Goals for Student Learning in the Linguistics Major

• Develop appreciation of general properties of language, including
  • systematicity of language
  • how language can spread geographically; how languages change over time
  • common cross-linguistic patterns; language universals
  • scientific importance of all languages/dialects
  • properties of signed as well as spoken languages
  • understanding the potential effects of social factors
  • value of describing language as a formal system
• Learn ways to study language in a scientific way
• gathering data and making observations
• hypothesis formation and testing
• making predictions about possible vs. impossible patterns
• empirical advantages of working with large amounts of data
• Develop competence in linguistic analysis, including
• analysis of sound, word, and sentence structures of individual languages
• modelling language as a formal system
• Improve general academic skills
• writing skills
• reasoning skills
• ability to focus on/pinpoint a problem

Assessment
Ways in which undergraduate learning is regularly assessed

• Course-specific assessment
• Oral and/or written work by students
• Student self-evaluations of learning
• Peer evaluations of student work
• Periodic surveys of majors
• Honors theses (Ling majors), senior project (Roling majors)