Sheri Wells-Jensen

Bowling Green State University
423 East Hall
Bowling Green, Ohio 43403
(419) 372-8935
swellsj AT bgnet.bgsu.edu
Office hours: MWF 10:30-11:20 am (and by appointment)

Dr. Wells-Jensen is an assistant professor specializing in linguistics at Bowling Green State University.

Her teaching and research interests include phonetics, applied phonology, psycholinguistics, speech production (especially slips of the tongue), language preservation, braille and xenolinguistics.

Spring 2008 Teaching Schedule

• ENG 290 MWF 9:30 am
• ENG 380 MWF 11:30 am
• ENG 517 M 6:00 pm

Links

Slips Pages
ESL Classes at BGSU
Linguistics at BGSU
Requirements for the Linguistics Minor at BGSU
List of Upcoming BGSU Lingiustics Circle BrownBags Talks

Research

Slips of the Dot

This on-going research shows how expert Braillists process the writing task and how it compares to typing on a standard QWERTY keyboard. Here's an abstract of a presentation on the topic. The corpus of Braille errors now comprises approximately 1,600 entries.

Braille literacy issues

Just Say No to Reading Braille? Part One, November 2002 Braille Monitor and Part Two, March 2003 Braille Monitor

Wells-Jensen, Sheri, Jason Wells-Jensen, and Gabrielle Belknap. "Changing the public's attitude toward braille: a grassroots approach." Journal of visual impairment and blindness, v. 99, Mar. 2005: 133-140. A look at what ordinary people do to boost literacy.

Cross-Linguistic Slips of the Tongue

Languages vary when it comes to the amounts of different kinds of phonological slips. For phonological anticipations, English and Turkish seem to show one pattern while Hindi, Spanish, Japanese, and Greek show another. Here's an abstract of a paper from 2001 and here is a more recent update from 2006. The update gives evidence that all languages are equally complex and discusses the implications.

Introducing The PINC

The Parallel Impromptu Narrations Corpus is a group of transcribed narrations containing a rich assortment of speech errors and restarts. These data will eventually be available to the linguistic community.

Error Clustering

Wells-Jensen, Jason, and Wells-Jensen, Sheri (2003). Clustering of speech errors. LACUS Forum 29: Linguistics and the Real World. Houston, TX: Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States. 359-364. It turns out that once you make a speech error, you are likely to make another one very shortly. Errors, in fact, tend to cluster.

Teaching L2 Listening to Korean Students

Wells-Jensen, Sheri, and Kim, Myoyoung. A psycholinguistic approach to teaching L2 listening, making pedagogical use of slips of the ear. In Oak, S., and V. Martin, Eds. Teaching English to Koreans. Elizabeth, NJ and Seoul, Korea: Hollyum International Corporation. 42-66.

Braille and Regular Expressions

The Best of The Perl Journal volume that contains this reprint (Sean Burke with S. Wells-Jensen) is available on Amazon.com

Mingo Language Folksong Project

Abstract of presentation at the 10th Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Conference, 2003. Music is a great way to learn any language, but especially useful in heritage language revitalization. Visit the Project Homepage

Making Language Classrooms Accessible

A chapter in Perspectives on ESL for Community Colleges, Volume Two. The presence of a blind student in a language classroom offers the teacher a chance to re-examine classroom techniques and assumptions. The result is a class that is better for everyone.

The Braille IPA and Other Interesting Techniques

Sheri Wells-Jensen. 2005. "The Braille IPA and Other Issues: The Blind Student in the Phonetics Classroom." Journal of the International Phonetic Association Volume 35 #2: 221-30. Similarly, the presence of a blind student in a phonetics class is not problematic for a teacher who is aware of his or her options.

Individual Differences... in Speech Production

This ongoing research will show how (or if) one person has a difference speech production mechanism from the next.
Click here for Details