Classes - Week 1 Review

OK, week one classes: COMPLETE!

Once my classes can be finalised (not until next week when the Add/Drop period opens unfortunately) I will post about enrollment drama and HOW TO GET THROUGH ENROLLMENT AT CUHK WITHOUT PERMANENT SCARRING, but for now, I'll just give a run-down of the classes I'll most likely be enrolled in for the duration of the semester.

Linguistics

Language Disorders - Taught by Patrick Wong, this class looks like it will entail a lot of reading and a lot of learning (our textbook "Foundations of Communication: Sciences and Disorders" is nearly 900 pages), but therefore I think it will be extremely rewarding. Patrick has practiced as a neurologist and researcher in the field of Langauge Disorders, with both child and adult patients. From aphasia to cleft-palate to every-part-of-the-throat/tongue-being-cut-out-due-to-cancer-from-smoking, he has seen it all and, in the US, has taught it all. Now he is back in HK, continuing his research into why children with cochlear implants (which these days are near-perfect replacements of the human ear) do not develop normal language functions at the same rate as their hearing peers.

Acquisition of English as an L2 - Taught by Helen Zhao. We spent the first lecture talking about L1 acquisition and establishing some foundations about how a child learns their first language (and historical theories of this process i.e. Skinner and his rats, Chomsky etc). This course is actually offered by the English department, but future students DON'T BE FOOLED! There is a lot of linguistic theory to be learnt, and the course will also focus on research methods as to how L2 is acquired, and to what degree it is acquired in different people (due to motivation, aptitude, anxiety) etc. It will also focus on effective methods of teaching L2, English being the target language of L2, so in the class there are also many students whose major is English Teaching.

Semantics - Taught by Candice Cheung. Semantics will be tough, I can tell. Our first task that lesson was to unpack the semantics of the meaning of the word 'mean(s)'. Like "I know what you mean" as opposed to "smoke means fire" as opposed to "I mean to go to every lesson". Pretty intensive stuff.

Languages

Japanese - New Practical Japanese II. Well, it seems that the grammar is fine, but I have SO much kanji study to do...

Korean II - Oh dear. Oh dear. Some new words. Some new grammar. Now I actually have to start spelling things correctly! >_< But the teacher is brilliant, and he is very patient with our small class of 8 students.

Don't ask about Cantonese or Putonghua. I'll learn from my roommate and my new friends. Sorry brain, no holiday for you until June!