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What can I do with a Linguistics degree?
In addition to providing you with analytical skills that are useful in any kind of career, an undergraduate degree in Linguistics prepares you for a number of specialized career paths as well. These include teaching English and other languages as second languages, doing educational research, developing language programs (for instance, for First Nations Communities), Literacy work, Speech Pathology and Audiology, developing and editing dictionaries, computer programming, developing telecommunication and other systems involving speech technology, and graduate studies leading to teaching and research at colleges or universities.
What skills will Linguistics give me?
All university programs teach you how to learn, how to do research, and how to use your mind. Linguistics focusses on teaching you how to think analytically by requiring you to analyze language data, to form and test hypotheses, and to present your analyses in a clear format, providing evidence and arguments to support them. These kinds of analytical and presentational skills are invaluable for any kind of career that you might wish to follow.
What high school preparation do I need to enrol in Linguistics?
You begin the study of Linguistics at the university, since Linguistics is not a subject that is currently taught in high schools. It is extremely useful to take language courses in school, however, since this allows you to learn to think consciously about a language, and therefore about Language in general. It is an interesting fact that most of us use language in almost all our interactions without ever thinking about what we're doing and how we're doing it. So while many of us find it exhilarating to be forced to think about Language, it is an experience which may be enhanced by having some previous practice in thinking about languages.
Although there is no special high school preparation necessary to study Linguistics, you should remember that Linguistics is part of the Faculty of Humanities at UVic. To be able to take Linguistics courses, therefore, you must satisfy the general requirements for entry into courses in the Faculty of Humanities.
What should I do in First Year?
The Linguistics department at UVic does not require you to take Linguistics courses at the First Year level. However, we do strongly recommend that you in fact enrol in one of our First Year offerings if you plan to take higher-level Linguistics courses. Students who have First Year courses in Linguistics find it considerably easier at the Second Year level than students with no First Year background in the subject.
There are a number of great First Year offerings in Linguistics. Linguistics 100A is the core introductory course, providing instruction in Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax. Linguistics 100B, the second half of the core introductory course, introduces you to various topics in Historical Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, and Psycholinguistics. Linguistics 110 considers the relationship between language and thought. Linguistics 150 introduces you to the study of the way in which the vocabulary of English has developed from many different origins. Linguistics 172 provides an introduction to Linguistics through the study of First Nations' languages. Linguistics 195 introduces you to sociolinguistics by asking you to consider why different forms of language are evaluated so differently in social contexts.