Psychology of Language (LING 315) is an introductory course in psycholinguistics. Students learn to examine how language production and comprehension happen in the human mind.
The course attracts many Linguistics and Cognitive Science majors, but students from other programs take it as well, because there is only one prerequisite: Introduction to Linguistics (LING 220). Students in LING 315 have several options for the format of their final project. One option is to write an 鈥榚xplainer鈥� article about one of the topics in the course.
The explainer article has to be aimed at a non-expert audience who might not have any background in the topic at all. This is a harder task than you might think! It is more difficult to write in plain language for a broad audience than to rely on specialized jargon familiar to a more narrow audience.
The Department made the decision to publish a collection of these LING 315 Explainer Articles, because they are simply too good to go unshared.
Athena writes about the mental processes behind cognate words 鈥� those words that overlap in their meaning, spelling and maybe sound between two languages because they share a common historical origin. Her paper is aimed at language learners.
Tyne explores Tip-of-the-Tongue states, during which you have the feeling that you know what word you want to say, but can鈥檛 quite articulate it. If you have ever been in this situation before (and it happens to just about everyone), then this article will be of interest.
Isabelle examines how psycholinguistics can inform the creation of Constructed Languages (ConLangs). Using her own constructed language as an example, she explains several key models and findings regarding spoken word recognition.
Veronica writes about dyslexia, including its underpinnings in the human brain, with an intended audience of teachers.
Angela writes about the development of reading aloud and silently, and the differences in cognitive processes between the two reading modes. The article is aimed at parents and teachers.