Whamit!

Dear friends of MIT Linguistics,

Sadly, we have been on hiatus for some weeks.  We are excited to share the news that will now be publishing a number of backdated issues to catch up with all we’ve been doing at MIT Linguistics in the meantime — and that we are now back! That said, January is always a quiet month at MIT (no regular classes, reading groups, or talks), so you might not hear from us for a while once again.  But once the new semester starts in February 2025, you will be hearing from us regularly, as before.

-the Editors

Speaker: Maya Honda, Christopher Legerme, Cora Lesure, and Lorenzo Pinton (MIT)
Title: MIT Linguistics reaches out: Making the field’s biggest questions accessible to its youngest stakeholders
Time: Thursday, October 17, 12:30 PM
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: Language is essential to being human and to understanding ourselves. Yet, Linguistics, the science of language, is not part of the school curriculum in the US; students are rarely exposed to Linguistics prior to going to university. Addressing this school-university gap could open up access and increase diversity in the field. To meet this need, linguists at MIT and across the country are doing educational outreach to introduce Linguistics to middle school and high school students.

In this presentation, those of us involved in outreach will discuss our work collaborating with one another and with partner teachers to design and teach Linguistics lessons for middle schoolers and high schoolers. We will discuss a range of topics, including our belief that studying Linguistics offers students the opportunity to develop scientific thinking skills, while gaining an understanding of the rule-governed nature of language and cultivating metalinguistic awareness. We will also address some of the key challenges of making big questions in the field (and possible answers) conceptually accessible to students, and the approaches that we have used to teach students in different grades and from different educational backgrounds, remotely and in-person in formal and informal venues. In addition to looking back at the history of this work in the Department, we will look ahead to possible future directions.