What’s the Use of Linguistics? Pre-Service English Teachers’ Beliefs towards Language Use and Variation
THE CURRENT STUDY
Subjects and data collection
At bottom, we wanted to see if the group of students who had taken no linguistics courses (the Pre-linguistics group) differed in their answers from those students who had taken one or more linguistics courses (the Post-linguistics group). Data labeled as the Pre-linguistics group were collected via questionnaire at the beginning of English 2651/3755 before students had any exposure to linguistics. Data for the Post-linguistics group were collected in two ways: at the end of 2651/3755, after the Pre-linguistics group had been exposed to linguistics and in other linguistics courses for which 2651/3755 are prerequisite: sociolinguistics, language and culture, language acquisition, TESOL methods, etc. Total number of responses was 269: 97 pre- and 172 post linguistics.
All these classes are offered in our department, and although they have been staffed by a number of instructors, during the two years in question, due to scheduling vagaries and faculty leaves, all the sections in which the students were tested happened to be taught by either of us. Let us emphasize that in the pilot study, which shows roughly the same results, data were collected in classes taught by two more colleagues, thus ruling out the possibility that the changes recorded in the data are due to our charming personalities.
The teaching of the introductory courses was entirely disassociated from the questions on the survey; none of the questions was ever used on a test, or quiz, and no classroom activities were directly planned to address these issues, although class discussion, if initiated by the students, could address the issues and relevant attitudinal complexes. This was not done out of any particular political or pedagogical reasons, or because of an attempt at experimental control, but simply because time pressure to cover the material on the syllabus precluded extended discussion of attitudes.
