Two Summaries

Audience 1: Biologist Mother

During my four years of undergraduate education, I have studied many different aspects of Linguistics. Among assorted sub-fields in Linguistics I found that mastering one set of skills was particularly advantageous to my success. The ability to recognize patterns and anomalies in data and using linguistic knowledge account for them is one crucial capability I acquired. This capacity allows me to tackle many of the unresolved questions that still exist in linguistics. For example, with this competence I can contribute to the knowledge bank of under-described and unknown languages. Without speaking or reading a language, I am qualified to collect linguistic data from native speakers and attempt to explain the natural rules of that language. Many languages in the world have not been described yet and may well go extinct before anyone records their unique characteristics.

Audience 2: Elementary school kids

After I graduated high school, I wanted to learn more about language. So I went to school for another four years and spent that time learning about languages and how they work. One thing I noticed very quickly was that each language obeys certain rules. Different languages follow different rules, but there are also rules that are common among languages. For example, when babies are learning their native language for the very first time, they usually learn vowel sounds before consonants, no matter what language they are learning. My schooling has taught me to identify these commonalities and explain them. I told you that babies learn vowels before consonants, the reason for this is that the vowel "a" can be made simply by opening one's mouth and vibrating the vocal cords. To produce a consonant like "p" requires much more control over one's lips and breathing. So, with these skills, I can learn more about how babies learn language effortlessly, while it takes adults many years to master a new language.