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Furthering Student Engagement: Lab Sections in Introductory Linguistics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Kaitlyn Harrigan ,
Anya Hogoboom  and
Leslie Cochrane
Kaitlyn Harrigan*
Affiliation:
William & Mary
Anya Hogoboom*
Affiliation:
William & Mary
Leslie Cochrane*
Affiliation:
William & Mary
*
[kharrigan@wm.edu]
[ahogoboom@wm.edu]
[lecochrane@wm.edu]
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Abstract

This article describes a pedagogical innovation implemented in our introductory linguistics course. We supplement classic theory building with a series of labs, deployed through a co-requisite ‘lab’ course that meets weekly. This builds on two previously established teaching strategies: the implementation of hands-on activities in linguistics classrooms, and the lab sections traditionally utilized in the natural sciences. The labs aim to fulfill three goals: (i) to better represent the field of linguistics in our introductory course, (ii) to help students solidify theories and connect them to the real world, and (iii) to teach practical skills for linguistics research and more broadly.

Keywords

pedagogyteachinglab courseproblem-based learning (PBL)process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL)introduction to linguistics

Information

Type
Teaching Linguistics
Information
Language , Volume 98 , Issue 4 , December 2022 , pp. e199 - e223
Copyright
Copyright © 2022 Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

We are grateful to many individuals who contributed to the development and execution of the labs presented in this article. First, the Linguistics Program at William & Mary, who have been supportive of this restructuring of our introductory course. We are especially thankful to Dan Parker, Talbot Taylor, and Rachel Varra, who helped to develop and/or run several of the lab activities described here. We are also extremely thankful to the students who have served as lab teaching assistants, without whom we could not have executed this innovation: Megan Rouch, Rebecca Smyder, Abram Clear, Kate Weis, Elizabeth Maneval, Alex Johnson, Alice Benjamin, and Caitlin McCaslin. We are also grateful to the Charles Center and the Center for the Liberal Arts and William & Mary for providing the opportunity to participate in the ‘May Seminar’ program in the summer of 2019, which allowed us time and space to develop several of the lab activities presented here. Finally, we are thankful to all of the students who have participated in the introductory linguistics course over the past six semesters, whose feedback, comments, questions, and enthusiasm have helped us improve the labs over this time. We are also thankful to several people who contributed to the development of this article. We are thankful to the audience at the Linguistic Society of America's 2021 annual meeting for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this work. We would like to thank Winnie Hogoboom, whose thorough comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript led to a much stronger version of the paper. Finally, we are grateful to two anonymous referees and the editorial team at Language for their incredibly helpful comments and suggestions on several drafts of this manuscript.

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