Just My Stoy

My Diary (11)

January 18th, 2006 20.00 pm. New Delhi

Attending A Seminar At My Department

Today, i attend a linguistic seminar at my department. In this opportunity, the speaker is a native of English, Prof. Lyle Jenkins from the Bio-linguistics Institute, Cambridge Mass, USA. The topic to be discussed is "Biolinguistics: Structure, Acquisition, and Evolution of Language". For me, this is the first time i can see and meet a native face to face, and it is also an exiting moment in my life that i never imagine before. Maybe for others it's not so special, but for me it is.

The seminar opens with an opening speech given by one of my lecturer, Prof. Tistha Baghi who ever teaches me Introduction to Linguistics in my first semester. She informs all of us in that seminar room about the brief outline of what Prof. Jenkins is going to represent. It is a short opening that takes only one minute. After that, Prof. Jenkins starts his representation on the topic.

Everyone in the room hear carefully to what he is saying and write on the important information on their notes. Event my lecturers who have time to come, pay a serious attention on his explanation. They also make notes of themselve. I do the same thing also. But i find a lot of difficulty in understanding his English because he speaks too fast, for me. It is not his fault, it's only me that not used to hear the way how he uses English. Then, i realise that it is better for me to make a record of his speech. Fortunately, i bring my type-recorder with me. I ask one of my friend to put it in front of him. I think i can hear it later after arriving home. The rest time i use to try to understand his speech event only a few sentence.

It's about one and half hour duration for him to give explanation on Biolinguistics. Then he closes it by giving opportunity to anyone who has question. There are there questions dealing with the topic. He gives a brief explaination to asnwer all of the questions because of the limited time. And he invites all of us who still have problem in linguistics, particularly in Boilinguistics, to send him email to his webside. All of us welcome it very much.

The seminar is closed by a closing speech from our Head Department, Mr. R.C. Sharma, by giving a highly appreciation to the speaker and his explaination, as well as thanking for his coming, and to the audiences that are willing to come.

posted by Rini Ekayati @ 10:39 PM