1. Briefly, where were you born and raised? Where you spent the first dozen years of your life has a great deal with determing not only what language you speak, but also the dialect of that language. Dialects of American English become especially relevant in Unit 2 of the course.
2. Exposure to other languages. Relatives from "the old country" from whom you picked up a few words and phrases, places you have traveled, lived, and worked--all sorts of exposure outside the classroom. Then tell also about the classroom: numbers of years of which languages, studied in high school and college. (If you've got nothing to report here, it doesn't mean that you don't belong in the course, just that you may be a bit more "linguistically challenged.")
3. Grammar studied, grammar learned, and how you feel about the subject. Did you learn to tell a noun from a verb and the other parts of speech? Can you diagram a sentence? If such was a part of your education, were you pretty good at it, or did you detest the subject?
4. Why are you here? Just an honest answer, like "it's required for SPA." Or, on the other hand, "I've always loved languages, and wanted to learn more." Or, "I need one more course to graduate, and this section was still open." Just an honest answer.
5. Computer literate? If so, where do you go to send email and surf? What hardware and software?
6. Phonetics. Have you learned any yet in other courses? Have you already taken Ling 410, Articulatory Phonetics. (Just to help your instructor decide how heavy a diet to include in this course.
Send this to your instructor at firstname.lastname@example.org and it will serve to give him your email address and begin to get acquainted with you. You can learn more about him at his home page, http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bender/
Thanks for answering these questions. I hope they weren't too intrusive.
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