Reflection on How the Availability of Corpus Enrich Our Studies as a BENL Student (Part 1)

Prior to furthering my studies in the English Language, I had thought that this course would allow me to read. and surely, we do. Scripts, poems, short stories, novels, and the likes. and I’ve always loved that part of being an English major. and I’ve always believed that, “a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies” and I am now immortal.

But, what I refuse to acknowledge about this course is the linguistics part of it all. though I particularly enjoyed my Sociolinguistics and Psycholinguistics classes, I never enjoyed, nay, dreaded, the other linguistics subjects.

I just don’t get it. why would you want to spend your days interpreting what the person is saying and separate them into nouns, verbs, and adjectives. and that is only the traditional part! it’s like math, but with words! and to think I left all formulas back in high school.

However, I have realized that I learn more about languages when studying linguistics. I now know things that I never knew before. I now know things that I didn’t even know that I want to know. I now can explain a text in its technical form than just the meaning between the lines. though I still suck at it, at least I understand the basic fundamentals of this language and maybe a bit about all languages. (Grammatical Analysis somewhat helped me understand Arabic more)

like the famous words of our Semantics lecturer, “language dances to people’s needs”.

and having basic language is the most fundamental of it all.