Today is the beginning of week 6, and I only have two weeks left. Scheduling participants has been going extremely well(at least in comparison to before). I not have scheduled my minimum of 25 participants and I’m confident that I can schedule at least 5 more.
I’m really glad that my participants actually enjoyed my experiment. I have a task called “word picture training”, which is helping them becoming familiar with the words used for my main task. Although this part is long, and can often last more than 40 minutes, most of said they’ve learned a ton of new words and found it really helpful. I also met a girl who’s very interested in American culture. She knows about Pennsylvania because the show Pretty Little Liars took place there, which I was also a fan of. The interesting thing is she though I go to University of Pennsylvania, and to be honest, I also wish I go there(but I do love Penn State more).
The university here is hosting a literature festival, as someone who’s also a literature student, I really want to go, especially when there’s a discussion(or lecture?) about Thomas Mann, one of my favorite authors. I am packed with participants during those days, but hopefully I can squeeze out some time to attend some activities.
Earlier this morning, I attended a lab meeting. Today’s topic was on considering the language backgrounds of participants. When we test participants, we look for a certain groups of people. For example native speaker of a certain language, L2 speaker of a language, bilinguals etc. But the reality is often a lot more complicated, different people have different definitions of native or L2 speakers, and how to categorize them and consider different backgrounds is the question.
Last weekend, I finally found some good places to buy souvenirs. They are not stereotypically German like beer mugs, pieces from the Berlin Wall, or bears, but something actually useful and reflect local culture.