Group Reflection

As a group we decided that our main concerns with the new project this year would be all working at the same pace as well as equally distributing tasks. All of the skills that we learned and improved last year in independent study are highly applicable for our new project. We believe that independent study enhanced our researching abilities and so this will be immensely useful in a research project, as well as our improved abilities in collecting and analysing data. The literature reviews we wrote last year will aid us in interpreting and using arguments from academics on the topics we've chosen.

Independent Study - Independent Reflection

The first-year independent study program taught me a number of important and useful transferable skills, with specific regards to conducting wide-ranging language-based investigations, as well as critical analysis of scholarly texts.I became familiar and comfortable with the complex referencing system underpinning all of our university assignments. Furthermore, thanks to assessment two, I was made aware of the importance of objective critical analysis, the various intricacies behind it, and how it can be used to effectively and accurately analyse a variety of texts.I really enjoyed the first year of independent study as it gave me the platform to conduct my own, personal language investigations under a broad, interpretative title. 

Daniel Walters

From completing this year’s Independent Study (Language) assignments, I have acquired a number of useful skills. Firstly, by designing and conducting a questionnaire I was able to gain a better understanding of this process as well as improve my ability to research, using both the physical library and online resources. This task also gave me a better understanding of the ethics needed for research. Secondly, I completed a transcription of spoken language. This allowed me to further develop my knowledge of this process as I learnt how to do this in more detail. Thirdly, by writing a literature review I learnt how to summarise the ideas and arguments of academics, as well as be able to draw my own conclusions from their arguments, with consideration to any stronger or weaker arguments. Lastly, through the corpus investigation, I gained a completely new skill as I had never conducted a corpus investigation. This allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of certain words as well as practical experience in using a corpus, which I feel I could use again in the future.

Sufia Elahi 

Independent study was a highly applicable module, incorporating interesting topic areas  into various methods, i.e a corpus investigation, which enhanced my ability to think and analyse independently. 
This was a module that I believed to have excelled in through my high interest in socio-linguistics which thus resulted in a large amount of reading and research.
The process of conducting and distributing a questionnaire and creating a transcription, highlighted the vitality of effective communication in order to fuel relevant research.
The main skills I can thus transfer are being thorough yet critically selective in relevant research and sources. 

Alice Power

In my first year of studying independent study, I learnt new ways to gather data as well as helpfully improving my knowledge of how to reference properly in an academic essay. I learnt how to search for linguistic data using a corpus and then incorporate my findings and research into answering an essay title. This type of research proved to be very useful as well as discovering a lot of interesting data I wouldn't have found otherwise. I very much enjoyed the freedom side of this module as it meant I could focus more on topics that interested me.

Lucy Hillen

Having completed the first year of independent study, I have gained and improved numerous skills that will aid me in our new project this term. As I didn't really have any idea what a transcription of spoken language, literature review or a corpus review was, and only had a very basic understanding of what an effective questionnaire involved, independent study has definitely taught me a lot. Learning to create a questionnaire allowed me to enhance my research ability by conducting a questionnaire and using data to answer a specific question. Writing a literature review helped me to improve my academic writing as well as my ability to use contrasting arguments to answer a question, and the corpus investigation enhanced my analysis ability. I believe that all of the skills I learned throughout independent study will help me greatly in our new project. 

Emily Scott