Language processing: Computational Linguistics and Psycholinguistics

What made you choose this degree programme?

My enthusiasm for learning foreign languages has also increased my curiosity about the processes in the brain that occur when using language. The opportunity to explore these processes on a psychological level fascinated me. The combination of psycholinguistics and computational linguistics seemed to expand these possibilities even further.

In which respect have or haven’t your expectations been fulfilled?

The program provides many interesting insights into the language processes in the brain, but you have to be prepared to deal with a certain level of abstraction. Nevertheless, the methodology, not lastly due to the computational linguistic methods, gives you a solid foundation in scientific discourse and you can be sure that you are not just speculating. This seems highly valuable to me, because as a linguist, one often feels disconnected from the ‘hard sciences.’ Currently, my courses lack contact with foreign languages, but this does not make the subject any less exciting, as many insights can be transferred.

Which aspect of your degree programme do you enjoy most?

Literature research at the beginning of projects. I enjoy delving into new topics and questions; it makes me feel like a detective.

What has been your biggest challenge to date?

Getting started with Python programming without any prior experience in the field.

What would you like to become after completing your degree?

I would like to continue pursuing psycholinguistics and remain in research. I am looking forward to interdisciplinary perspectives and applications that I might not have recognised myself before. 

Which advice would you like to give to students who consider enrolling in this degree programme?

You should definitely not be intimidated by numbers or complex notation. In the end, everything can be deciphered. If you do encounter difficulties, you can always solve the problems together with your fellow students. That's the best way to learn anyways, and it also helps you integrate yourself better into your studies.

What made you choose this degree programme?

In which respect have or haven’t your expectations been fulfilled?

Which aspect of your degree programme do you enjoy most?

What has been your biggest challenge to date?

What would you like to become after completing your degree?

Which advice would you like to give to students who consider enrolling in this degree programme?

What made you choose this degree programme?

I have always had a great passion for languages. It was clear to me that I wanted to focus less on language in the literary/literary studies sense and more on language itself, its function and its structure.

In which respect have or haven’t your expectations been fulfilled?

My expectations were met, and even exceeded, particularly in the field of computational linguistics. You start programming in the first semester, which I enjoyed. The programming component increases as the course progresses, allowing you to tackle more complex topics such as LLMs (large language models) and neural networks later on.

On the other hand, a few areas that I had expected to cover were not included. For example, historical linguistics (language development over time) or stylistics (individual language use, e.g. everyday language). 

The content was different than I had expected, but in a positive way.

Which aspect of your degree programme do you enjoy most?

I enjoy analysing linguistic phenomena, deriving rules from them and applying these rules to various texts using a program I wrote myself.

What has been your biggest challenge to date?

Getting started with academic writing in the Basic Methods module, where you have to collect and evaluate data yourself for the first time in order to derive correlations from it.

What would you like to become after completing your degree?

My focus is on computational linguistics. In the future, I hope to work in software development to create software that makes life more accessible for everyone.

Computational linguistics is much more than LLMs (large language models such as ChatGPT).

Which advice would you like to give to students who consider enrolling in this degree programme?

Don't be put off by the relatively small size of the programme. This is actually an advantage, as it allows you to ask your own questions and discuss topics/papers/research with lecturers who are closely involved in research.

What made you choose this degree programme?

I have always been interested in communication and language. I found the structures behind them particularly exciting and was less interested in learning a specific language.

In which respect have or haven’t your expectations been fulfilled?

I have a little more to do with programming than I originally anticipated, and it took me a while to get used to it. Otherwise, I have gained exactly the insight into human language processing that I had hoped for.

Which aspect of your degree programme do you enjoy most?

Rediscovering concepts that I learned during my studies in everyday life and being able to explain to those around me exactly why I find a particular statement especially fascinating.

What has been your biggest challenge to date?

Probably a forgotten comma in some Python or R script. Maybe also the adjustment of suddenly having to be careful not to write too much. Studying requires a different writing style than school, and that threw me off a bit at first.

What would you like to become after completing your degree?

I find psycholinguistics incredibly interesting, and if I find an opportunity, I would like to use it professionally. It probably won't be in the job description, but an understanding of language processing is also helpful in the field of computational linguistics, where I will probably end up working sooner or later if I don't end up in research.

Which advice would you like to give to students who consider enrolling in this degree programme?

Read the documentation for a software of your choice. You will have to look up individual functions again and again during your studies and should feel comfortable doing so. I also don't know any teacher who isn't happy when people ask questions, whether out of interest or because something was unclear. So ask any question that comes to mind.