What made you decide to write this book?

My book ‘Study Skills for Linguistics' is aimed at students starting out at university. Teaching first-year students, I realized that I was dealing with similar basic questions year after year. Sometimes these questions were asked in individual personal tutor sessions by those who ‘dared’, while other students would be shy about engaging with their lecturer. I started to put together materials to help students in their first year of study, sharing my answers to some of the questions on the departmental blog run in collaboration with students (https://uwelingo.wordpress.com/), as well as through short videos shared on our online learning environment. I also started to develop sessions in the first year of the course to teach study skills, as well as basic grammatical terminology.

The book then came together when I talked to Greville Corbett , one of the editors of the series, about another idea for a textbook. We ended up discussing the issue of first-year students ‘finding their feet’ and the potential for a textbook. This is when I started working on ‘Study Skills for Linguistics.'

What is the one thing you hope readers take away from this book?

There are a lot of things for students to consider when starting university, and it can be overwhelming to juggle new terminology with generic study-skills such as how to find out more about a topic and how to do well in the assessment. Lecturers often take it for granted that their students are able to negotiate these different skills. They may also expect students to know what nouns and prepositions are. However, depending on when and where the students went to school, they may never have encountered these terms (for example in the UK they were not part of the National Curriculum for many years).

Students come to university with a wide range of background knowledge and very diverse skillsets. My book brings together the different skills expected of prospective students. I want my readers to feel confident that they get off to a good start in their language-related studies, independent of their background. The book will also follow my readers throughout their studies, for example with a detailed self-evaluating skills-questionnaire that the students can come back to throughout their course.

Is there something you think it’s important to highlight about this topic?

I’d like to highlight to lecturers in linguistics that it is important to bring students up to a common level of understanding early on in their studies. This will allow students with different background skills to flourish and feel comfortable in their language studies. The book has a detailed glossary with short definitions of the concepts discussed in the book, as well as references to synonyms that students may have encountered elsewhere.

What is a common misconception about this topic that you would like to clear up?

Lecturers often take for granted that their students are familiar with generic study skills and knowledge about basic grammatical terminology. This is often not the case, however, and has a lot to do with the educational policy during the time the students went to school. It is also an issue of widening participation, in that students with different family- and school-backgrounds may be differently equipped for university study. From my personal experience of teaching at both Russell Group and post-92 universities, many undergraduates have not learnt about categories of grammar and generic study skills. As a lecturer it is sometimes difficult to know what students know. This books aims to be accessible to all students, and help them to a good start at university.

Study Skills for Linguistics is the essential companion for students embarking on a degree in linguistics. Covering all the core skills that students of linguistics will require during the early part of their degree, this book gives the reader a basic understanding of the field, as well as confidence in how to find out more and how to prepare for their future career.

The key features covered include:

• Subject-specific skills including basic linguistic tools and terminology, such as word classes and grammatical terminology;
• Essential study skills, such as how to perform well in the degree, how to search for and reference literature and how to write an essay;
• Guides for a future with a linguistics degree, including how to write a CV and prepare for a range of graduate destinations.

An accessible guide to essential skills in the field of linguistics, Study Skills for Linguistics is a must-read for students contemplating studying this topic, and provides a guide that will take them through their degree and beyond.