ENG6202 Lee 

ENG 6202: Introduction to the Graduate Study of Linguistics

Spring 2011: Thursday 2:00-5:00

For any graduate students in English linguistics, there are two important skills to master, reading
and writing. Graduate courses require you to read textbooks and articles to help you understand
the content of the discipline. They also require you to write papers because you convey what
you know and advance what you discovered through writing. Recent research shows that
writing helps enhance your reading skills. When reading and writing develop in tandem,
therefore, you not only learn the content of language studies but also learn methods by which
these contents are developed.

This course is designed to give you practical and concrete experiences with academic reading
and writing processes that are critical in these graduate courses. Throughout the course, I will
engage you in a variety of tasks such as article analyses, draft writings, group paper and thesis
writing to guide you in a step-by-step fashion. This will help you write term paper, thesis and
research paper.

Course Goals
By the end of this course, you will be able to
 Know and carry out library & on-line research to locate and use relevant academic
resources.
 Learn the convention of academic research in language studies.
 Read academic papers in language study and know what makes them good.
 Analyze how the authors of published works read and write (e.g., how these authors use
prior research, carry out their own research or theorize their works and do write up).
 Know and apply several research methods academic writers use (e.g., empirical
research, theorizing, content reviews, thesis or dissertation writing)
 Carry out a small scale project and pull together your research findings into persuasive
and cogent academic paper.
 Develop sufficient reading and writing skills to carry out Masters’ thesis or dissertation
research.

Who can take this course?

Any graduate students in English department, particularly those who are new to the program
and have to read and write in the following areas, but not limited to, linguistics, education,
applied linguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, English
language teaching, and etc. You also have to demonstrate your commitment to the learning
process and to display patience required at the graduate level.

Instructor Information
Yo-An Lee, Ph.D
British & American Language & Literature
http://hompi.sogang.ac.kr/yoanlee
If you have questions, contact me via email yoanlee@sogang.ac.kr

Readings
• Swales, J., & Feak, C. (2004). Academic writing for graduate students (2 edition). Ann Arbor:
The University of Michigan Press.
ENG6202 Lee 

Reading Lists

(Subject to change)

Reading Package

 Macaulay, M. (2006). Surviving linguistics (pp. 13-24). Somerville, VA: Cascadilla Press
 Perry, F. (2005). Research in applied linguistics: Becoming a discerning consumer
(pp. 41-54) Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
 Gay, L.R., & Airasian, P. (2003). Educational research (7th ed)(pp. 277-286). Prentice
Hall: Columbus, OH
 Creswell, J. (2002). Educational research (PP.414-418). Prentice Hall: Columbus, OH.
 Glesne, C., & Peshkin, A. (1999). Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction
(pp.13-37). New York: Longman.
 Johnstone, B. (2000). Qualitative methods in sociolingusitics (pp. 20-38). New York:
Oxford University Press.
 Peters, R. (1997). Getting what you came for: The smart student’s guide to earning a
master’s or PH.D (pp.175-207). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
 Patten, M. (2005). Understanding research methods (5th ed)(pp. 97-120). Glendale, CA:
Pyrczak Publishing.
 Elbow, P. (1981). Some essentials. In Writing with power: Techniques for mastering the
writing process (pp. 3-46). New York: Oxford University Press.

Group Paper Choice 1

 Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct: How the mind creates language (pp.12-43).
New York: Perennial.
 Sampson, G. (2005). The 'language instinct' debate: Revised edition (pp.1-25). New
York: Coninuum.

Group Paper Choice 2

 Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213-238.
 Hyland, K., & Tse, P. (2007). Is there an "Academic Vocabulary"? TESOL Quarterly,
41(2), 235-254.

Group Paper Choice 3

 Nassaji, H., & Wells, G. (2000). What's the use of 'Triadic dialogue?’: An investigation of
teacher-student interaction. Applied Linguistics, 21(3), 376-406.
 Lee, Y. (2007). Third turn position in teacher talk: Contingency and the work of teaching.
Journal of Pragmatics, 39(6), 1204-1230.
ENG6202 Lee 

Major Assignments

Attendance & Participation (10%)

Short Assignments (30%)

The short assignments are designed to check your progress on your reading assignments. At
regular interval, I will ask you to write about 200 words on the assigned reading(s). You will
have 6-9 short writing assignments throughout the semester. Most of short writings will be in-
class. Doing short writing this way helps you develop their writing skills dramatically and
become strategic readers. Details will be announced later.

Action-Research Project (25%: Research question 5% & Poster Session 5% Included)

This assignment provides you with an opportunity to carry out a small scale and informal
research on any language issue that interests you. This project will have you go through several
stages of the research process that includes, generating research questions, collecting data,
doing analyses of the data and presenting the findings. The types of methods you can use
include language analysis, theoretical reviews, surveys, observation, interviewing, and
document analyses. Your research does NOT have to be a big scale; a small scale research
with limited data is also highly encouraged. The point of the project is to give you a concrete
practice for writing thesis-oriented paper. It is crucial for you to pursue one question/problem in
depth, which will sharpen your critical thinking skill and help you become more informed in
writing academic paper in language studies. Details will be announced later.

Group Paper (10%)

One of the biggest challenges in writing academic paper is to develop skills to construct a
thesis-oriented writing. In fact, the lack of thesis is the single most prevalent problem with
students’ writings; the source of the problem is not just the lack of writing skills but also
inadequate reading skills. This assignment is to have you experience a thesis-oriented reading
and writing process in a focused way. For this task, you will be asked to choose one set of
article among linguistics, applied linguistics, corpus analysis and/or pragmatics. Then, you will
form a group of 3 or 4 people and write a position paper together in a 2-3 page long paper (500-
600 words). The articles you will use will be available in the cyber space. You will be given
some class time to work collaboratively.

Final Paper (25%)

This assignment is to help you start thinking about your master thesis concretely. Your task is to
demonstrate your readiness for using primary sources in order to make evidence based
argument through writing. Writing offers the best resource to help you accomplish the high level
of sophisticated knowledge and reflective capacity. Be sure to remember that this final paper is
not about showing what you read but about displaying your problem-solving skill through
argument and analysis. The minimum length of the paper is 6 pages in a double spaced format
(1500-1600 words) excluding the title page, reference and/or appendix. Details will be
announced later.

Students with disabilities

If you have a disability which requires accommodation in order for you to realize your potential
in this course, please see me or email me as soon as possible to notify me of the
accommodation you need.