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Learning to work and collaborate on an interdisciplinary team in the Living Language course has been indispensable to Paris Gappmayr's graduate education.
Gappmayr took the course in 2019, and is now a doctoral student in Speech, Language, Hearing Sciences at Boston University. Her research interests include sign language acquisition and modality-specific vs. modality-general properties of language. She shares her main takeaways from the course and advice for students considering taking it.
Read about Paris' final project, which conducted research about UBC and other universities' ASL offerings, as well as student interest in such courses, here.
What did you learn in Living Language that you use now (in your studies or everyday life)?
Living Language synthesized a lot of knowledge I had accumulated during my Speech Sciences degree into one course - I think it was a great capstone course. However, the biggest takeaway I have from the class wasn’t the course material itself, but the skills I learned about working with students and researchers from different programs. Most of the classes I took at UBC were with students who had a similar background to me, so there was a shared foundation of knowledge; in Living Language, I learned how to work with people who didn’t have the same research background as me.
It’s important to be able to both communicate my own research to others without a language studies background, but also to learn from what other researchers have to say and to respect and honor their perspectives.
The ability to collaborate and work on an interdisciplinary team has been indispensable in my graduate education, and I’m glad I was able to hone those skills in Living Language.
What was your main takeaway from the course?
There is still so much we don’t know about language and how it interacts with culture, politics, art, etc., and the only hope we have in understanding these concepts and their intersections lies in diverse, interdisciplinary, collaborative work.
What advice would you give to students considering taking the course?
I truly think that any student at UBC could benefit from this course.
If you are already familiar with language studies research, you can benefit from working with students from a diverse range of backgrounds. If you are unfamiliar with linguistics/language research, then you can benefit from learning about how language influences and interacts with your discipline, as well as offering perspectives about your own field of study. Throughout the semester, you’ll get out of the classroom, learn from many different guest presenters, and collaborate with other students. I highly recommend it!
Interested in taking the course this year? Find out more information and sign up for a registration alert at www.languagesciences.ubc.ca/course