37.2% responses). Thus, it can be seen thatin spite of the fact that they have already selected their major, theprofessional orientation is relatively low, moreover, even those students who

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mentioned professional qualities, are rather distant from what linguisticinvestigation really is. Thus, Student A wrote:

“For me to think like a linguist means to compare language withhistory, culture and traditions of people and also to be interested inlanguage development, to see causes and consequences on different levels oflanguage development”.

To see the ties between language and history is very importantespecially when it concerns English since in the course of its historicaldevelopment the language was greatly influenced by French borrowings onthe level of lexicon, which was due to Norman Conquest of the British Isles.Thus, from the class objective realizing this is essential; however I wouldlike my students to be more specific, i.e. what language phenomena can beinterpreted from purely historical perspective and which were stipulated bylanguage change proper. The awareness of the language evolution within thecenturies was also reflected in Student’s B essay: “linguists investigate thelanguage as a generating organism”. Definitely, a skillful linguist wouldword it as “philologists study the evolution of certain linguistic phenomena”,which was basically meant by the respondent. So, I may assume thatintuitively some students realize what they are supposed to do in future, butthis vision is a rather abstract one, since they never really practiced thediscipline. Thus, naming around 20 items that are closely related to theirfuture major students avoid using specific linguistic terminology: out of 127responses they employ linguistic terms only in ca. 32%, which is less than ahalf. Therefore, I may conclude that they have the idea of language analysisat the mundane level.

Realizing linguistics as a science, Student C stresses upon theoreticalaspect of problem investigation: “linguists investigate different linguistictheories and concepts, i.e. they study the problem from different sources.”Basically, this means that to investigate the problem one must know whatwas accomplished by the predecessors. Still studying the problem is only atop of the iceberg. Is linguist’s task only to see the language issue fromdifferent angles? Theoretical review is important but what is the use of it?That is the students should understand that there is something more to it: tosee the problem, to conduct investigation and to suggest original solution isfar more essential.

Talking about language investigation Student D writes: “Linguists useintuition for language analysis”. What, probably, is meant here may berephrased thus: doing research an experienced scholar would present ahypothesis, which is proven to be true in the course of analysis. However,

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insight has nothing to do with language research, since to study languagephenomena one applies certain methodology and within the course studentsshould see that talking about language and conducting a research are quitedifferent issues.

Since a lot of essays contained similar ideas I tried to group them inaccordance with similar viewpoints highlighted. The most frequently tracedresponses, concerning what it means to think like a linguist, are as follows:

a) to analyze different words (their form and meaning). In this sectionI also included such interpretations as “to compare words in differentlanguages” (20 responses), “to think over diversity of lexical units” (17responses), “to know the etymology of different words” (11 responses). I maypresume that students concentrate on one level of investigation only – thelexical one. Probably, it is caused by their perception of grammar andphonetics as the disciplines that deal with strict prescriptive rules, whichthey find while mastering a foreign language. The students view lexical unitsas a source to enlarge their vocabulary, thus there emerges the idea of lexisdiversity or association of words.

b) to follow language changes (to know the historical development oflanguages). This section also contains the following student answers: “tocompare language with history and traditions of its people”, which wasmentioned in 15 student papers; “to know language origin” (4 papers), “tonotice causes and consequences on different stages of languagedevelopment”; c) to compare languages. In four student essays this issue wasinterpreted thus: “to compare languages, find the relationships amongdifferent languages, define which family a particular language belongs to”.

d) to know language structure (its grammar, phonetics, lexicon),which was mentioned by four students only. This points that only a fewstudents are aware of structural approach to language, however it is the basisin language investigation.

e) to compare natural and language phenomena, highlighted in onepaper. This idea was rather complicated for me to interpret, however, Iwould rather see the ties of linguistics and anthropology, i.e. how differentenvironment would influence people’s worldview.

f) etc.As it was observed highlighting professional issues the students

mostly refer to the analysis of words as lexical units, however the idea ofother levels (phonological, morphological, syntactic, etc.) are definitelyoverlooked in most answers. Therefore, they do not see the language as asystem. In my view this happens due to lack of special linguistic classes

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during the freshmen year of studies. Thus, the students have only onetheoretical freshmen course “Introduction to Linguistics”, while the otherdisciplines focus more on their mastering practical skills, such as PracticalGrammar, Practical Phonetics, etc., which is good from the perspective offoreign language learning, but not from the point of linguistic training. Thisis one of the drawbacks of university curriculum since a lot from teacher-training major remained unchanged.

2) Generic skills. Singling out this domain in student responses Ipaid attention that for quite a large number of them it was hard to realizewhat linguists do in reality. Therefore, the students perceived the questionfiguratively, that is they refer to the process of thinking directly (28% – 95responses). Thus, student D wrote: “To think like a linguist means to thinklogically and structurally”. In this response one may definitely observe thenaïve vision of the prospective profession, which may also testify that mostof students never reflected upon the idea why they entered this major.Moreover, it is hard to specify which skills they need to become a linguistapart from “thinking in a specific way”. Among student responses were alsothe following: “thinking like a linguist presupposes to think extraordinarily,not like others,” from which I may assume that they have a romanticperception of their future career. Student E in this respect sees a linguist as asuperhero. So she writes: “these are the people who are able to find the wayout of any situation.” For Student F this is a person “knowledgeable in allspheres of life”. Student answers in this domain refer mostly to the thinkingprocess which in their perception is: a) logical (13 responses); b) figurative(10 responses); c) objective (9 responses); d) abstract (9 responses);e) illogical (5 responses); f) flexible (3 responses), etc. Thus, students see theimage of a linguist somehow ideally; however these features can be ascribedto a person irrespective profession. Some of the answers were connectedwith learning a foreign language: “to think in a foreign language” or “tothink in several languages simultaneously”, which describes its commandand concerns about language learning at the same time.

3) Foreign language learning. This issue appeared in students’responses since they major in foreign philology and learning a foreignlanguage occupies the greater part of their studies, which definitely explainssuch a large amount of responses that reflect this idea (21.1% – 72responses). Thus, Student E projected his concerns in the following way: “Aphilologist must build grammatically correct sentences, as well as apply aliterary language”. In this response I personally see the most importantaspect for the educational process – mastering English or German languages,

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which most freshmen and sophomore classes are aimed at. Rather oftenstudents come across the situation when in the process of learning it is hardfor them to be understood by interlocutors, since a lot of foreign words differin meaning from their native language and their linguistic intuition still fails.Therefore, Student F puts it this way: “A linguist should express one’sthoughts clearly, so that people grip his/her arguments”. This reflection mayemerge due to the fact that being not proficient in a foreign languagestudents are often corrected by their language instructors when expressingtheir thoughts. The responses in this domain can be generally grouped asfollows:

a) to speak to foreigners or people of various social layers (registeredin 15 student essays). From my viewpoint, a lot of students upon enteringthe university have their major aim to master English as a language ofcommunication but they do not put an aim to study the language as futureprofessionals in this field.

b) to express ideas correctly, to be able ground one’s hypothesis oropinion in every sphere of life (12 responses). Among the answers thestudents also limelighted such: “to be an efficient speaker”, “to state one’sviewpoint distinctly”, “to be able to prove one’s theory”. This may suggestthat some of the students find it difficult to provide reasoning on a particularissue, i.e. voicing their opinion remains a challenging task. The same is trueas to the next issue highlighted.

c) to be understood by other people (8 responses).d) to be capable of inventing new words (3 responses). This may

imply that students have vague idea how new language units emerge in theword-stock, therefore they consider it to be the task of a linguist to expandthe vocabulary of a certain language, without realizing that languagefunctions and evolves irrespective the will of one or several individuals.

e) to understand the content of the information expressed, tounderstand the questions put and be able to answer them (mentioned in threestudent answers). I personally observe here the student anxiety ofcommunicating with foreigner since most teaching is done on the part ofUkrainian or Russian-native speaking instructors, with some recordings ofEnglish-native speakers, which is definitely not enough for languagetraining. Therefore, they perceive a linguist as a person capable todistinguish different accents and be fluent in communication with others.

f) to pronounce the words correctly (2 responses). This would suggestthat students usually have trouble with acquiring received pronunciation.Thus, a linguist for them is a person who is capable to recreate a real English

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accent.g) to communicate the same language, the interlocutor applied to you

(2 responses): in this answer I personally traced the problem of bilingualism,which bothers the students and they expressed the idea that it is important tospeak the same language with a person who referred to you.

h) etc.I would definitely agree that these characteristic features are important

for a linguist, but such issues relate to any well-developed personality. Thismay testify that it is difficult for students to differentiate between personaland professional qualities. On the other hand, such answers also concern aproblem of foreign language acquisition, since for some students it is stilldifficult to express their own ideas in a foreign language, sometimes theymisinterpret terms, etc. Considering the answers I observed a stronginterdependence of theoretical and practical courses (e.g. classes on Englishconversational, grammar, phonetics).

4) Foreign language teaching. This section includes the answers thatrelate to students’ perception of a linguist as a teacher of a foreign language(13.7% - 47 responses); this reflects the idea that if you teach a foreignlanguage you may be considered a researcher. Thus, Student G wrote “this isa person who analyses the communication of other people and notices thedrawbacks in their speech”, close idea was expressed by Student H “alinguist evaluates others from the speech accuracy plane”. From thisperspective I may assume that a linguist is associated among the studentswith a person who is more knowledgeable in a foreign language than theyare, the only concern that arises (and which is not the matter of the presentresearch) deals with teaching English: Is it only associated only withcorrecting the mistakes? To this domain also belongs Student’s I response “Iassociate a linguist with a person who teaches a foreign language.” Thestudent reflections can be grouped thus:

a) to notice mistakes in the speech of people;b) to define the origin of interlocutors;c) to observe people’s relations;d) to find way out of any situation, etc.Teaching some practical English courses in previous years and doing

some observations before I should admit that most likely the profession of alinguist is associated among students with something either close to theirpersonal experience or what they saw their school or university teachers dowhile teaching English. Thus, as they mention any person who knows aforeign language and teaches it may be called a linguist, which is definitely

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not the point, because being a linguist presupposes considering languagematter applying specific methods of analysis and has nothing to do withteaching.

The diagram bellow illustrates how linguistic thinking is perceived bythe students in general:

As preliminary data show most sophomore students (62.8%) find itdifficult to be specific what a profession of a linguist is in reality, since forthem it seems to be a collective image of a well educated person with aspecific type of thinking and profound speaking skills. Moreover, enteringtheir major a great percentage has an aim to master a foreign language onlyand some also consider upon teaching it in future, still only a few of themare a bit aware that being a linguist is something that has noting to do withforeign language mastering or instructing.

Reflective Essays:The second phase of investigation dealt specifically with project

creation to see how they would influence student’s vision of a linguist. Thequestions the students were supposed to answer concentrated upon only onedomain among highlighted: Linguist’s profession proper, which in myopinion could facilitate their professional identification.

During the stage of project preparation the students were supposed todo a lot of literature search that is I tried to model for them a trueenvironment of a researcher. For the first presentation the students wereprovided with all the necessary references, either paper or electronic ones.Since, the time between the first and second presentation was two weeks, Iasked the students to do independent search of literary sources and tell me

Linguist’sprofession proper,37.2

Generic skills,28

Foreign languagelearning,

21.1

Foreign language teaching,13.7

Foreign language learningLinguist’s profession proper Generic skills

Foreign language teaching

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within a week whether they had problems finding information. I wonderedhow this issue would be reflected in their further essays. Students of group 2and 4 wrote: “we found problematic at first to find credible information inthe library or in the Internet”, after discussing the question with me theywere provided with necessary references. Another point that students oftenmention in their essays is language problem, since the majority of theinformation they find is in Russian, German or English. As the course istaught in Ukrainian the students were supposed to present the information intheir native language. Firstly, the difficulty was to find Ukrainianequivalents of some terms, since their scientific vocabulary was not on thesufficient level, which could also be observed from the first essay theywrote. Some student sent me e-mails asking to translate a certain term. Still,another difficulty for the students turned to be information arrangement intological sequences and to find compromise upon more important and lessimportant issues because the time of the presentation was limited (10minutes) and the amount of information they wanted to present was great.The usual problem was the number of slides to fit in ten minutes, I also triedto explain them the main principles, since they needed to present only themost essential ideas and their peers would ask them further explanations.

In one of their presentations students had to analyze the problem ofexpressing the category of future in Old Germanic languages. They were tohighlight the major forms trying to explain why exactly these structures wereused in different Germanic languages. For example, the dominant form ofrepresenting future in Old English was the present tense (Present Simple),which differs from Modern English where the dominant forms are “to begoing to + infinitive” or “Future Simple”) and the present tense to expressthe future is used only to talk about scheduled events. The abundant usage ofpresent tense in Old English as other Old Germanic languages to express thefuture in explained by the specificity of time perception as a “whirlpool”.This was facilitated by mythopoetic model of thinking, in which there wasno differentiation between past, present and future, as the time projectionwas highlighted at the beginning of the story. Moreover, for Germanic tribescharacteristic was to perceive time beyond time plane, even their godsworried about such present problems as harvesting, war, diseases, etc. Thespread of Christianity among Germanic tribes played a decisive role in theirperception of category of time, since the Bible end the Gospel reflect theevents in linear chronology: past – present – future. So, there appeared aneed to create special forms to express Future (within the period of historicaldevelopment these have become Modern future forms). Such grammar

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changes took centuries, which caused the coexistence of several forms toexpress future.

The students tried to reflect how this very linguistic project influencedtheir perception of a language and future profession. In this respect StudentA writes: “Working on the project helped me understand why there existssuch a variety of different forms to express future, the most difficult for mebefore starting the project was to understand why we use present simple toindicate a scheduled event, since in Ukrainian or Russian we do not havesuch analogy. While doing the project I realized that this is a rudiment ofGermanic heritage.” Therefore, this comment shows that the student tries togive explanation of some language phenomena, which are difficult tointerpret from present-day linguistic situation. Moreover, they draw parallelsbetween their native language and English or German, which show initialsteps of reflection upon language phenomena. Student B wrote in thisrespect: “studying the category of future I would like to conduct a furtherinvestigation of such tense forms as present and past”. Student C mentionedthe following as something he would wish to learn: “Such kind of work willhelp me compare English with different Germanic languages in terms ofgrammar structure.” Student D commented the following: “before startingthe course I could see that English, German, Dutch are different languages,which should be studies separately, investigating them as a group of oldlanguages that come from a common ancestor helped me realize that theyhave much more in common than I thought before, since knowledge of somephonetic and grammar peculiarities promotes to drawing parallels betweenlanguages”. Therefore, the projects helped students not only conductinvestigation of the problem but also reflect on the historical development oflanguages, their convergence and divergence.

Another example of effectiveness of the proposed methodology canbe illustrated on the basis of the discussion of three theories of Indo-European homeland theories that contradict each other, thus trying to provethat their approach to the issue was the best one. The problem of origin callsfor hot debate in modern linguistics, still the aim in class was not to define areal place of origin but to work on the problem from different perspectivesand see which approach they would choose.

The first hypothesis presented was Kurgan Theory (M.Gimbutas),proposed in 1956 and based on archeological and linguistic data. Itpostulates that people of archeological “Kurgan culture” in the Pontic steppe(the region between the Dnieper and the Urals) were most likely thespeakers of Proto-Indo-European language. The hypothesis it was

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considered not only from linguistic angle, but also from archeological,historical, and biological ones (Gimbutas 1997).

Another group was proposed to deal with Armenian hypothesis(V.Ivanov, T.Gamkrelidze), which considers that Proto-Indo-Europeanlanguage originates on the territory of Armenian Highland or AryanHighland. This theory has mostly linguistic background, i.e. it is based onphonetic features of Indo-European languages and linguistic data are provedby archeological ones (Ivanov, Gamkrelidze 1990).

The third group worked upon Anatolian hypothesis also calledRenfrew’s Neolitic Discontinuity theory, which proposes that thediscontinuity of Proto-Indo-Europeans originated in western Anatolia(present-day Turkey). The distribution of historical Indo-Europeanlanguages occurred during VI–VII millennia BC. This hypothesis wasproved by archeological, linguistic and genetic data (Renfrew 2003).

After presentations the students were asked to voice their own opinionupon every theory and give an account why they would support a certainapproach in their reflective essay. Thus, Student E wrote: “It was difficult tochoose a specific theory that would give a grounded answer to the questionof Indo-European homeland since they all were criticized by differentscholars. But I would rather stick to either to Kurgan hypothesis since it wasbased not only on linguistic data but mainly on archeological ones and wasproved by recent studies in anthropology and genetics”. This reflectionshows that students realize that not only linguistic data should be taken intoaccount but extralinguistic factors are also essential, especially when itconcerns global language problems. Another issue, highlighted in StudentF’s essay was: “depending on the approach one may get different scientificresults”; moreover, 26 students highlighted that this very presentation madethem realize how complicated the linguistic matter was and there was nouniversal truth in any question they investigate.

Thus, work upon the projects required from students not only do someminor research but also reflect upon what language investigation reallymeans, therefore facilitating their professional understanding.

Final Paper:After proposed interventions (i.e. presentations and reflective essays),

the students are set the same task to answer the question and state their viewon the problem what it means to think like a linguist. As the data show theyprove to be more focused on their professional orientation, which was myinitial goal. Thus, the student answers remain within the same domains,however, the percentage allotment and the content differs (See the diagram).

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1) Linguist’s profession proper (64.1%). The second paper showedthat student vision of a linguist is more specific and is not as blurred asobserved in the initial questionnaire. In my view this was caused by the factthat students were to reflect upon their professional training while writing anessay after each presentation. As one of the Students pointed out: “It wasvery hard at the very beginning of the course to understand what it means tothink like a linguist, but now I realize that a linguist observes the connectionof language with its history (feels it as a symbol of a certain nationality ofethnic group), studies the influence of extralinguistic factors upon thelanguage, knows the origin and the development of a certain languageconstruction.” So, this reflective essay showed the identification of severallinguistic directions in language investigation: historical linguistics (tiesbetween language and history, origin of language units), sociolinguistics(impact of external factors upon the language). Student B in this respectwrote: “To be a linguist means to study different language levels: phonetics,lexis, grammar, semantic, pragmatics, i.e. one knows the language structureand is able to determine different language peculiarities.” From thisperspective the student is able to see a hierarchy of language levels, treatinglinguistic matter from structural approach.

The student responses in general can be distributed into the followinggroups:

a) to draw parallels between languages, to compare differentlanguages to notice their convergence and divergence; to understand acertain notion from different language perspectives. This issue washighlighted in 19 student papers.

Linguist’s professionproper,

64.1Generic skills,

5.8

Foreign languagelearning,

12.8

Foreign language teaching,17.3

Linguist’s profession proper Generic skillsForeign language learning Foreign language teaching

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b) to trace the relations between the language and its culture, to feelthe language as a symbol of a certain nation; to study extralinguistic factorsthat influence language development. Thus, 17 students named, so called,socio-cultural component, which should definitely be taken intoconsideration while interpreting language phenomena.

c) to investigate phonetic, lexical, phraseological and grammar levelsof the language, to study semantics and pragmatics. Among the answers Ishould distinguish also the following “to take into consideration syntacticpeculiarities of the language”, “to know language structure and take intoconsideration the interrelation of different language levels”. This issue washighlighted in 18 student papers. What should be taken into account is thefact that in comparison with the first essay the students focus not only onone language level “lexicon” but mention all language levels and theirinterdependence.

d) to analyze different linguistic phenomena comparing one’s ownexperience with the ideas of scholars of previous generations; to base one’sown idea on major linguistic theories. This matter was mentioned by 30students. The important issue highlighted in student answers is that in theprocess of investigation of any language phenomenon the researcher shouldtake into consideration the experience of previous generations of linguists,which was done in the process of preparing presentations.

e) to know the history of a certain language family evolution andunderstand that languages have common origin. This viewpoint wasmentioned by 15 students.

f) to define a word etymology;h) to study the problems of language and speech, which leads to

Saucerian differentiation between these two phenomena. Another issue dealswith stylistics and discourse “to find a hidden context in the text”, “toanalyze the speech of other people as a linguistic phenomenon”.

One of the students also dwelled on the idea of professionaldevelopment a bit metaphorically, for Student A to think like a linguistmeans “to understand the mysteries of language”. Another interpretation of alinguist by Student B was “a philosopher in the sphere of linguistics”.

Analyzing the results after the intervention I should note that studentstry to employ linguistic terms in their essays more in comparison with thefirst one (136 responses out of 208, which makes ca. 65.4% of studentanswers) , which testifies not only to their professional growth since theterminological vocabulary was expanded twofold. Final papers testify thatnot only quantitative data change but also qualitative ones, since students

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mention a greater amount of professional domains for a linguist and theirview of the language became more complicated, they consider it as agenerating organism, not as a set of words which they have to combineaccurately.

2) Foreign language teaching (17.3%). The student answers showthat they perceive a linguist as a person who has knowledge beyond theirprofessional sphere: “they are capable to define the origin of theirinterlocutors”. Student K still makes the profession of philologist and ateacher equal, he writes: “it means to know the language and to be able toteach it”. Among the student responses I found the following:

a) to be able to find delicate approach to a person, to be bothpsychologist and philosopher;

b) to have a proficient command of a language;c) to notice the mistakes in the speech of others;d) to compare certain information and use it for different purposes,

etc.3) Foreign language learning (12.8%). The student answers touched

upon the same issues as in the first paper. E.g.a) to avoid mistakes in speech;b) to express one’s viewpoint literately and grammatically correct, etc.It is evident that a lot of students are still concerned with mastering a

foreign language as an essential attribute of linguistic education.4) Generic skills (5.8%). E.g. a) to compare information; b) to think

logically; c) to think quickly; d) to think creatively, etc.The allotment in the last three rubrics, which do not concern

professional growth, has greatly reduced. Still, one may observe, that forsome students it is difficult to differentiate between professional andpersonal qualities. The domain which refers to the process of thinking hasreduced greatly in comparison with the first questionnaire, which may meanthat they stop perceiving the question “to think like a linguist” figuratively.

Conclusion

The collected data (papers and essays) give evidence that the majorityof students have progressed tremendously towards better anticipation of theirprofessional orientation. Their views of a linguist also changed: the initialreflective papers testify that students do highlight professional skills andcompetences (37.2%) though they have rather general ideas what it means tothink linguistically. Therefore, they focus mostly on language particulars

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(e.g. analysis of words, etc.), but only few of them mentioned causes andconsequences on different stages of language development, as well as, theanalysis of language structure. 28% of students perceived the idea to thinklike a linguist literary, thus referring to the process of thinking itself (logical,objective, irrational, etc.). The others put emphasis on speaking activity(21,1%), making reference to general speaking skills (pronounce wordscorrectly, or being understood by people), which may testify to their greatconcerns about foreign language learning. Another issue indicated in thepapers was students’ approach to a profession of a linguist through the prismof language teaching (to notice mistakes in the speech, etc.) – professionalcommunication skills (13,7%). Thus, the image of the linguist seemed to beblurred, being a kind of a “melting pot”.

The final reflective essay shows that students changed their vision of“what it means to think like a linguist” significantly. Still, theabovementioned domains remain, however the quantitative analysis testifiesto rearrangement within each group: linguist’s profession proper (64.1%),foreign language teaching (17.3%), foreign language learning (12.8%) andgeneric skills (5.8%). The qualitative data study indicate that the studentstouch upon a greater amount of professional spheres peculiar for a linguistand their view of language research became more complicated. The attentionshould be also paid to employment of specific linguistic terminology instudent final answers, which may point to their professional growth as well.

As a result of working in class and preparing their group projectsstudents have developed a much better understanding of languageinvestigation, which facilitated their being more specific about theprofession of a linguist. As indicated in the essays most of students hadvaluable experience, since they learned to perceive the controversialproblems from a perspective of various linguistic approaches, discuss themost essential issues for their presentations, hence learning not only aboutthe language changes, but also considering the best method to investigatethem. Work in small groups engaged more students into participation andpreparation for seminars since even those who are less interested and used tolag behind had to make their own contribution to teamwork, which promotedto such notable changes in perception of a linguist within a very short periodof intervention.

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