Integrated Writing

Students majoring in Linguistics fulfill the Integrated Writing requirement by the completion of two Tier III courses, as per the requirements for the major.  Tier III courses are courses in the Linguistics Department numbered between 350-499 (with the exception of 358, 400, 401, 410, 459, and 487).  These courses offer students an opportunity to explore a linguistic topic in great depth, and they are more challenging and advanced in scope than lower-numbered courses.  Accordingly they integrate a variety of large-scale and/or continuous writing projects which allow students to hone their skills in linguistics writing.

Specifically, Tier III writing projects include one or more of the following components that are key to good linguistic writing: identifying and explaining original research questions, synthesizing a set of primary literature, organizing and reporting on complex data, and crafting a clear, convincing and well-structured analysis.  Since linguistics has many subfields with different writing practices, specific Tier III courses vary in their particular writing requirements.  However, the completion of two such courses will give students sufficient experience in working towards these goals of linguistic writing.

Students majoring in Linguistics may gain further practice in Integrated Writing by undertaking a senior honors thesis.  This requires a student to choose a topic, develop a set of research questions, survey the literature, and conduct an in-depth investigation in order to answer the research questions using one of a variety of methodologies (e.g., experimental work, surveys, interviews, elicitation, analysis of written text, etc.).  Writing a senior honors thesis is optional, and it is available to students who meet the GPA requirements.  See HERE for more information about writing a senior honors thesis in Linguistics