Daniel Greene

Student teaching and thesis writing my last quarter in grad school

I just started co-teaching an Introduction to Interpreting class at Phoenix College yesterday. It’s a hybrid course, so I’ll be doing both onsite teaching and online teaching. Luckily, I’ve had experience with both kinds of teaching, especially since doing my teaching practica in three different courses last spring at Western Oregon University (WOU), where I taught in the course management system (Moodle) and via videoconference (Skype and Google Hangout).

The next five weeks are a break before my last quarter of grad school, and I’m taking this time to write the first draft of my master’s thesis on vague language (VL). Sometimes I think I need to keep writing this blog so it doesn’t fade into obscurity, and other times I think I’d better let it wait and settle for the delayed gratification of publishing my thesis. I suppose balancing both wouldn’t hurt; in fact, blogging regularly might help writing my thesis regularly and vice versa.

In the course I’m co-teaching, we’re using the books Sign Language Interpreting: Exploring Its Art and Science (Stewart, Schein, & Cartwright, 1998) and So You Want to Be an Interpreter (Humphrey & Alcorn, 2007). In writing my thesis, I’m using the book Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success (Belcher, 2009) as a guide.

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6 responses to “Student teaching and thesis writing my last quarter in grad school”

  1. Finished graduate school! | Daniel Greene's TerpTrans Avatar
    Finished graduate school! | Daniel Greene's TerpTrans

    […] Student teaching and thesis writing my last quarter in grad school […]

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  2. Specializations vs. special skills: An interpreter’s scope and abilities « Daniel Greene's TerpTrans Avatar
    Specializations vs. special skills: An interpreter’s scope and abilities « Daniel Greene's TerpTrans

    […] shared my first essay about settings vs. specializations with an Introduction to Interpreting class, I now realize I wasn’t clear enough the first time I wrote on the topic. One confusing […]

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  3. Kathy Duncan, NIC Avatar
    Kathy Duncan, NIC

    I know the interpreting level students at Phoenix College will benefit immensely from your instruction as a whole but also from the insight you can (and hopefully will) provide them into navigating those difficult waters of “do I voice that?” in which Vague Language identification may play a role. I have taken your VL workshop and took away knowledge that I keep handy in my “toolbox” everyday out in the field. Congratulations on seeing the light at the end of your Master’s “path.” Be strong, have a little fun, and enjoy your students! –Kathy

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    1. Daniel Greene Avatar
      Daniel Greene

      Thanks, Kathy!

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  4. Peggy Huber Avatar
    Peggy Huber

    Sounds like a solid plan. I’m curious about your thesis… what is it that you are looking at with vague language? There’s lots to talk about, linguistics, conginitive linguistics, communication theories, etc.

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    1. Daniel Greene Avatar
      Daniel Greene

      Thanks for commenting and asking, Peggy. There sure is a lot to explore in vague language, and I hope to spend more years doing it! For my thesis, though, I am presenting a review of what has been written about the forms and functions of vagueness in spoken and signed languages, and in my methodology and findings I am describing vague language in a corpus of ASL videos. My contribution is the description of VL in ASL and the offering of VL as a theoretical framework that helps people see the bigger, more connected picture of the various aspects of vagueness that have been written about thus far. My implications section will suggest experiments into the benefits of teaching VL to interpreters.

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