Psycholinguistics

Stephen Politzer-Ahles

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Overview

This a self-paced online subject. There are no lectures; the class is organized around learning activities, and you can do most of them at your own pace.

This subject is a basic overview of methods used in psycholinguistic research and issues that psycholinguistic methods have been used to study.

The subject is divided into modules. Each module includes some tasks for you to complete online, and each module is intended to also have an optional group discussion section (of course if you are using this website to study psycholinguistics independently, that may not be possible). In addition to the modules, there are several bonus activities and projects to complete. Your final grade in the class will be based on which modules and activities you complete (see below for details).

Activities and assignments

You do not need to do all the activities in this class; you can choose which modules and activity to do, based on the grade you aim to earn. See the "Grade bundles" below this list for more information. Every module or activity is scored on a pass-fail basis; i.e., you don't get partial credit for doing part of a module, for submitting a project that does not meet the project requirements, etc.

Grade bundles

Any grade (other than D) can be increased to a corresponding "+" grade by doing two bonus activities. For example, if you complete the abovementioned requirements for a B and then you also complete two bonus activities (for example, a four levels video and two summaries), you can earn a B+.

Likewise, I may reduce any grade (other than D) by half of one letter grade if I judge that much of your work to meet the grade was borderline (i.e., barely met the criteria) or if you took many attempts to pass several activities. For example, if you meet the criteria for A but the work you submit for it is borderline, you might receive an A-. If you meet the criteria for B+ but required many attempts on several modules, you might receive a B.

Note to teachers: When I teach this class, I adjust the number of discussions, and the rules for discussions, based on how many students are in the class. The goal is for the requirement to be high enough to incentivize students to do enough discussions so that we can hopefully have at least one discussion per module, but low enough that everyone has a chance to do enough discussions to get the grade they need. With larger classes I allow students to lead discussions as a group (e.g., two or three people can lead a discussion together and all get credit), whereas for smaller classes I make each student do it on their own. These two factors, of course, can trade off with each other: if you allow students to lead discussions as a group you can also require them to do more discussions to earn a given grade.

Other useful information for this course


by Stephen Politzer-Ahles. Last modified on 2021-07-11. CC-BY-4.0.