April 12, 2005 issue
I love working at EMU for several reasons. I really like the department and I like all my colleagues. I have the chance to work with really bright and enthusiastic students. I also find a very diverse student body and I really enjoy this diversity.
We have a lot of different programs in the department. I find it very interesting to work with people who are doing things quite different from what I am doing. We have people in journalism, literature and technical writing. So, it gives us a chance to interact in a very interesting way.
As a linguist, I work with endangered languages, minority languages and cultural groups. In most cases, students haven't heard of or haven't been exposed to minority languages and cultures. Teaching at EMU gives me the chance to bring this to the classroom, to expose students to the issues related to endangered and minority languages and cultures.
One of the things I try to do, if anything, is to make students aware of the diversity, the variety and the beauty of languages. There is no good or bad language, no good or bad grammar, and no language is better than another. It's just our attitude toward them and socially imposed ideas about the speakers. I show students how languages work and talk about my experience of working with minority languages and their speakers.
I like to present issues related to languages to students and see them develop their own informed opinions. I enjoy seeing the students use the knowledge they've acquired in class. Another thing that I like about teaching is that it allows me to bring research into my classroom. I plan to go on working with endangered languages and help the speakers to preserve their language and culture.
I'd like to see students more involved in empirical research and also have the opportunity to experience other languages and other cultures firsthand, to get the chance to travel to places where they can interact with speakers of different languages. What I would like to see is more support from the state to provide students with better opportunities in their education.
