There will be four tutorial-classes for each group of students taking the second year core lecture course on Language & Cognition. Tutorials will be held at approximately fortnightly intervals with the first tutorial held at the end of first week.
You are expected to write two essays and to offer two presentations for the tutorial classes, i.e., for each tutorial you will need to prepare either an essay or a presentation. Essays must be handed in no later than noon on the day before the tutorial.
Signing Up: Please sign up for tutorial-classes by completing the forms on Level C in Experimental Psychology or on your tutor’s office door. Times are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Note that all tutorials take place on either Thursday or Friday afternoons. If you need to change the time of a tutorial you have signed up for, you will need to make sure that you can agree an alternative time and date with the rest of your tutorial group (and your tutor!). Please find out the email addresses of your colleagues.
Reading Lists: Each reading list contains an introductory ‘Overview’ section and two or more in-depth sections. You should read at least two of the readings from the Overview section – preferably a reading marked with an asterisk – and then select one of the in-depth sections for more specialist reading. The final section of the reading list contains a set of questions, one of which you can use for your essay title or as a topic to organise your presentation. You may also choose to define your own essay title or presentation topic.
- Tutorial One: Speech Production and Speech Perception
- Tutorial Two: Lexical Processing
- Tutorial Three: Grammatical Processing
- Tutorial Four: Brain and Language
Writing an Essay: An essay should be no more than 1500 words long, preferably less, depending on the subject matter. Avoid duplicating your lecture notes and notes taken whilst reading the tutorial material. Endeavour to present an argument in your essay where you argue for and against a given position. It is often a good idea to start your essay with a brief introduction–rather like an abstract in a journal article–in which you summarise the storyline of your essay. As with many other forms of communication, it is often a good idea to tell your audience what you're going to say, say it and then tell them what you've just said. The chances that your message will be understood is thereby increased. Think about the structure of your essay before you begin to write!
Giving a Presentation: Giving a presentation is quite unlike writing an essay. The listener does not have a script to consult, so you have to make sure that the main points of your argument are revisited frequently during the course of the presentation and that your listener understands what you say. You'll be surprised how easy it is to confuse people, especially if you expect them to memorise a lot of detail. The tutorial will give you a chance to practise these verbal skills in a friendly, supportive environment. Prepare your presentation in collaboration with one of your tutorials partners. There are 3 students in each tutorial, so for each tutorial, sometimes you will give a presentation by yourself and at other times in collaboration with a tutorial partner. In the latter case, please meet with your tutorial partner at least a day ahead of the tutorial to discuss how you will structure your presentations.