If you're just starting your career as a linguist, or if you're interested in boosting your computational or phonetic skills, join the LSA at our Annual Meeting for one of our three minicourses. Our minicourses on Praat scripting, Python, and "Thriving As An Early Career Faculty Member" will be offered the morning of Thursday, January 8, the first day of the 2015 Annual Meeting in Portland.

Sample Praat screenshot--Credit: Univerzita Karlova

Praat is a popular software tool used for recording, analyzing, playing, and modifying speech sounds in the course of linguistics research. The Praat Scripting course, taught by Kevin McGowan (Stanford University), will explore how scripting can help you automate mundane tasks, ensure consistency in your analyses, and provide implicit (and richly-detailed) methodological documentation of your research. A basic familiarity with Praat is requested for participation.

Python is a scripting language commonly used in linguistic and scientific programming due to its gentle learning curve and broad base of existing packages. In the Python course, taught by Robert Daland (UCLA), students will learn the basics of Python from the ground up and build their skills coding projects from corpus linguistics. No prior knowledge of Python or of programming is assumed, although some previous programming experience will be helpful.

The Thriving As An Early Career Faculty Member course, hosted by the Linguistics in Higher Education Committee, is designed to provide advanced graduate students and postdocs with a toolbox for thriving as early career faculty members. During the minicourse, participants will reflect on their identity as scholars, educators, and community members, taking into consideration best practices for thriving in these three areas.

Each minicourse requires a small fee for registration; Annual Meeting registration is not required to participate in the minicourses, but we enourage anyone participating in a minicourse to explore the broader linguistic opportunities available at the Annual Meeting. Space is limited for all three minicourses, so sign up promptly to ensure your space is reserved.