English Language and Culture S2684187 Owen Kapelle Prof. dr. M. Keijzer dr. JPM Jansen Internship at BALAB 1
Sha
BA Research internship at the Bilingual Aging Lab
Table of contents Preface……….4 Report………..4-13 1. Introduction……….4 1.1 Internship organisation ………...4-5 1.2 Tasks………...5-6 2. Reflection……….6-13 2.1 Starting goals……….6 2.2 Goal-oriented reflection………7-13
2.2.1 Practical experience and realistic estimations…………....7-8 2.2.2 Interdisciplinary field and working together………..8-9 2.2.3 Language learning in the third age………...10 2.3 Task-related reflection……….11-13 Conclusion: my internship and future ambitions………..13 Bibliography………..13 Appendixes……….14-18
Appendix A: Recruitment poster………....14 Appendix B: Classroom writing………...15-16 Appendix C: Course homework………...16 Appendix D: Internship goals………....17 Appendix E: Presentation slides………....18
Preface
I chose to do an internship because I wanted to develop practical experience doing research. I knew I was interested in research and was thinking about applying for the Research Master Language and Cognition. To prepare for this application and to explore whether it would be a good fit, I felt that I needed more practical insight into research. My interests were mostly in cognition and psycho- and neurolinguistics, which were underrepresented subjects in my studies. I talked to a teacher whom I knew had some experience with this kind of research and he recommended a few names. I chose to email Dr Keijzer in July 2019, to ask her whether I could start an internship after the holidays. She answered positively and we scheduled an appointment. In the meantime, I read up on the lab (BALAB, n.d.) she runs. I was most excited to join the study delving into how language learning in the third age (late-life or 65+) could be beneficial for the brain. I chose this study to join in my internship. My placement report will comprise two main parts: a description of the internship, the placement organisation and my tasks (part 1). This is followed by a reflection on my goals and achievements (2.1-2.2), my tasks (2.3) and a reflection on my internship and my future ambitions tied in with my internship (2.4). I will then conclude my report with a summary.
1. Introduction
1.1 Internship organisation & activities
The organization where I did my internship is a lab led by Prof. Dr M. Keijzer from the English department of the University of Groningen. The lab is called BALAB (Bilingual Aging Lab), and it is a collaboration of multiple studies with the subject of Bilingualism and Aging under the supervision of Prof. Dr M. Keijzer (Merel). The main study I have been
assisting with is that of a PhD candidate (Saskia). Her study is called LangCog and her study aims to explore whether language learning in the third age (65+) can be beneficial for people above 65 (BALAB, n.d.). The participants are divided into three groups: language learning, music learning, and the social/creative group.
1.2. Tasks
As part of my internship, I had several regularly occurring tasks: I attended the BALAB
meetings every Wednesday, I attended the English course given to elderly people from the LangCog study every other Wednesday, and I went to the UMCG Cognitive Neuroscience Centre (CNC) for office- and lab work. I also did tasks at home. The lab meetings comprised presentations from other lab members (such as PhD candidates) about parts of their research. These were usually feedback oriented. For example, we gave feedback on the construction of a questionnaire on how elderly people like to learn a language, and on a short talk one member had to do for a three-minute thesis competition. Sometimes, we discussed other subjects, such as publication, journals and H-scores, free-access publishing, and recruitment of participants or struggles with PhD’s. Outside of the lab meetings, I have given feedback and input to another PhD candidate’s (Joanna) study setup on request: we made appointments to talk about methodology and participants. I further helped her set up a recruitment plan for transgender and non-binary participants, made a poster and a flyer in photoshop (Appendix A), and translated English questionnaires to Dutch.
Every other week I attended the English course that was part of the LangCog study. This course was taught biweekly, by one teacher with two assistants. Nine third-age language learners took the course. As an assistant teacher, I mainly helped with group assignments such as writing an article (see appendix B) or tended to students who were having a hard time with the English language. I have also once given a presentation for the students and the teacher.
Once, the main teacher and the other assistant were ill, so I taught the class myself (the class had already been prepared). Outside of the classroom, I have graded oral and written assignments made by the students at home via the LOI-learning platform (see appendix C for an example).
The office work for the LangCog study consisted of multiple tasks and further I helped wherever needed. I started with promotional work for a special Healthy Aging week held in October. I also started the training for the EEG and fNIRS sessions in the lab. From October onwards, two months of these EEG and fNIRS sessions followed. I also helped with language tests for the students who would do the English course. They had to do an IELTS listening and talking task and a Peabody Picture task. I had previously learnt these tasks in class. In the office, I mainly did data control within the UMCG RedCap system. This data consisted of all the questionnaires the previous participants had to do and the tests in the labs that were done, which results were put into a digital system. Copying down those results often went wrong, and I spent a considerable amount of time checking all this data. I also helped with artefact removal of EEG data in the program Mathlab and towards the end of my internship, I learnt how to do the psychology questionnaires and tests with the participants.
2. Reflection 2.1 Starting goals
My starting goals as stated in my internship contract (Appendix D) were about getting practical experience with research in my field of interest, namely psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, and understanding what practical experiments in the field look like. I wanted to experience how to plan a study design accurately, by going through stages of such a schedule for a more concrete impression of a realistic time plan. I also wanted to gain experience in interaction with (older) participants and learn to test and help these participants.
By working throughout the schedule of a study, I wanted to learn to estimate realistically how long certain parts of research take and estimate how much pressure can be on those involved. I also wanted to learn to better understand the relevance of research into healthy ageing and language, see the dynamics of a multidisciplinary research field, and experience what issues come up while doing research. Lastly, I wanted to see what teaching older adults would be like, that is, how their needs would be different when needing to learn a new language than traditional (young) students, and how to help these people when learning a language. These goals can roughly be divided into 3 groups: 1) gain practical research experience to further develop my theoretical knowledge and establish a realistic view on how much it takes to carry out experiments, 2) experience an interdisciplinary research field and its issues and 3) specifically focused on how elderly learn a third language.
2.2 Goal-oriented reflection
2.2.1 Practical experience and realistic estimations
Through my attendance in the BALAB meetings as well as helping in the labs and with data processing, I have gained a lot of insight into how much work a study generally takes. Throughout my internship, I witnessed multiple changes of plan and setbacks in all stages of research I worked at. One common kind of setback concerned participants who turned out not to have done a task they should have; they understood instructions incorrectly, or could not, or did not want to follow instructions fully. I realised when testing participants that there are many facets and details involved in research practices that might go wrong. Through my attendance in the lab meetings, I realised the study design phase is partly where these setbacks are integrated beforehand to be allowed to happen. This taught me that creating a research design for a study that will need lots of participants and testing is time consuming and many issues need to be addressed to best make use of the participants’ time. I also learnt that
setbacks will be inevitable and that you should prepare for extra time and problems when estimating how much you can do in a given timeframe when planning a study proposal.
2.2.2 Interdisciplinary field and working together
My presence during lab meetings was very helpful for my view on how much help a researcher may need from others. Throughout my program, partly due to the mixing of the fields of linguistics and literature, literature being a field where research is done individually, I had developed a view on researching in linguistics (or general research) as being largely a task you need to do alone. My internship helped me to review my thoughts on this. I learnt that many studies are developed with the help of others, and that it is normal to utilize other people’s skills when a certain task is not your expertise. You can then offer your skills to other people as well. This interactive way of exchanging knowledge is something that surprised me, but I think it works well. Especially in designing an interdisciplinary study it is an ideal solution, because an individual plainly can’t have all the knowledge needed for such a study design.
My research interests are interdisciplinary: mainly psychology, neurology, and linguistics. I have learnt what specific difficulties can arise in such a mix of disciplines. This ranges from thus needing help from people in tasks which are uncommon for linguistic research (such as the development of psychological tests), to differences in social norms and rules. I generally find it hard to estimate certain unwritten social norms, and have had some experience within my internship where I misjudged these kinds of communicative rules. Throughout my internship, I was mostly involved in research within the field of psychology and neurology. This is a field which is used to having many names of those involved in their publications. This caused a misunderstanding where I misjudged a conversation about my continued help with a study while writing my thesis. Though I did not want to imply my
continued involvement would merit some kind of publication, it was perceived as such. I also did not know that having many names on a publication in linguistics is not necessarily as common as in for example psychology. Therefore, I had a hard time understanding exactly why the conversation went as it did. I learnt from this that different disciplines have different rules and skills, and that you have to be aware of this when working with another discipline besides the one you are used to. I will pay attention to this in the future because I have realised this is a weakness I have, and I can now consciously take it into account.
In general, I learnt a lot about how I function in a team. I knew this was something I wanted to focus on. In my earlier jobs I have also had trouble when working in a team. I thought I was not good at functioning in a team at all, but I have been positively surprised about how well it went throughout my whole internship. I had to work together with interns from the Hanze (applied psychology), the research master Language and Cognition, a BA student Bewegingswetenschappen, PhD students from various fields from the BALAB, other members of the BALAB, and the teacher of the English course. I noticed I fitted well in the teams, and working together went well. Sometimes, communication could have been smoother, but this usually only went wrong at the start and then improved as time went on. Sometimes, it was hard to incorporate the differences in the groups of people from, for example, PhD students or Hanze students. These different people have a very different attitude and conversing with each group was hard at the start because I didn’t know what they expected of me. Over time I developed a better understanding of the need to portray the same information differently depending on what the practical need was for this information. I think this experience was useful, as it is a personal pitfall of mine to give too much information, making what I say confusing.
2.2.3 Language learning in the third age
At the start of my internship, I did not know much about language learning in the third age, but was curious to see how teaching elderly people would go. Throughout my internship, I learnt that teaching language to elderly people differs significantly from teaching language to younger people. In the past, I have also taught English at a secondary school, and I disliked this tremendously. Teaching English to the group of older adults was much more enjoyable. The classroom was always active with people talking and asking questions. Most of the rules in the classroom, such as “only speak English” were directly respected, even though sometimes the students slipped up. The rule did not have to be adhered to strictly, because overall people respected the rule. Strict adherence to the rule would have resulted in communication difficulties. It was enough to establish the rule, and when people did not know how to say something in English, they would ask another student or the teacher for help in Dutch. After receiving that help, they often continued in English.
I realised creating teaching schedules is based partly on getting students engaged and interested and adhere to certain rules. This group did not need to be encouraged to participate, they were all enthusiastic to learn (to various degrees). This left time and place for a different approach. Students liked to be corrected when they did something wrong, and several students made it a habit to write down words they did not know immediately and often asked for help with the spelling. It took me a while to get used to this open way of teaching, but I found it very encouraging that they were so enthusiastic. I noticed the enthusiastic people could sometimes talk over the more insecure people, or the people of lower English proficiency. The small group helped divide attention to these insecure or less proficient people. I (as an assistant teacher) could easily sit down with such a person to help them personally.
2.3 Task-related reflection
In the English classroom, I had to teach the class unexpectedly on my own one week, because the teacher and the other assistant were ill. There was a lesson plan already, so I only had to stand in front of the classroom and teach. I was nervous about this and chose to share this directly with the class. They responded nicely and also helped me along the way. Sharing my nerves with the class helped to fight those nerves, and I think the lesson went well.
For a PhD study about the processing of stereotypical gender occupations (by Joanna), I had to translate multiple questionnaires. I learnt that translating a survey is very sensitive to how you word certain phrases. I had to translate a questionnaire about sexism and gender from English to Dutch. Some questions would be, when literally translated, a lot more subjective than the English version. An example of such a sentence is: “Women have a quality of purity few men possess”. The connotational implications of “purity” in English are very specific, and translation to “puurheid” in Dutch could mean interpretation differences.
Part of my office work for the LangCog study was checking the data that had been submitted by others in the system. I had to check multiple questionnaires as well as other data and make sure they had been transferred correctly from the folders to the computer. There were quite a lot of mistakes here. It was systematic but boring work. I was given a lot of freedom to do this task whenever I wanted and did not have a goal of the number of participants to go through. This was hard, but a very useful learning opportunity. I had many (much more exciting) tasks next to this data checking task, and I had to be very disciplined to carry it out. I had to explore how to best go about this and challenged myself to get it done. I made myself commit to doing an hour of data checking every time I went to the office to do something else. This worked well because this way I also didn’t have to do the boring tasks all at once. This sometimes resulted in creative planning, but I was proud of myself every
time I did some of the work, even when I didn’t feel like it. It was very helpful to experience this kind of need to prioritize just to hold myself to a promise I set myself. It was also good to experience that research sometimes includes boring tasks that can get easily forgotten next to more fun tasks. I can prepare for this pitfall in the future based on these experiences.
The EEG analysis in Mathlab consisted of using a script made by Saskia, and visually rejecting artefacts in the data. It was fun to do, though it was also very hard. It is a very subjective process and we did it with three people. We had to take out ERP’s with very large peaks or very unsteady data. This was a lot of work because there were 280 items per test for a participant, and there were around 60 participants who all had 2 or three EEG tests. We did not finish all of it. It became very clear to me while doing this artefact rejection task how much work the processing of EEG data is.
In the BALAB meetings, people often presented their research. I presented my thesis design in front of the lab and received feedback on it. This presentation was a task I had designed together with my teacher-supervisor, to challenge me a bit. I have always been quite nervous for presentations. Receiving feedback has always been hard for me as well. I think it was helpful to do this task. I received a lot of feedback that was very in-depth about complex aspects of research design, and I liked that people were very honest to me about the parts of my presentation that were not good. I am glad to have done this presentation, because I also think the presenting part itself went a lot better than expected. For the PowerPoint slides of my presentation, see appendix E.
The last, but quite a large, task of my internship, was helping to prepare the people who had to take an EEG-monitored switching task in the lab. This preparation included explaining everything to a participant and talking them through what they would do. This was important because people got confused quickly if something was unclear. I had not expected
how much information they needed, before they could understand it well. Preparation also included putting on all the EEG equipment, where a detailed explanation was yet again key to make sure the current participant was not confused or anxious. I found these elderly participants needed a lot of clarity, and I needed to be slow and calm in my actions and explanations. I also learnt that it is best to be clear why you are giving the instructions you are giving. For example, “you need to sit very still with your head because otherwise, it will disrupt the signal from your movement” will explain to them why I am asking them to sit still.
Conclusion: my internship and future ambitions
The internship with BALAB comprised many parts. I joined an English third age learners class as an assistant, I joined lab meetings about a range of studies in bilingualism, and I helped out in the lab and office of one specific study. In addition, my task list expanded throughout my internship, because I assisted another PhD student in their study. I helped with the study design of a specific task, concerning a participant group, made recruitment posters, contacted organisations to spread the poster, and had another EEG lab training for a different lab. My internship helped me to explore whether I wanted to continue in research. I have realised that I like research work, and would love to do more of it. I also realise that I will have to learn more about communicating with academic people, and I need to learn about the academic culture in general. I also learnt that a lot of issues come up while doing research. I know now that I am highly interested in combining linguistics with cognitive- and neurolinguistics research. I have seen that this is a very new field, and I am now excited to be part of its development.
Bibliography
BALAB. (n.d.). Bilingual Aging Lab. https://www.balab.nl/
Appendix
Appendix A: Recruitment poster
Appendix B: Classroom writing
Learn a language and retain your cognitive health!
Three students are being instructed by one of the co-teachers, Owen Kapelle (left).
For three months now, a group of seven older adults has been taking part in an English course for beginners, taught by Rhomé Busstra. The students will continue to do so for another three months. The language course is part of the LangCog project, which is carried out by PhD student Saskia Nijmeijer (UMCG). The study examines potential beneficial effects on cognition of learning a new skill at a later age (after the age of 65). All participants are randomly placed in three groups: one group learns to play the guitar, one group learns English, and one group takes part in creative workshops.
One of the assignments during a previous English lesson was to write an article on the students’ experiences so far. The seven students were divided over three small groups and together wrote the rest of this article. One of the groups, consisting of Ger, Truus, and Hans, wrote: “The students are participating in a research on the influence of different activities for the brains to learn something new. Hans said: “I am very glad to be placed in the English group”, and Truus mentioned that learning English with her husband is extra fun. Ger thinks improving English is stimulating for the brains. Seven out of nine students decided to
continue for three months more. Truus says she wants to keep her investment, because when she stops now, she’s afraid everything will be gone. The group is excited for learning in the next three months.”
Irma and Peter in the second group added: “All of the students are very enthusiastic. The group exists of about 7 people, so we are involved with each other. When we step into the classroom we only have to speak English. Each of the students have made a presentation about different subjects, for instance about travel, hobbies, cooking, etc. We have seen videos and have made a conversation about it or a discussion. We also have had some
assignments, for instance making a menu for a fake restaurant. Learning a language at a later age is very well for your brains but is also very hard. For the most students it’s relearning so that makes it easier. Some students noticed changes [in their cognitive health] after three months, but some don’t.
Lastly, Greetje, a member of the third group, said: “At the start I was a little disappointed when I was put in the English group, but it was much nicer than I thought.” Together with her group member, Tiny, they concluded: “The course lives up to our
expectations. Of course, we recommend it to several people, because it is very necessary to train our brains for healthy ageing in addition to for example yoga, sports, and so on.
Learning a language is a fun thing to do! It is our intention to continue to learn and to train our body and brains forever.”
Two groups of two students are working on an assignment.
Appendix C: Course homework
Appendix D: Internship goals
Appendix E: Presentation slides
