* This is a non-scheduled post. In other words, HOT OFF THE PRESS!!! *
It's the midpoint of the semester and there's a one week break. Some people call it recess week, which is actually the official term, but others refer to it as "reading week" instead because immediately after this week come the midterm tests.
Naturally, recess week is usually used for studying for the midterms and catching up on various assignments. I have been occupied by such pursuits too for the past few days, but I felt the need to take a bit of time off today to write this post. I was going bonkers having to read and write academic (read: lousy) writing and wanted a change, if only for a couple of hours.
So let's talk about what I've been up to over the past several weeks.
I mentioned before that I'm taking 6 modules this semester. My favourite one is EL1101E: The Nature of Language. The lecturer is very good and she brings across all the important information in a clear and organised manner. I also love the interesting content. Just as a taster of what the module is about:
How do you know what are possible words in English? Some words simply don't sound right to us if we are native speakers but linguists need a system that's more concrete than that. The rules governing sound patterns that can be present in a particular language are called phonotactic constraints. An example of a phonotactic rule in English is: In a complex onset, the first consonant with the exception of [s] must be followed by a liquid or glide. What does that mean? When a word has at least two consonant sounds at the start, the second sound must always be the sound of the letters "l" ("place"), "r" ("fragile"), "w" ("quick": made up of the sounds "k", "w", "i", and "k", phonetically transcribed as [kwɪk]), or "y" ("curious": "k", "y", "u", "r", "i", "uh", "s", phonetically transcribed as [kjuːrɪəs]), unless the first sound is the sound of "s", in which case there is no restrictions on what the second sound can be ("spoke", "smoke", "scale", "snail", "slide", "swear").
Isn't it exciting!? You'll never think about English the same way ever again after taking this module.
On the flip side, I don't really like FAS1101: Writing Academically and GER1000: Quantitative Reasoning. I feel that they were made compulsory with good intentions but something got messed up along the way and the whole module became irrelevant and a chore. For FAS1101, it focuses too much on argumentation and philosophical debate. It fails to cover what in my opinion are more vital topics like how to do referencing properly. A couple of online lessons are devoted to this but it's not enough because referencing is full of intricacies that could trip up even the most careful writer, and yet making a mistake could land said writer in hot soup for academic dishonesty. The module is also too narrow in scope: not all writing done in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences conforms to the "thesis statement + supporting arguments" mould. I know for a fact that very little of such writing is done in the field of psychology, which is dominated by journal articles reporting the results of studies and which use the "Introduction + Methods + Results + Discussion" format. In communications and other subject areas, writing tends to be more discursive rather than argumentative in nature. FAS1101 would be more useful if it was designed to acknowledge these differences and spend a few weeks on each type of writing, rather than using up the entire semester on building a single piece of argumentative essay.
As for GER1000, it could just be that I'm an arts student so I struggle with mathematical concepts. But I really think the module kind of misses the point of why it exists in the first place. As claimed during the first lecture, the module is supposed to equip us with the skills and knowledge to critically evaluate reports of findings and data that we may encounter in our daily lives. For example, if we see a newspaper article claiming that "Eating more eggplant boosts libido", we can use what we have learned in GER1000 to decide whether or not to believe the conclusions drawn in the report. Well, so far, I've learned how to calculate Risk Ratio and Odds Ratio, Symmetry Rule, Simpson's Paradox... But nothing that really helps me to, you know, decide whether or not to believe what I see! All those fancy stuff I mentioned are only useful in the back end, when you have all the necessary raw information to work with, but not to everyday consumers. Oh wait, they taught us the maxim that goes "Association/Correlation is not causation" but I could have told you that three years ago, when I was barely into my first year of polytechnic. And even non-psychology polytechnic students learn it. It's old news.
Funnily enough, the two modules that I'm most emotionally invested in, NM1101E: Communications, New Media, and Society, and PL1101E: Introduction to Psychology, are kind of non-descript. NM1101E has cool content that's relevant and up to date with real life, and PL1101E is a good old-fashioned "memorise a ton of facts" psychology module. I have not much more to say about them except for one gripe: I feel a bit lost and anxious about how to study for these two modules. The NM1101E lecturer doesn't really follow the textbook and adds in a lot of his own content, which is good. But I can't help but wonder what will come out in the test and examination. Will he ask about the extra things he covered during the lectures but which are not in the book? On the other hand, the PL1101E lecturer sticks closely to the structure of the text, but picks out a few key points (or what he calls "learning outcomes") from each chapter to cover in depth during the lectures. Does this mean he will set questions based around these learning outcomes, or should students just boil the textbook into soup and drink it?
I don't understand this university stuff. I'm so confused.
Anyway, these are my thoughts on my first one-sixteenth of my university education. Only 15 more similar segments to go...
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