With the first week of classes over, this is how it went:

Day 1 -- Applied Linguistics
Raised hand in class. Asked what is 'L1' and 'L2'. Lecturer looked horrified. "First language and second language!" Am sure the lecturer wondered what on earth I was doing there if I didn't even know something so basic. Was in complete agreement with her.

Day 2 -- Structure of English
Received my very first assignment, due in March. Out of the four questions, there's one I would particularly love to do... if I only knew what it meant.

English prosodic features are sometimes arbitrary and sometimes obligatory. Discuss.

Why Week Two finds me back for more punishment
Okay, so there were redeeming factors. I'm fascinated by all the different branches of linguistics, and when my lecturers talk about how we learn language, how we make sounds and put them together to form words, how words can carry several meanings, how the same word is pronounced differently when spoken in different corners of the world... I could sit there and listen for hours!

There is a guy in one of my classes who has either done some mega reading up on the subject, or comes from a linguistics background. He raises his hand in the middle of lectures to ask, "Isn't that Chomsky's theory?" and the lecturer replies, "Well, in a way, because Chomsky said... blah blah blah... but Chomsky also thought that... blah blah blah... which is not really... blah blah blah" and I'm wondering, okay, firstly, who the hell is Chomsky, and how do you spell his name?!?

(In my notes, I wrote it as "Chaumsky" because that's how it sounded like to me. I love Google -- when I went home and typed in chaumsky linguistics, Google asked me, "Did you mean chomsky linguistics?" and I went, "Yes! Yes! That's the one I meant!")

Then I have a classmate who, on the first day of class, had already been to the library to check out the journals and borrow textbooks. I felt so... so... behind! On the first day of class!

Much to my surprise, I in turn managed to freak out another one of my classmates with, of all things, my rather paranoid note-taking. The lady sitting next to me exclaimed, "You're very hard-working -- you write down every word of what the lecturer says!" I laughed and ruefully blamed my journalistic experience.

The thing is, I'm woefully aware that I'm at a disadvantage in this course because I have no linguistics background whatsoever. Plus I'm so used to scribbling down stuff in the fear that if I miss anything, it'll surely turn out to be a crucial point or succulent quote (I can be a bit obsessive-compulsive at times). And I've always had the knack of writing really fast, somehow. All these factors come together in a splendid cocktail during classroom time.

Interesting to see how we are so easily intimidated by others, yet often don't realise that others are equally intimidated by us!

So all the while I was moaning and groaning about how scientists insist on putting a label to every minor thing, I thought my lecturers were just trying to torture me for the heck of it. Coz, you know, that's what teachers do. *grin*

Then I bumped into a friend who is taking singing lessons. "I keep on mixing up 'V' and 'W'. I pronounce 'W' as 'V' and 'V' as 'W'. My teacher is pulling his hair out and whatever hair remains is turning white!" she said, frustrated.

A lightbulb came on in my head. Hey, I'd just been learning about the way the mouth and tongue ('articulatory organs') move and come together to form various sounds. 'V' and 'W' are produced in completely different ways. Maybe if I could get my friend to see this, she'd have an easier time of it...

You see, when we speak, we string all the sounds together so fast that we don't pay attention to what the articulatory organs are doing. But when you slow down, you realise that for 'V', the upper teeth make contact with the lower lip, then separate; whereas for 'W', the lips and teeth do not make contact at all -- rather, the lips round out to form an 'O' shape.

After explaining this, I suggested to my friend that it's a matter of being a bit more aware of how her tongue and lips are moving when she speaks or sings, and to be more purposeful in the way she articulates certain letters. She found this helpful, and I was amazed that there could actually be practical reasons for learning all this kind of stuff!

I'm so used to speaking English that I never consciously realised all English words of more than one syllable are pronounced with different degrees of stress placed on the different syllables within a word. It wasn't until my lecturer pointed out the importance of 'word stress' that I thought about it and went, "My goodness, that's so true!"

For example, you might leave an imprint (noun) on a page but have a pretty lady
imprint (verb) her image onto your mind.

You might suspect (verb) someone, and if there is enough evidence against him, he eventually becomes the suspect (noun).

The stressed syllable here indicates a change of meaning (or change of word class from noun to verb and vice versa). But even words that don't change meaning have stress, like receive and partner. Not only that -- when speaking, you'll find yourself giving more time to the stressed syllables and less to the unstressed ones. I mean, stressed syllables last ever so slightly longer than their unstressed friends.

Suddenly I realised why native speakers of Malay and Mandarin have such a hard time learning to speak English as a second language. Both Malay and Mandarin don't have this 'stress' feature. Each individual syllable is given equal stress and time.

Since English doesn't give equal time to each syllable, when we speak in sentences, some words likewise end up more 'compressed' than others. Take this example from the British Council & BBC's Teaching English website (go there to download an audio clip of the same):

1	2	3	4
1 and	2 and	3 and	4
1 and a	2 and a	3 and a	4
1 and then a	2 and then a	3 and then a	4

1, 2, 3, 4 are the stressed words while the rest are unstressed. Notice how the unstressed words get "compressed" whilst the 1, 2, 3, 4 fall on a steady beat. Now, try doing that in Malay or Mandarin. It simply doesn't work.

That's why native speakers of Mandarin, especially, often sound a little strange when they first try to speak English. There's nothing wrong with the structure of the sentence, but they have some trouble putting the stress in the correct places, so they may either end up stressing all the syllables or stressing the wrong ones. And they aren't used to the idea that one can prolong or shorten a syllable, so they may give equal time to all syllables as is normally done in their native language. For me, it's all very intuitive because I'm familiar with the language. For them, it's a total minefield.

I wonder if anyone has ever figured out how to teach word stress and sentence stress effectively.

I've just finished going through the entire Oxford Dictionary of Abbreviations. That's what you do when your lecturer insists that you come up with examples other than the ones she provided in class -- and you can't think of any. It's also what you do when you are somewhat kiasu (afraid of losing out, or uber-competitive), and mild symptoms of OCD start to pop up.

We've been learning about the way new words are formed. Of course one of the most common ways to come up with a new word is to simply borrow a word from another language. Then there are the words that echo sounds (meow, moo, woof, clink, bang, pop), and words that are formed by joining two words together (lightweight, fanfare, lovesick). Not to mention, words created by adding prefixes (mis-, de-, un-, etc.) and suffixes (-tion, -ly, -ist, etc.).

Abbreviations are a whole different kettle of fish.

It seems to me that there are at least four types of abbreviations:

1. Blending: Where two or more words have been abbreviated and joined together to form a new word, like brunch (breakfast + lunch), or sitcom (situation comedy);
2. Clipping: Informal abbreviations that shorten longer words, like vet (veterinary surgeon) and fridge (refrigerator);
3. Acronyms: Initials that are read out as a word, like NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) or NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation); and
4. Alphabetisms: Initials that are read out by each individual letter, like WTO (World Trade Organisation) or UN (United Nations).

From what I've read online, there seems to be some dispute as to whether the last two categories should really only come under one, but I'm going to go with what I've been taught.

There are no end to acronyms and alphabetisms, but when it comes to words formed by clipping and blending, I've ended up scratching my head for new examples.

Still, it's not that bad. Leaving abbreviations aside, the worst -- the absolute worst -- is trying to come up with examples of proper nouns that have ended up being used as a common noun. Like how Tupperware now is used to generally refer to any kind of plastic container, and Maggi mee, in the Malaysian context, is taken to mean any kind of instant noodles. I think I might need to spend yet more time reading through the dictionary.

It all started when a friend of mine posted a link to an online primary school textbook in the Foochow dialect (one of the Chinese dialects).

This sparked off a discussion on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), an internationally recognised system used to describe how words of any language are pronounced.

"Why doesn't the entire world teach children to use the IPA? It would make learning how to read foreign languages a lot easier!" another friend commented.

The thing is, you'd then have to produce books which incorporate both writing systems, like how Mandarin textbooks have the Chinese characters with the corresponding pinyin below each character. It's okay when you're trying to describe a language that doesn't use the Romanised alphabet. The fun starts once you try to describe a language like English... because quite a number of the symbols used in IPA are the same as letters of the Roman alphabet, but sometimes represent or refer to different things. Talk about confusing.

For example, the letter j in IPA refers to the 'y' sound. So if you have a word beginning with 'y' in English, when you write it out phonetically using the IPA you'd start with 'j'. Imagine looking at /jes/ and reading 'yes'.

And some English words are already so difficult to spell, IPA is only going to further compound the problem and confuse the poor student. Think about it:

cat --> /kat/
apple --> /epəl/
love --> /lʌv/

My senior kept on saying that results should be out by now, so yesterday we traipsed over to the university to take a look at the noticeboard, and lo and behold! Provisional results were pinned onto the board in all their glory.

No names, though. Only student numbers. How's that for anonymity?

And my results are... [drum roll]

General Linguistics: B+
Applied Linguistics: A
Structure of English: A

I couldn't believe it.

Come to think of it, every time I get good exam results, I never quite believe my ears or eyes. When I was in my final year as an undergraduate and called the college to get my results, I was so incredulous that I called again the next day -- just in case the person reading the results to me had seen the wrong name or read the wrong line or something!

Anyway, this time I was quite flabbergasted coz I'd felt like I was writing grandfather stories in the exam hall. I came home after my papers and told friends that I had never waffled like that on paper in my entire life.

I figure the assignments must've saved me... since exams account for only 50% of the final marks.

Wow! *celebrates*

Week 7 of my second semester; it hardly seems possible. Especially when one semester only consists of 14 weeks of class. I'm halfway through the semester... and I still don't know what's going on in one of my classes!

This class was supposed to be interesting: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Whazzat? Best explanation I can give -- it's about analysing spoken or written text to discover the ideologies that are hidden in the text, ideologies the writer is consciously or unconsciously trying to perpetuate. I think. (I did say I'm not sure what's going on in the class, didn't I?)

I was really looking forward to this subject because I'm always interested in anything to do with writing. Alas, to my dismay all the lectures have been clothed in fog. For one thing, my lecturer chose to start off with various philosophies and ideologies and it was so abstract, our eyes glazed over at all the jargon and unfamiliar-sounding names like Althusser and Foucault. The only name I recognised was Derrida, and that only because one of my friends has mentioned him in conversation. Don't ask me what Derrida is all about!

Unfortunately (and that's the other thing), my lecturer doesn't seem to be blessed with the ability to weave the abstract into more concrete forms. He tries very hard to explain, but we just don't seem to get it. There's only one person in class who knows what the lecturer is talking about, and we know this person gets it coz he's forever asking questions that likewise sail right over our heads.

This is quite a bummer coz I was planning to structure my research project around CDA. I chose to take 10 subjects and conduct a research project instead of taking 6 subjects and writing a dissertation. With no background in linguistics, I decided I would be crazy to attempt a dissertation -- I'm not familiar with the various branches in the field, and I wouldn't have a clue where to start.

It's a good thing I have another 5 subjects to go before I need to decide on the topic of my research project. The way this class is going, I have serious doubts about my ability to use CDA for anything that serious.

If anybody had told me I would write a 1,650-word paper to analyse five measly paragraphs of a newspaper article, I would've thought they were crazy. You've gotta remember that in newspaper reports, every paragraph consists of only one or two sentences. 1,650 words to explain, what, 10 sentences at the most?

Yeah, I did it. I have no idea how I did it, but I did it. Welcome to academia, baby.

Now I know why people accuse academicians of sitting in ivory towers. Hello? 1,650 words based on 10 sentences? I sat down and picked that unfortunate newspaper article apart until there was nothing left of it. I analysed it to within an inch of its life and read all kinds of things into it until I wasn't even sure myself whether I was hallucinating and making stuff up, or whether they were really there. Gives new meaning to the phrase "reading between the lines".

I've never had a problem meeting a word limit for an essay, but even I didn't realise the extent of my... err... "powers" until I wrote this paper. Back in high school, I didn't worry about meeting the word limit because I always wrote more than enough. Waaaaay more. In fact, I never even bothered to figure out how much more. I flagrantly disregarded the word limit because I just knew my essays were so much fun to read that the examiner wouldn't mind. It's called being young, naïve, and confident in your own abilities. Well, maybe over-confident.

Hmmm. I was about to say that I haven't written an essay ever since I graduated in 2000, when I realised that's not true coz I was a journalist for four years up to Oct 2005. Maybe that didn't register in my subconscious coz I always typed out my feature stories and news reports, compared to writing essays in longhand. Or maybe the excitement of pursuing what I thought was my "dream job" eclipsed the hard work involved and made the horror of assignments and exams stand out in stark relief. Or maybe it was coz my boss always gave me a free hand where article length was concerned, so I never needed to worry about exceeding or meeting a word limit.

I vividly remember being given my very first assignment and turning to my boss for guidance.

"When do you want it?"

"As soon as possible."

"How long do you want it?"

"Just give it whatever it's worth."

I was fresh out of law school, had no journalism training or experience, and was completely lost. So I did what I do best: I followed my instincts and wrote.

In the same way, I followed my instincts and wrote my linguistics assignment. And ended up with 1,650 words. Can you say "long-winded"?

I thought lawyers and judges were bad enough, but linguists are worse.

Interdiscursivity involves relations between discursive formations or, more loosely, relations between different types of discourse. It is a matter of how a discourse type is constituted through a combination of elements of orders of discourse.

Did that sound like English to you? No? My point exactly.

You know what is worse? Once I manage to figure out what these people are trying to say, I'll probably end up going over to the dark side and writing like that, myself. Assimilation is imminent; resistance is futile.

"That time of the semester" doesn't have quite the same ring as "that time of the year" or "that time of the month". But it is that time of the semester... when provisional results are released.

My classmate kindly asked for my student number and offered to help me keep a lookout, but when she told me what I'd scored, I decided I had to see for myself. Just like how, in my undergraduate days, I called my college THREE TIMES to verify my final year results. In case, y'know, the person reading the results to me over the phone had accidentally read those of the candidate listed above or below me. It isn't wildly beyond the realm of possibility, after all!

So I traipsed over to the university today during my lunch break. Lo and behold, my classmate's eyes had not deceived her!

Research Methodology: A-
Critical Discourse Analysis: A

*blinks*  I distinctly remember walking out of the exam hall after the Research Methodology paper and telling friends, "I'll probably pass, but most likely won't score."

So much for predictions! *super silly grin*