Resources - For Students

You will find that many of the ideas covered in this course are new to you. The ways of thinking about language and how it is produced and understood will be unfamiliar, even if you have already studied English Grammar. Psycholinguistics focuses more upon the language producer than upon the language that is produced.

So give the course time. Think about the material and try to trace connections between one idea and another. The course includes a number of activities which are designed to make you think and reach your own conclusions. The basic assumption is that these conclusions will result from extended discussion in a class. But it need not be the case. The self-discovery approach that is adopted means that the course is ideal for somebody who wants to study on their own - out of personal interest or to supplement a more general Linguistics or Speech and Communication course.

If the topics covered are unfamiliar, you may feel uncertain about how well you have understood the ideas that you have studied. To support you, this website will provide a series of review exercises based upon the sections of the course. These will enable you to check your understanding of ideas and of terminology. They will be especially useful to those who study the course partly or wholly on their own.

RELI Psycholinguistics has three important features.

* It is based on discovery techniques. You are encouraged to analyse data and to reflect upon evidence. In this way, it is hoped, you will achieve a deeper understanding of the issues raised. You will not simply acquire a set of facts, but will learn to think in the way that Psycholinguists do.

It is important to take time to examine the material with care. In many of the sections tagged as Activity, you will be asked to reflect on and discuss the evidence or findings obtained by researchers. You will present your own ideas to the whole class and will discuss alternative versions before you go on to learn the established view. It will be useful if you prepare some of the activities in advance, by way of homework. This will have the added advantage of equipping you with the right 'mind set' ahead of material which you may find new and challenging.

* It is flexibly structured. A linear progression through RELI: Psycholinguistics takes you through three cycles, in which increasing demands are made. Each cycle covers the same twelve major topics in Psycholinguistics, and, as the book proceeds from Section A to B to C, the coverage of the topics becomes more detailed. However, the possibility is also open to you of focusing on a single topic and exploring it fully before going on to another. To do this, you simply need to follow the system of numbering: thus sections A1, B1, C1 and D1 introduce and extend a single topic (the goals of psycholinguistics). The same is true of Sections A2, B2, C2 and D2, and so on. Psycholinguistics falls into a number of clearly demarcated areas; and you may feel that you gain a sharper picture if you proceed in this way.

Much will depend upon your teacher's judgement of how to present the material most effectively. But you may be asked to say which approach you prefer. Try to think which learning style you feel most comfortable with. Are you a localistic learner who likes to build up knowledge a little at a time? Or are you a holistic learner who prefers to master a whole topic before moving on.

* It promotes psycholinguistic enquiry beyond the seminar room.
a. At the end of almost every Section C, the course describes a simple experiment which you yourself can easily undertake with small numbers of fellow students. These experiments have been designed so that they do not demand sophisticated measuring or testing equipment. They are optional and the course material is not dependent upon them. However, even if your time for studying Psycholinguistic is limited, it is worthwhile doing at least one so that you get a feel for what Psycholinguistic research is like.

b. Also at the end of every Section C, there are suggestions for assignment titles. Of these, at least one encourages you to extend your area of enquiry well beyond the ideas which have been taught in the course, usually by reading a specialist account.

c. Section D offers a series of readings from leading names in the field. You should try to make sure that you do these readings on your own, to support and extend the ideas that you cover in Section C. Your teacher may wish to follow up the readings with class discussion which critically examines the ideas of the writers.