LLDSA Hosts Successful Linguistics and TESOL Symposium
What started four years ago as a simple presentation of papers written for a sociolinguistics class has blossomed into an inclusive showcase appealing to scholars and students alike. SJSU undergraduate students, graduate students, alumni, and outside academics gathered in late October of 2015 to share ideas, present research, and expand their learning through thoughtful discussion in the LLD Student Association’s Linguistics and TESOL Symposium.
Joined by speakers from Singapore, the University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (UAJK) in Pakistan, and SFSU, the Symposium put on by the LLD Student Association was a huge success. Conference organizers Dr. Roula Svorou and graduate student Juliet Solheim hope that the growth and achievement will continue in the years to come.
“We hope to get our students involved in the idea of presenting, and to work when they do their papers with the presentations in mind, and to want to do that,” Dr. Roula Svorou elaborates. “That’s one of our goals — to motivate them to do quality work so that they can be invited, and pass the scrutiny of abstract submission and conference presentation.”
By taking part in the process of applying for and participating in the Symposium, students gain valuable confidence, experience, and perceptions that they can apply to their own work during their time at SJSU. “I think it’s a great opportunity for them to present their work beyond the classes for which the work was written,” Dr. Svorou explains. “As the years have gone by, students have become a bit more ambitious about the whole event.”
And with the Symposium growing to include more and more speakers every year, students have a lot to aspire to. With growing interest from parties outside of SJSU, Juliet Solheim anticipates a greater regional presence at the Symposium in the coming years, and hopes to include more speakers from nearby universities. Greater interest leads to more diverse presentations, as illustrated by October’s turnout, with presenters discussing topics ranging from the language of cricket commentary to creating a digital collection of written texts using Python, a programming language. These presentations, in turn, inspire students to look at things in ways they had never considered, exposing them to topics for future study and shaping students’ perspectives on their current research.
Even though some presentations branched out into territory unknown to most SJSU students, there were many similarities in the research presented, even between local students and visiting presenters from UAJK. “It’s interesting to see that, in linguistics, everyone is doing the same sort of work,” Juliet Solheim remarked. “Two of the guest presenters focused on TESOL, which is very much a part of LLD here.”
With 2016 being the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the SJSU LLD department, there are sure to be some big plans in the works for the next Symposium. One thing is for sure: LLD faculty and staff are proud of their highly competent, motivated students, and look forward to working with them to help foster expression and communication across the LLD community as a whole.
To keep up with LLDSA events and news, be sure to visit their blog – http://blogs.sjsu.edu/linguistics/
By Kaitlynn Magnuson
