Multilitteratus Incognitus

Check, check. Is this thing on? Linguistics isn't generally considered a topic, like one of those sexy STEM courses, that everyone talks about when they talk about degrees and fields to study for job related purposes. For this reason we haven't seen a lot of linguistics related MOOCs.  Last year we had the Virtual Linguistics Campus offer three MOOCs using their own approach to teaching MOOCs which seemed more like self-paced eLearning. I didn't complain (much) because it was, after all, courses in linguistics. This time around, the University of Lancaster is offering a course on Corpus Linguistics, which I have naturally signed up for.  There is at least one colleague from the #rhizo14 MOOC taking this course, so I am curious to see what they think of the course after all is said and done.  In the meantime, I have some initial thoughts on the course itself, as well as the mechanics of the future learn platform, as they are realized through this MOOC. The first ...

Just as I've started taking a course called "structure of the English Language", which deals with English Grammar, here comes a blog post called " there is no grammar ". OK, now that the other blog got your attention, I think that I agree with the original blogger. Grammar is a construct made up to understand the language we speak. From a language learner's perspective though is it useful to start learning grammar from the get go? Whether you agree or disagree, the article is interesting to read. I think that we shouldn't be so grammar heavy in intro courses to language, however we should learn the rules eventually. Verbal communication only gets you so far, and not knowing the intrinsic, abstracted, rules of grammar will only hurt language learners in the long run if they wish to gain proficiency in a language - IMHO.