Denise Batchelor and Dr. Jeffrey Turley, Spanish and Portuguese
Philology is a broad field that includes the study of a language’s history, especially that language’s process of evolution over an extended period of time. Romance Philology specifically covers the Romance languages, i.e. those European languages that have Latin roots. These languages include Spanish (Castilian), Catal<n, Portuguese, French, Italian, Rumanian, and several other languages and dialects found throughout Europe. Those elements that define each language—its similarities to Latin as well as its distinctions from the other Romance languages—have been greatly influenced by the history, culture, and geographical area of those who speak that language.
Historically, Philology has not been of much interest to most linguists. The research that has been done on this area of study is very limited, and theories and opinions are often contradictory, making the possibility of studying and understanding Philology very limited for most students with only a limited knowledge of linguistics. For this reason I decided to research Romance Philology and develop a computer-aided tutorial to help beginning students grasp the major concepts and make the learning interesting enough that it will hold their attention.
Dr. Jeffrey Turley of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese teaches an introductory Romance Philology class once a year. So, to make my project more easily accessible, I decided to design the tutorial to follow the course syllabus for Dr. Turley’s class. The computer tutorial, developed in Microsoft Visual Basic, covers all of the major topics discussed in the class, reviewing the concepts in as simple a manner as possible in order to aid the students in understanding the discussion topics. But the real benefit of the tutorial comes from the examples and practice questions it contains. This will give the students an opportunity to determine their understanding of each concept and to focus their studies on the concepts that are more difficult for them.
This tutorial program is in no way meant to replace Dr. Turley’s lectures. It purposely covers only the more general topics so that students know to use it as a study resource and not as a substitute for the class.
Because Romance Philology is only taught once a year, my program has not yet been tested by Philology students. I hope to gain some feedback for the tutorial throughout this fall semester once it becomes available for Dr. Turley’s class so that I can make improvements to the program for future students. At this point, the tutorial has not been completed, but because I view this as a long-term project, I intend to continue maintaining and improving it until it becomes the high-quality program that I originally envisioned. My hope is that my Romance Philology tutorial will be both entertaining and educational so that future students will have the opportunity to study Romance Philology in such a way that it sparks interest in them as it has for me.