Stress

Syllables – A Myth of Universality in Linguistics

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Neurodiversity Crowd 2

Stripped to its very basics, rules of English phonetics can seem pretty universal among speakers. We can all distinguish between consonants like b and m, we can all hear the difference between a whisper and a shout, and we can all divide speech into syllables, even if it might require clapping our hands a bit.

Except that last part might not be as universal as you might think.

I was 8 years old when we were taught syllables in school. While all the other kids would clap along and split words like pea/nut and foot/ball, I wouldn’t. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t hear what they heard. I couldn’t hear syllables. At age 27, I … ↪

How do learners make use of foreign language learning materials?

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Title illustration

How do learners make use of foreign language learning materials? This was the question that I set out to answer in my ph.d. thesis. Along the way, I learned to use to methods for evaluating usability of a product (think-aloud protocols and constructive interaction), learned how to analyze the results quantitatively (which was scary), and found new ways to look at the data qualitatively (conversation analysis). Especially through detailed qualitative analyses of how our study participants made use of the learning materials in our usability test settings, I learned more about the sequential organization of such sessions, how instructions are realized, and how different visual and other aspects of the learning material drafts were made relevant.

In this blog post, … ↪