Student Profile

"Linguistics and Chinese." "Chinese and Linguistics." Whichever way you say it the response is usually, "Oh... Wow!"

Hi, my name's Roselle Dobbs, I'm 43 years old, and I've just completed a BA majoring in - you guessed it - Linguistics and Chinese.

As an adult student returning to full-time study in 2003, I knew I'd be learning a lot. What I had no idea I'd be encountering was world-class, but approachable lecturers, lively and thought-provoking discussion, people as
passionate as myself about language, new friends of all ages and many different backgrounds, scope to pursue my own crazy interests, and some very exciting open doors. Not to mention incredibly helpful support staff and lots of Chinese students here on campus to practice my language skills with.

Studying linguistics alongside a language turned out to be a very good idea, as the two streams of study complement each other very well. I am often told what a good Chinese accent I have, and I know this is largely due to the technical aspects of language production that I learned as a linguistics student. Conversely, my understanding of features of world languages was enhanced by my hands-on experience of Chinese.

Many of my linguistics classmates were also studying another language and/or are from non-English speaking backgrounds. In some classes more than a dozen languages were represented. I don’t know about you, but to me that kind of environment is a bit like being in heaven! (They do speak Chinese in heaven, don't they?)

After three years of study I have a good grounding in both my chosen fields of study, but I am also very aware of how much I still have to learn. So, where to from here? Well, there is a lot of linguistic work to be done in the border regions of China, and I just happen to have picked up a scholarship to continue my Chinese language study in China next year…

Chinese and Linguistics? Linguistics and Chinese? If I can do it, so can you!