Phonetics, Phonology, Teaching
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One of the most important things that instructors can do is to make our implicit assumptions as explicit as possible. We need to identify those academic skills that are rarely taught, and which we too often assume our students will already have. In linguistics, these include discipline-specific reading skills, interpreting visualizations, and statistical literacy. Some links and tools are available on my Resources page, and I am always looking for more areas that deserve attention.
At HHU, I have been part of two “E-learning Förderfonds” grants to develop standalone didactic materials. The first sought to address a problem in English Linguistics at HHU: students in intermediate and advanced courses needed revision of phonetics and phonology material from the introductory course. The grant allowed Lara Rüter and Julika Weber to develop online review units, which are now publicly available on OSF and ORCA.nrw. The second, currently underway, aims to develop online tutorials for making and analyzing recordings in the phonetics lab, in order to more easily involve students in research and primary data collection.
Linguistics is unusually well-suited for students to engage in original research from very early in their careers. Just by knowing a language, students can already access the data necessary to test many ideas in linguistics. The widespread availability of corpora and the relative accessibility of many experimental techniques put more seemingly complex methods in the hands of undergraduates.
Engaging in research allows students to naturally develop a wide range of skills, from critical analysis to formulating new ideas, theorizing to empirical testing, collaboration to communication. I particularly recommend the “CARE” framework: Collaborative Active-Learning Research-Based Education (Bjorndahl & Gibson 2022).
Undergraduate students can be brought into teaching through a variety of structures. Some pursue individual research, such as a thesis. Others work in laboratories, ideally with robust training and organization (like those at the NeSST Lab!). Another option are “CUREs” (Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences), regular courses designed around conducting research (Auchincloss et al. 2014). Read the (abstracts from a panel on undergrad research)[https://cageissler.github.io/files/GURT2026_Colloquium_abstracts.pdf] I was a part of at GURT 2026!
What is actually involved in an undergraduate degree in linguistics? My former student Caroline Serenyi and I looked at the requirements for the linguistics major at all US institutions where one is offered. See the materials from our presentation on curricula at GURT 2026. We’re continuing this work in collaboration with Katherine Martin. Some important notes:
F = Fall, S = Spring, M = Summer, W = Winter Semesters marked with asterisk (*)represent when I developed and offered a course for the first time.
Feel free to reach out about any of these courses! Having developed a bunch of courses, I’m always happy to share materials and compare notes.
From F2015 through S2020, I taught weekly (or more) at the Branford College Pottery Studio, serving as studio manager and a Graduate Affiliate of Branford College.