The Scholar: Chloe Lee
The Project: Learning Language Through Linguistics Puzzles
The Essential Question:聽Ms. Lee, a Latin scholar and a mathlete, investigated whether linguistics puzzles could be an effective tool for learning languages. In her own study of Latin, she had noticed that she approached the language as if it were a math equation, and wondered if math and language are somehow connected. Her introduction to linguistics puzzles in Honors Discrete Math provided a way to further explore this question. The puzzles ask students to use logic or pattern recognition to answer questions about a language they have never seen before. Ms. Lee presented puzzles to two groups of students, followed by a grammar exercise. While her results were initially inconclusive, she is continuing her work and developing a new approach.
Biggest Challenge.聽鈥淭here really wasn鈥檛 much information on this topic on the internet. I had trouble finding data or research papers, so I decided to conduct my own research. That was challenging. I did a little experiment based on knowledge from AP Statistics, which I took last year. I collaborated with my teachers and their classes, Honors Latin 2 and Spanish 2. For the Latin class, I generated randomized groups and gave out the linguistics puzzle, then the grammar exercise. I didn鈥檛 get the result I desired because probably the class size was too small, just 6, so my second experiment was with a Spanish class of eleven. I divided the test into three parts: grammar exercise, linguistics puzzle, and another grammar exercise. Again, I didn鈥檛 really get the desired results. So I think what I鈥檓 going to do is study more about language and mathematics and then maybe come up with my own linguistics puzzle.鈥
Surprising Discovery.聽鈥淒oing my own experimental research was harder than I thought. I had only read research that had already been done, and written up clearly. It was really interesting to do my own.鈥
Tip for Future Scholars.聽鈥淵ou don鈥檛 have to know exactly what you want to do. I first wanted to study language and mathematical algorithms, but I didn鈥檛 have much knowledge of algorithms. Teachers helped me along the way, and studying on my own really changed the path of my research. If you have something you are passionate about, you can just start and see how it goes.鈥
From Her Presentation:聽A sample of a linguistics puzzle.
