Essential of Linguistics

eBook

English language

Published March 15, 2018 by Maricopa Open Digital Press.

(1 review)

This Open Educational Resource (OER) brings together Open Access content from around the web and enhances it with dynamic video lectures about the core areas of theoretical linguistics (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics), supplemented with discussion of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic findings. Essentials of Linguistics is suitable for any beginning learner of linguistics but is primarily aimed at the Canadian learner, focusing on Canadian English for learning phonetic transcription, and discussing the status of Indigenous languages in Canada. Drawing on best practices for instructional design, Essentials of Linguistics is suitable for blended classes, traditional lecture classes, and for self-directed learning. No prior knowledge of linguistics is required.

1 edition

arensb reviewed Essential of Linguistics by Catherine Anderson

Review of 'Essential of Linguistics' on 'Storygraph'

2 stars

The material is interesting. But as a book, it’s either poorly put together, or at best unfinished.

Every chapter includes a link to a video. This makes sense if the book started as a collection of recordings of Anderson’s classroom lectures. And given the subject material, it makes perfect sense to include videos. But it quickly becomes apparent that the videos are the preferred way of teaching the material, and the text is an afterthought:

After each video come review exercises, and only then does the text part of the unit appear. This is a transcript of the video. There has been little or no attempt at adapting the transcript to a text medium, since often the video transcript refers to illustrations that appear in the video, but not in the text version.

This is especially painfully obvious in the last chapter, in which Anderson interviews a Mohawk speaker. The …

The material is interesting. But as a book, it’s either poorly put together, or at best unfinished.

Every chapter includes a link to a video. This makes sense if the book started as a collection of recordings of Anderson’s classroom lectures. And given the subject material, it makes perfect sense to include videos. But it quickly becomes apparent that the videos are the preferred way of teaching the material, and the text is an afterthought:

After each video come review exercises, and only then does the text part of the unit appear. This is a transcript of the video. There has been little or no attempt at adapting the transcript to a text medium, since often the video transcript refers to illustrations that appear in the video, but not in the text version.

This is especially painfully obvious in the last chapter, in which Anderson interviews a Mohawk speaker. The text of that chapter includes every hesitation and repetition, every little tic that peppers speech, but that gets edited out of prose.

If this book is intended as a complement to a syllabus or something, it would have been nice to say so in the preface. Currently, as a textbook, it is lacking.