Honours students from the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch attended a mini conference, covering a broad range of subjects and marking the start of a number of research careers.
On Monday 1 August, 19 honours students from the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch presented their progress with their major research assignments during a mini conference at Stias.
Discourse analysis, editing, interpreting, language acquisition, language technology, literature, lexicography and translation were all covered. Topics included a critical discussion of the usability of a workbook for Afrikaans first additional language, a schizoanalytical reading of Marlene van Niekerk’s Kaar (2013), a study of retranslation in French, a comparative study into the accuracy of autogenerated closed captions on YouTube, and the application and evaluation of guidelines for practical academic editing.
Two of the presenters, both working in the education sector, joined the proceedings from Makhanda via Teams.
The research the students undertake for their honours assignments frequently becomes an exploratory study for further MA and PhD research. And for a good many of the current crop of honours students, Monday’s mini conference represents only the first of many successful research presentations.
