Naomi Nagy
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Linguistics at U of T

Response 1: Language Shift (HW_R1)

Ravindranath & Cohn 2014
Can a language with millions of speakers be endangered?

Carefully considering the structure and style, as well as the content, of the assigned readings, will help you to develop writing styles, empirical techniques and skills specialized to sociolinguistic research norms.

Students have noted that it can be difficult to write good answers that fit the length expectations. These tips on revising and redrafting may help.

Part A: Preview

Prior to reading the article, answer the following questions to help you focus your reading.
  1. Examine the title, section headings, and data/tables/figures. What do they reveal about the article’s topic and main arguments? Summarize in 1-2 sentences.

  2. Consider your purpose for reading this article as an assigned reading for the course. What kinds of facts and ideas do you think your professor expects you retain from this reading? Summarize in 1-2 sentences.

  3. Considering your personal interests, what do you hope to learn from this article? Summarize in 1-2 sentences.

Part B: Personal connections

After you read the article, answer the following questions based on the content of the article. You may find it useful to use skimming and scanning skills in answering these questions.
  1. What are one or two interesting things you learned from reading this article? Why did you find these particularly interesting? (To answer this question, you may find it helpful to reflect on your personal interests and any questions you began to formulate in your mind while previewing the article.) Summarize your answer in 1-2 sentences.

  2. What are one or two things that were difficult to understand in this article? Why did you find these particularly confusing? Summarize your answer in 1-2 sentences.

  3. Make note of 3 terms related to sociolinguistics that appear in the article. These can be words that have been previously introduced in class or in the textbook; words that you have never heard before but which appear numerous times in the article; or words that you have heard before but which seem to carry a different or more specialized meaning in this article. For each term, summarize in 1 or 2 sentences the clues you found in the article that helped you better understand its meaning.

Part C: Content Comprehension

Tip for summarizing: See if you can find a sentence in the paper that summarizes the purpose of the paper (or whatever you need to summarize). Once you are sure you understand the sentence, close/hide the paper. Then write a sentence (or two) in your own words that conveys the same information.

  1. In 3-4 sentences, summarize the topic and purpose of this article. What did the authors hope to find out by doing this study? What turned out to be their most important finding? Make sure that in your answer you mention the language(s) that the article focuses on, as well as specific linguistic or sociolinguistic phenomena.

  2. In 3-5 sentences, summarize the main claim the authors authors make in Section 5 of the article, and describe two ways in which they support this claim.

  3. Think of one additional type of data or approach that could also be used to test this claim and describe it in 1-2 sentences.

    4.  Return to syllabus || Updated October 27, 2022

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