Blurb:

This chapter questions what can be done to counter such subversive forces. What are the crucial components of good postgraduate supervision? And how can professors ensure they are incorporated into the experience of linguistics and applied linguistics postgraduates. In addition to the author's personal experience and reflections, this short chapter draws on three sources of information to address these questions: (1) general research on the quality of postgraduate supervision (e.g. Harper 2005; Neale 2000; Morrow 2000; Dinham and Scott 1999); (2) feedback collected from linguistics and applied linguistics students at Victoria University; (3) discussions with a wide range of academics and linguistics scholars about these issues over the last three decades. The discussion is presented in four main sections: it is first considered three areas which are generally identified as problems for postgraduate supervision – workload, choosing a topic and giving and getting feedback – and then it takes a more constructive tack and outline one possible model for doing it well.