Developing students’ linguistic and analytical skills: the use of anchored instruction in an introductory sociolinguistics course

Introductory sociolinguistics courses at university can be challenging, especially for students at the very beginning of their tertiary studies. Difficulties may arise due to students not having any prior exposure to the discipline’s content or methodologies, which is likely to be a result of these aspects not generally being taught in high schools. Undertaking introductory sociolinguistics courses may prove even more problematic for students in alternative pathway programs, as they often come from disadvantaged backgrounds and/or have had unsuccessful prior learning experiences. As a result, such students tend to struggle with adequately developing fundamental skills in sociolinguistic, which include objectively analyzing their own use of language and that of others. To assist students in acquiring these and other relevant generic competencies, we developed a teaching tool based on anchored instruction, which comprises a series of filmed scenarios. Preliminary results and feedback from students indicate that the tailor-made instructional videos assisted them in drawing links between their real-life use of language and theoretical sociolinguistic concepts.