LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

[LAGB) Audit of grammatical knowledge

The (LAGB) Linguistics Association of Great Britain would like to invite those of you who teach first-year undergraduates to take part in a very brief audit of school-leavers' (explicit) grammatical knowledge. The audit uses a short two-part questionnaire which was first used in 1986, then again in 1997, so the results will reveal long-term trends as well as informing your teaching.

Nominations for UCML Linguistics Exec vacancy
There is currently a vacancy for a representative of Linguistics on the Executive Committee of the University Council of Modern Languages and we would welcome nominations to fill this vacancy.

Threat to Area Studies at Durham
Durham University has recommended to its Senate and Executive Committee that the Department of East Asian Studies be abolished, with the last intake of students in October 2003.

English Language at undergraduate level: its identity as a subject in UK Higher Education in the 21st century

A-Level Linguistics: a proposal (26 Oct 05)
Event date: 26 October, 2005
Location: Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, Room 691

English language and linguistics: from 'A' to BA (31 Oct 2003)
Event date: 31 October, 2003
Location: CILT,

Teaching, Learning and Assessing Linguistics
Event date: 4 May, 2001
Location: CILT, London

Web-based learning and teaching for languages, Linguistics and Area Studies (Beginners)
Event date: 30 March, 2001
Location: Unversity of Westminster

Resources and techniques for teaching Linguistics
Event date: 20 June, 2003
Location: CILT, London

Issues in Postgraduate Training for Linguistics
Event date: 6 December, 2002
Location: CiLT, London

Benchmarking Linguistics: Open Meeting
Event date: 20 April, 2001
Location: CILT, London

Postgraduate Information Day: Linguistics
Event date: 29 November, 2001
Location: CILT, London

Teaching Linguistics to Students of Foreign Languages
Event date: 7 December, 2001
Location: Salford University

Linguistics and the Web
Event date: 4 July, 2002
Location: University of the West of England, Bristol

Languages and Linguistics Postgraduate Information Day
Event date: 26 November, 2002
Location: CiLT, Covent Garden, London

Early English Books online
From the first book published in English through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare, this incomparable collection now contains about 100,000 of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. Libraries possessing this collection find they are able to fulfill the most exhaustive research requirements of graduate scholars subject areas, including: English literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, theology, music, fine arts, education, mathematics, and science.

Linguistics: Quizzes
These quizzes are designed for students at the early stages of their Linguistics progamme or for non-specialist Linguistics students. They have been designed using Hot Potatoes authorware (http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/halfbaked/) which can be used to create cloze, mix, match, multiple-choice exercises as well as crosswords and quizzes. The materials were authored by (and are copyright to) the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of the West of England, Bristol.

Phonetics: for Students of Modern Languages
An introductory phonetics course for students of French, German and Spanish

Linguistics: Item Bank
A bank of multiple choice questions that can be used to examine first year linguistics students. Some 69 HEIs currently offer courses which include Linguistics as a named portion of an undergraduate degree, and most of these run a general introductory course - often called An Introduction to Language and Linguistics, or some variation on this theme. These courses attract large numbers of students, and therefore represent a significant marking burden for first year teachers. At the same time, these introductory courses often cover much the same ground in different institutions. These factors suggest that there is a strong case for sharing examination questions at this level. The fact that many institutions now use multiple choice questions in first year examinations opens up the possibility of establishing a national item bank for linguistics. A bank of this sort would allow institutions to set first year examinations with formally defined characteristics, and thus help to standardise achievement at this level.

Linguistics and the Arts and Humanities Data Service

The explosion of access to electronic texts and information about languages and cultures on the Internet offers wonderful new resources for linguists. However, the texts available often present themselves to the researcher as a bewildering choice of unfiltered data. The Oxford Text Archive (OTA) is centrally funded as the centre of expertise in the creation and use of electronic texts for languages, literature and linguistics in the UK academic community, as part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS). This paper describes the ways in which the OTA (http://www.ota.ahds.ac.uk ) is currently working in particular to improve the service which it provides specifically for people working in the subject field of linguistics in the UK Higher and Further Education communities. The AHDS is a UK national service funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB). Organised via an Executive at King's College London, and five service providers from various Higher Education institutions, the AHDS aids the discovery, creation and preservation of digital collections in the arts and humanities.

Where can I study Linguistics in the UK?