On February 6th, the Department of Linguistics hosted a talk by Sonya Bird (University of Victoria), which was entitled " Putting it all together: Hul’q’umi’num’ listening quizzes”.
The abstract of her talk is provided below:
This presentation is based on a project to create a series of listening quizzes (60 in total) to support adult learners of Hul’q’umi’num’ (Central Salish) in fine-tuning their listening and speaking skills. Hul’q’umi’num’ has a rich consonant inventory, including many sounds not found in learners’ L1 (English). It also has a long legacy of collaborative linguistic research, resulting in a large corpus of recorded materials that are available to support language teaching and learning. The quizzes were developed collaboratively, drawing from insights in experimental phonetics (Bird et al. 2022), second language acquisition (Uchihara et al., 2021), and Indigenous language learning (Brant, 2024; McIvor, 2020). This presentation will present findings from a study that assessed their usefulness in the context of a university-level, community-based course on Hul’q’umi’num’ sound structure. Findings showed that learners appreciated the quizzes, and that their perception improved as they practiced with them. The listening quizzes provide a model of how to blend research and pedagogy in a way that centers the community’s needs and priorities while also increasing our understanding of second language speech perception, laying the foundation for more targeted efforts to support learners in their language work.
We extend our thanks to the Guest Speakers Committee for organizing Prof. Bird’s visit!