This series of video IS interesting but so informative. The following is some thoughts I had after watching it.
First,nonlinguistic communication, the imparting of the information without using language, has so much for us to look into. As it was mentioned in the video, one reason for the existence of nonlinguistic communication ways is that they are efficient. The same as language, they carry meanings as well. And the meaning that a gesture or some other body language carries vary due to the different situation they are in--it's also culture-, region-based or even group-based. No doubt, body language usually helps understanding. It was kind of interesting to know how body language makes boundaries during a conversation. I didn't realize it before, but as I've heard that, I think that is so true.
Facial expression, another interesting part in the video, gave us some insights on how the different parts of muscle work when having different expressions. One thing I still remember is about eh courtesy and real smiles. What have been described by one of the linguist there really makes sense, but there may be some exceptions like some one always smile with his/her mouth muscle move. Maybe some of the smiles are real, but get misunderstood?
Another thing was in my mind is about the language learning. When the linguists were talking about articulation system when producing certain sounds, it reminded me of the "critical period" theory. Personally, I think there may be a critical period for people to acquire/learn a language. Many people moved here when they were adults and they found there are certain sounds they always have problem to make them sound "authentic". So, the question I had is: Is this partly because their articulation system has been shaped at their age so it is hard for the existing one to make some new sounds they did not produce before?
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
English Language Development
A brief view on the historical development of English language is very important to language teachers, I think. This view would give us a peek on how the language we are using now differ from that of many years ago. It also would be helpful if we or our students are interested in reading some literature works that are not translated. Meanwhile, by reading the development of English, we can have a concept on how dialects of English have developed in many areas and how English language was influenced by other languages in the world, and how it adopted foreign words from many other languages. It's kind of interesting to see how languages in the world interact with each other. As far as I know, Japanese has borrowed words,Chinese does that, too. And so does English.
We have so many languages in the world, but why English become the global language? I also think it would be nice for the language teachers to know about the background on this. Giving students some insights on that may increase their motivation in learning English. This is what I found on that:
One of the more remarkable aspects of the spread of English around the world has been the extent to which Europeans are adopting it as their internal lingua franca. English is spreading from northern Europe to the south and is now firmly entrenched as a second language in countries such as Sweden, Norway, Netherlands and Denmark. Although not an official language in any of these countries if one visits any of them it would seem that almost everyone there can communicate with ease in English. Indeed, if one switches on a television in Holland one would find as many channels in English (albeit subtitled), as there are in Dutch.
As part of the European Year of Languages, a special survey of European attitudes towards and their use of languages has just published. The report confirms that at the beginning of 2001 English is the most widely known foreign or second language, with 43% of Europeans claiming they speak it in addition to their mother tongue. Sweden now heads the league table of English speakers, with over 89% of the population saying they can speak the language well or very well. However, in contrast, only 36% of Spanish and Portuguese nationals speak English. What's more, English is the language rated as most useful to know, with over 77% of Europeans who do not speak English as their first language, rating it as useful. French rated 38%, German 23% and Spanish 6%. English has without a doubt become the global language.
We have so many languages in the world, but why English become the global language? I also think it would be nice for the language teachers to know about the background on this. Giving students some insights on that may increase their motivation in learning English. This is what I found on that:
One of the more remarkable aspects of the spread of English around the world has been the extent to which Europeans are adopting it as their internal lingua franca. English is spreading from northern Europe to the south and is now firmly entrenched as a second language in countries such as Sweden, Norway, Netherlands and Denmark. Although not an official language in any of these countries if one visits any of them it would seem that almost everyone there can communicate with ease in English. Indeed, if one switches on a television in Holland one would find as many channels in English (albeit subtitled), as there are in Dutch.
As part of the European Year of Languages, a special survey of European attitudes towards and their use of languages has just published. The report confirms that at the beginning of 2001 English is the most widely known foreign or second language, with 43% of Europeans claiming they speak it in addition to their mother tongue. Sweden now heads the league table of English speakers, with over 89% of the population saying they can speak the language well or very well. However, in contrast, only 36% of Spanish and Portuguese nationals speak English. What's more, English is the language rated as most useful to know, with over 77% of Europeans who do not speak English as their first language, rating it as useful. French rated 38%, German 23% and Spanish 6%. English has without a doubt become the global language.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Play the language game
I think Dr. Smidt was right about the videos that we are watch for the recent three weeks. They are fun and informative. I enjoyed the first two sections at least. Some thoughts popped up in my head after watching the part of “Playing the Language Game”.
At the very beginning of the semester, we had a discussion about if we acquired our language or we learned our language. If my memory serves, it may be proper to say “We acquire our L1, and we may try to learn a L2.” A person who learns a L2 may not able to acquire it, but it is not often for a person to fail to acquire his/her L1.
However, how do children acquire language? It seems that they do it without seeming to learn it? Why can a 3 year-old child speak kind of complicated language but can’t tie their shoes? Obviously, few parents would teach their kids grammar, like syntax when they are at that young age. But they can make correct sentences with the words they know; even they know the 3rd person singular forms of verbs? How do they get that? I agree with the linguists in the video---language is not acquired by imitating. But, is that because they were equipped that in their mind when they were born like the birds can fly without being taught? Or their innate knowledge interacts with the environment that they are in and help them produce new knowledge, as the analogy example in the video? Maybe. Children may do have a system of knowledge they were born with; this system interact with the environment that they are immersed; then, they become able to create the sentences they’ve never heard before. Gradually, their language ability grows and they would eventually acquire it.
At the very beginning of the semester, we had a discussion about if we acquired our language or we learned our language. If my memory serves, it may be proper to say “We acquire our L1, and we may try to learn a L2.” A person who learns a L2 may not able to acquire it, but it is not often for a person to fail to acquire his/her L1.
However, how do children acquire language? It seems that they do it without seeming to learn it? Why can a 3 year-old child speak kind of complicated language but can’t tie their shoes? Obviously, few parents would teach their kids grammar, like syntax when they are at that young age. But they can make correct sentences with the words they know; even they know the 3rd person singular forms of verbs? How do they get that? I agree with the linguists in the video---language is not acquired by imitating. But, is that because they were equipped that in their mind when they were born like the birds can fly without being taught? Or their innate knowledge interacts with the environment that they are in and help them produce new knowledge, as the analogy example in the video? Maybe. Children may do have a system of knowledge they were born with; this system interact with the environment that they are immersed; then, they become able to create the sentences they’ve never heard before. Gradually, their language ability grows and they would eventually acquire it.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Slang & idioms in ESL teaching
This week, our group were assigned an activities, which is to find out the meaning of some popular slang used by university students in US. Honestly, I did not know very much about those slang, even though I have been in this context for about two years now. While doing that exercise, some questions came to my mind: What are the difference between slang and idiom? Should we teach slang in ESL class? Why should we teach them? Isn't slang viewed as nonstandard English? Which class use slang most often?
I found out that the definition of slang is "nonstandard vocabulary of a given culture or subculture",while idiom mean "a phrase that is commonly understood in a given culture or subculture to have a meaning different from its literal meaning". I was told that a math teacher told a black kid not to use slang in his English because they are not standard English. It seems that slang are views as a "bad" language in many people eyes. It is said that in Japan, using slang would have a negative context for the person. Then, should ESL teachers teach slang in class or avoid them? Which group of people usually use slang?
Actually, some experts say that there are some categories and subcategories of slang in slang. Each category is used by a specific group. Many people use them for entertaining. if I am going to teaching ESL students, I probably will not promote the use of slang and idioms, but I feel that I have a responsibility to familiarize the nonnative speaker with this type of language.After all, whether we like it or not, this nonstandard English has existed for years and will continue to exist. Knowledge of slang and idioms is fundamental to nonnative speakers' understanding of the language that native speakers actually use. It is also essential for those who want to integrate into our culture; without slang and idioms, students will always be outsiders. This nonstandard English may even be important for students' safety and well-being.
I found out that the definition of slang is "nonstandard vocabulary of a given culture or subculture",while idiom mean "a phrase that is commonly understood in a given culture or subculture to have a meaning different from its literal meaning". I was told that a math teacher told a black kid not to use slang in his English because they are not standard English. It seems that slang are views as a "bad" language in many people eyes. It is said that in Japan, using slang would have a negative context for the person. Then, should ESL teachers teach slang in class or avoid them? Which group of people usually use slang?
Actually, some experts say that there are some categories and subcategories of slang in slang. Each category is used by a specific group. Many people use them for entertaining. if I am going to teaching ESL students, I probably will not promote the use of slang and idioms, but I feel that I have a responsibility to familiarize the nonnative speaker with this type of language.After all, whether we like it or not, this nonstandard English has existed for years and will continue to exist. Knowledge of slang and idioms is fundamental to nonnative speakers' understanding of the language that native speakers actually use. It is also essential for those who want to integrate into our culture; without slang and idioms, students will always be outsiders. This nonstandard English may even be important for students' safety and well-being.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Language Variations: Dialects
Dialects always sound an interesting topic to me. There are probably thousands of dialects in my country. I have no idea about how many dialects exist in my hometown, but I know each town in this county has its own dialects. Huge difference could be found among some, so it may happen that people who do not live very far could not understand each other very well. Actually, my mom is from different county than my dad. I remember that when I was young, I liked visiting my mom’s parents. However, I was laughed at because I spoke a little different than the people there do; even people were just kindly joking.
Finegan is so right about the dialect use. People use dialects to show their social identities-- to indicate which group they belong to. Many people may be able to more than one dialect, but they would prefer to speak one of them. Finegan states that what counts most are just the views of the speakers. This is so true.
The topic about “Northern Shift” and “Southern Shift” are presented in this chapter. I’ve heard about that before. The shift itself is amazing, but I wondered about the reason behind those shift. Is that because people who move to that area tend to talk alike, then those shift happened? Why did they happen in this way instead of the other way? I think it may be worth researching. I’ll try to see what I could find.
Finegan is so right about the dialect use. People use dialects to show their social identities-- to indicate which group they belong to. Many people may be able to more than one dialect, but they would prefer to speak one of them. Finegan states that what counts most are just the views of the speakers. This is so true.
The topic about “Northern Shift” and “Southern Shift” are presented in this chapter. I’ve heard about that before. The shift itself is amazing, but I wondered about the reason behind those shift. Is that because people who move to that area tend to talk alike, then those shift happened? Why did they happen in this way instead of the other way? I think it may be worth researching. I’ll try to see what I could find.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Lamguage Variation-Registers
When reading the instruction for the writing sample analysis, one topic I was not feeling so comfortable with is the register. It seems that Chapter 10 helped me figure out what register is. My understanding is that register means different types of language characteristics in different social situations. I hope I got it right.
It is interesting to know that language repertoire refers to the set of language varieties that present in the speaking and writing patterns of a speech community. I was wondering if language repertoire is like a stock of a certain community’s language patterns. People use this language with what has been exist in this storage. This storage has different marks styles, in lexical, phonological, grammatical, and semantic. When people in this community are interacting with some other people for some particular purposes in different location with different mode, they switch from one language to another. When they are writing, they may use different language than they usually say in everyday life. This contributes to the fact that oral and written languages have their own styles. However, in different types of writing, the registers are different, too. The example that Finegan present in this Chapter is a legalese, we can see the register features of this type of text. As for the oral example, what we read is an interview. I think its style must be different from that of an impromptu speech.
It is interesting to know that language repertoire refers to the set of language varieties that present in the speaking and writing patterns of a speech community. I was wondering if language repertoire is like a stock of a certain community’s language patterns. People use this language with what has been exist in this storage. This storage has different marks styles, in lexical, phonological, grammatical, and semantic. When people in this community are interacting with some other people for some particular purposes in different location with different mode, they switch from one language to another. When they are writing, they may use different language than they usually say in everyday life. This contributes to the fact that oral and written languages have their own styles. However, in different types of writing, the registers are different, too. The example that Finegan present in this Chapter is a legalese, we can see the register features of this type of text. As for the oral example, what we read is an interview. I think its style must be different from that of an impromptu speech.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Linguitics Study is Fun
The far as this semester goes, the more I think studying linguistics is fun.
I do think the video "He said, she said" is interesting. Actually, I think Dr. Tannen's speech is more like a book, a book on linguistics but delivered to the audience/reader in a lively and humorous way. Conversation style is a topic about what happens in our real life. Those patterns do not sound too far from us, however, as for the deep side, we just do not know if we don't look into it closely. One thing I was wondering is if what Tannen focuses on is something about sociolinguistic.
The chapter on semantic is not boring to read as well. Most of hose terms are not new to me, but I enjoyed reading those examples that listed in the book. There are something new in the section, for example, I did not know modalities can be divided into epistemic and deomtic ones, even though I knew those are modalities. I feel kind of anxious to know what I will discover in the rest of the book and in the rest of the semester.
I do think the video "He said, she said" is interesting. Actually, I think Dr. Tannen's speech is more like a book, a book on linguistics but delivered to the audience/reader in a lively and humorous way. Conversation style is a topic about what happens in our real life. Those patterns do not sound too far from us, however, as for the deep side, we just do not know if we don't look into it closely. One thing I was wondering is if what Tannen focuses on is something about sociolinguistic.
The chapter on semantic is not boring to read as well. Most of hose terms are not new to me, but I enjoyed reading those examples that listed in the book. There are something new in the section, for example, I did not know modalities can be divided into epistemic and deomtic ones, even though I knew those are modalities. I feel kind of anxious to know what I will discover in the rest of the book and in the rest of the semester.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Syntax knowledge
Why did children make the sentence like "I goed to school today"? Why did I made words like "There are a lot of laughness here" before? I think these are common phenomena in language learning. As Freeman & Freeman says, language learners are trying to recognize the rules of language, hypotheses these rules and use these rules in the language that they develop. As they become more capable in dealing more complex rules, they modify their hypotheses and say "I went to school today" instead of "goed". This reminds me of something we language teachers should be very careful in our teaching---error feedback given. Confronting language errors like "goed", "laughtness" actually is a good thing, because it shows that learners are acquiring the language by using it---constructing meanings they want to express. Therefore, proper feedback is crucial because we want this meaning construction in language learning.
Using Cloze Procedure to access syntactic cues does sound a good method. How well language learners could do in cloze procedure depends on their knowledge on surface syntactic structure, deeper syntactic structure. i think semantic knowledge is also important. I remember when I was teaching, cloze was always a part of the any English quiz or exam.However, I don't think I did it well on those parts when explaining the answers. Freeman and Freeman indicates that "Getting the right word is not important. What is important is developing a strategy to be used later during silent reading". I guess I just stopped at the surface level--explain the answers and how to get them. As for how to enhance the skills in doing cloze up to strategies in silent reading, I definitely need to know more about it.
Using Cloze Procedure to access syntactic cues does sound a good method. How well language learners could do in cloze procedure depends on their knowledge on surface syntactic structure, deeper syntactic structure. i think semantic knowledge is also important. I remember when I was teaching, cloze was always a part of the any English quiz or exam.However, I don't think I did it well on those parts when explaining the answers. Freeman and Freeman indicates that "Getting the right word is not important. What is important is developing a strategy to be used later during silent reading". I guess I just stopped at the surface level--explain the answers and how to get them. As for how to enhance the skills in doing cloze up to strategies in silent reading, I definitely need to know more about it.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Morphology in teaching reading—Freeman & Freeman
Words are made up with meaningful parts while not all of the parts are relevant to the word itself, which makes morphological knowledge difficult to apply during reading. Therefore, Freeman and Freeman emphasized a lot about not to sue structural analysis to teach language learners vocabularies, saying that knowing the parts of the word do not help pronounce words and learn the meaning of the word. I think this can be true in many cases and I also agree that sometimes the existing knowledge of parts of the word may not help get accurate new knowledge of the whole word, which could be frustrating to the learners. Then, how can we language teachers help develop students’ vocabulary?
Freeman and Freeman suggest that when teaching learner new words, we should let them know the concept of a word instead of the definition of the word. One approach is to use a variety of activities to build background to learn words before reading. Extensive reading helps vocabulary learning as well. According to the case study on Page 201, it has been approves that students who are read to a lot have better vocabulary knowledge. I was wondering what kind of reading it was that the teacher did for the students. Obviously, it should not just the teacher reading, but what did the teacher ask the students do before/after that? Picking up words from a story is another way to build up students’ vocabulary. Thinking of many English teachers in China still pre-teach the new words before getting into texts, I can’t help worrying about students’ outcome of their learning. Reading Chapter 9 on the application from morphology of teaching English, I feel ashamed about my own teaching methods too. However, I have confidence that I can do better in the future.
Freeman and Freeman suggest that when teaching learner new words, we should let them know the concept of a word instead of the definition of the word. One approach is to use a variety of activities to build background to learn words before reading. Extensive reading helps vocabulary learning as well. According to the case study on Page 201, it has been approves that students who are read to a lot have better vocabulary knowledge. I was wondering what kind of reading it was that the teacher did for the students. Obviously, it should not just the teacher reading, but what did the teacher ask the students do before/after that? Picking up words from a story is another way to build up students’ vocabulary. Thinking of many English teachers in China still pre-teach the new words before getting into texts, I can’t help worrying about students’ outcome of their learning. Reading Chapter 9 on the application from morphology of teaching English, I feel ashamed about my own teaching methods too. However, I have confidence that I can do better in the future.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Reading Chapter of English Morphology (Freemans)
It is amazing that words can be broken into parts (sometimes many parts), even some of the parts can be individual words, too. Thus, it is difficult to define words and what’s more, it is difficult to count how many words a certain group of learners should master during a certain learning period as well. Morphemes seem to bring some “trouble” to us.
The number of morphemes in a word is different among languages, as Freeman and Freeman states. Chinese language is analytic, since almost each word is one morpheme. Language like Latin is synthetic because of words tend to be added inflections, while languages like Navajo have more inflections on words so they are polysynthetic languages. Turkish has many morphemes in a word so it is agglutinative. This is so interesting.
This chapter talks about that grammar learning starts from very boring and strict experience to a fun process now. As for the parts of speech, a lot of good books are available to the learners. It’s said that phrases are accompanied by colorful illustrations. I think that indicates one important point that is grammar knowledge like parts of speech should be learned in context. For example, when classifying words, we need to base on the meaning of words, while the meaning of the words is determined by the context to some extent. Freeman and Freeman say that morphological evidence can help identify the parts of speech and meaning, while this evidence should be gathered from a group of words, I think. For example, I notice that Freeman and Freeman classify “this” as a determiner in this chapter. It is true when telling people “This is my house/book/blog”, but in the sentence “Look at this backpack. I got this from Staples”, is “this” still a determiner OR it is more like a pronoun. If it is right to say “this” is a pronoun in the second example above, then the importance of a context cannot be denied at all.
The number of morphemes in a word is different among languages, as Freeman and Freeman states. Chinese language is analytic, since almost each word is one morpheme. Language like Latin is synthetic because of words tend to be added inflections, while languages like Navajo have more inflections on words so they are polysynthetic languages. Turkish has many morphemes in a word so it is agglutinative. This is so interesting.
This chapter talks about that grammar learning starts from very boring and strict experience to a fun process now. As for the parts of speech, a lot of good books are available to the learners. It’s said that phrases are accompanied by colorful illustrations. I think that indicates one important point that is grammar knowledge like parts of speech should be learned in context. For example, when classifying words, we need to base on the meaning of words, while the meaning of the words is determined by the context to some extent. Freeman and Freeman say that morphological evidence can help identify the parts of speech and meaning, while this evidence should be gathered from a group of words, I think. For example, I notice that Freeman and Freeman classify “this” as a determiner in this chapter. It is true when telling people “This is my house/book/blog”, but in the sentence “Look at this backpack. I got this from Staples”, is “this” still a determiner OR it is more like a pronoun. If it is right to say “this” is a pronoun in the second example above, then the importance of a context cannot be denied at all.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Lexicon & Morphology
When typing the title,I still feel that the definition of lexicon seems more clear to me than morphology. But this is my understanding: Lexicon refers to the set of all the words and idioms of any language; Morphology studies morphemes and their different forms and the way they combine in word formation.
To divide the words into open classes and close classes is kind of new to me, but makes sense, since the open classes are basically content words which are far more than the closed classes which are function words. As we are alking about these two word classes, I was wondering: are we takling about all the languages in general or just English language?
When reading portmanteau words and blends, I was confused if they refer to the same thing. According to wiki, "Portmanteau word" is used to describe a linguistic blend, namely "a word formed by blending sounds from two or more distinct words and combining their meanings." I guess they both mean blend words and "PORTMANTEAU" must be a blend word itself.
One more interesting point I found in this chapter is about adverb. Taken "carefully" as an example, "care" is a verb, "careful" is an adjective, "carefully" is an adverb. So I was thinking if the adverbs are usually dirivations of adjective and verb. "adjective+ verb-----adverb."
To divide the words into open classes and close classes is kind of new to me, but makes sense, since the open classes are basically content words which are far more than the closed classes which are function words. As we are alking about these two word classes, I was wondering: are we takling about all the languages in general or just English language?
When reading portmanteau words and blends, I was confused if they refer to the same thing. According to wiki, "Portmanteau word" is used to describe a linguistic blend, namely "a word formed by blending sounds from two or more distinct words and combining their meanings." I guess they both mean blend words and "PORTMANTEAU" must be a blend word itself.
One more interesting point I found in this chapter is about adverb. Taken "carefully" as an example, "care" is a verb, "careful" is an adjective, "carefully" is an adverb. So I was thinking if the adverbs are usually dirivations of adjective and verb. "adjective+ verb-----adverb."
Monday, February 9, 2009
Reading Freemans talk about phonics
Freeman & Freeman's discussion about orthography is so practical. Even though pretty much of the rules are what I have learned, it was kind of interesting to hear other peoples' view.Plus, I found the same rule might be explained in different ways. For example, as for the rules of sounding the suffixes of plural forms, my teacher summarized as voiced/z/ follows voiced ending, voiceless /s/ follows voiceless endings and /z/ follows vowel sounds. Of course, this rule does not include the epenthesis. I really liked the explanation about the softened /c/ and /g/, this is new to me and it does make sense to me.
Whether phonics instruction is needed or not was brought up again in Chapter 6. I think we've talked about it in the last two weeks. However, Freeman & Freeman's summary about the two views is: "The only way that the subconscious knowledge can be developed is through reading and being read to". Therefore, I assume that what they mean ed is graphophonics needs phonics instruction, but it should be done systematically and explicitly. I noticed in this part, the silent "e" in "made" was responded as the /y/ sound in /meyd/. That seems a little bit confusing to me.
I also like the Checklist for characteristics of text that support reading and the list of the good books. These information are going to be helpful for many preservice ESL teachers.
Whether phonics instruction is needed or not was brought up again in Chapter 6. I think we've talked about it in the last two weeks. However, Freeman & Freeman's summary about the two views is: "The only way that the subconscious knowledge can be developed is through reading and being read to". Therefore, I assume that what they mean ed is graphophonics needs phonics instruction, but it should be done systematically and explicitly. I noticed in this part, the silent "e" in "made" was responded as the /y/ sound in /meyd/. That seems a little bit confusing to me.
I also like the Checklist for characteristics of text that support reading and the list of the good books. These information are going to be helpful for many preservice ESL teachers.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Phonemic awareness
If my understanding is right, phonemic awareness(PA) is that people can hear, indentify and manipulate phonemes in their language use. As cited in Freeman and Freeman, Stemovich indicates that PA is the key factor to diferentiate good readers from poor readers. How did this come? Is phonology the only factor that matters in reading or not? I wondered that.
So, is PA learned through direct instruction or it can be learned subconsciously? I think the two different views--word recognition & sociopsycholinguistic view both partly make sense. I believe it can imporve one's PA skills through word recognition; however, I really do not know how to learn the phoneme without any instruction or without any conscious learning. Based on my L2 learning and teaching experience, I suppose that PA need to be learned in a conscious way first and then it may be subconscious acquired when one's phnology knowledge is good enough.
Wait, is my view under the influence from the traditional concept of learning in Chinese culture? According to that, one should master certain amount of knowledge to become able to use it. ?? My APP is going to drive me crazy, I guess.
So, is PA learned through direct instruction or it can be learned subconsciously? I think the two different views--word recognition & sociopsycholinguistic view both partly make sense. I believe it can imporve one's PA skills through word recognition; however, I really do not know how to learn the phoneme without any instruction or without any conscious learning. Based on my L2 learning and teaching experience, I suppose that PA need to be learned in a conscious way first and then it may be subconscious acquired when one's phnology knowledge is good enough.
Wait, is my view under the influence from the traditional concept of learning in Chinese culture? According to that, one should master certain amount of knowledge to become able to use it. ?? My APP is going to drive me crazy, I guess.
Reading Freemans' "English Phonology" Chapter
It is always such a joy to read Freemans' "Essential Linguistics". It is easy to understand and actually it helped me review and undertand better about what I have learned on English phonology.
As I began to read, I noticed that Freeman & Freeman classifies "diphthongs" as "long vowels", I was wodnering if diphthongs should be two vowels, then it can be just long vowels?
While, I do agree that social contexts, gestures, natural language itself, situation, roles and status of the speakers and listeners are the factors that influence meaning making. I like the definitions of phonology and phoneme, which says that phonology is a study of the sounds used by speakers of a particular language and phoneme is a sound makes difference in meaning in lanuage. However, I don't quite understand that why vowels are syllabics and consonants are nonsyllabics. Another question I have is if the Freeman and Freeman are using IPA symbols here, since they use different symbols for /ʃ/& /ʒ/; /tʃ/&/dʒ/.
Tongue Twister is an interesting part. I was wodnering if there are tongue twisters for different L1 background students, since they may need different help in certain sounds. And, do those people who create tongue twisters are from linguistic domain?
As I began to read, I noticed that Freeman & Freeman classifies "diphthongs" as "long vowels", I was wodnering if diphthongs should be two vowels, then it can be just long vowels?
While, I do agree that social contexts, gestures, natural language itself, situation, roles and status of the speakers and listeners are the factors that influence meaning making. I like the definitions of phonology and phoneme, which says that phonology is a study of the sounds used by speakers of a particular language and phoneme is a sound makes difference in meaning in lanuage. However, I don't quite understand that why vowels are syllabics and consonants are nonsyllabics. Another question I have is if the Freeman and Freeman are using IPA symbols here, since they use different symbols for /ʃ/& /ʒ/; /tʃ/&/dʒ/.
Tongue Twister is an interesting part. I was wodnering if there are tongue twisters for different L1 background students, since they may need different help in certain sounds. And, do those people who create tongue twisters are from linguistic domain?
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Some Thoughts about Teaching Phonetics
My classmate brought up a good point about teaching L2 in different context. That was actually I was going to talk about here. While, the first thing I want to address my opinions here is about teaching phonetics.
I don't know why that learning or teaching phonetics sounded pretty boring to me, unless someone really enjoys how funny to see others try to produce some sounds. It is not hard to produce those easy one, but as for those tough ones, I was thinking how could we EFL/ESL teachers help our learners to get it? It is true that we can definitely teach them by demonstrating, by imitating, by drilled exercise. However, I don't think there is more that we can do. The same as we teach vocabularies, grammars, it is very important to teach the sounds in a context. Therefore, we could learn the sounds in words, in sentences, in texts. Doing minimal pairs is one kind of exercise students could do. Teachers can design some other controlled, guided and communicative practice as well. When I was a students, the communicative exercise is what we missed. Actually, this kind of practice can be a part that our students really enjoy doing it.
As for teaching English language in ESL and EFL contexts, there is a huge difference. There is possbility that both EFL and ESL teachers learned the same L2 as students do. Take myself as an example, if I go back to teach in China again, my Chinese linguistic knowledge and English linguistic knowledge can help me undstand learning English as a foreign language in a better way. My personal learning experience could be anothe asset to my teaching. However, ESL teacher may confront bigger challenges, since the student group could be more diverse. Students' different language and cultural background may "push" ESL teachers to learn linguistic knowledge about some languages. It can be a good opportunity to learn, but it can also make it more difficult when trying to find out how we can best help these students.
I don't know why that learning or teaching phonetics sounded pretty boring to me, unless someone really enjoys how funny to see others try to produce some sounds. It is not hard to produce those easy one, but as for those tough ones, I was thinking how could we EFL/ESL teachers help our learners to get it? It is true that we can definitely teach them by demonstrating, by imitating, by drilled exercise. However, I don't think there is more that we can do. The same as we teach vocabularies, grammars, it is very important to teach the sounds in a context. Therefore, we could learn the sounds in words, in sentences, in texts. Doing minimal pairs is one kind of exercise students could do. Teachers can design some other controlled, guided and communicative practice as well. When I was a students, the communicative exercise is what we missed. Actually, this kind of practice can be a part that our students really enjoy doing it.
As for teaching English language in ESL and EFL contexts, there is a huge difference. There is possbility that both EFL and ESL teachers learned the same L2 as students do. Take myself as an example, if I go back to teach in China again, my Chinese linguistic knowledge and English linguistic knowledge can help me undstand learning English as a foreign language in a better way. My personal learning experience could be anothe asset to my teaching. However, ESL teacher may confront bigger challenges, since the student group could be more diverse. Students' different language and cultural background may "push" ESL teachers to learn linguistic knowledge about some languages. It can be a good opportunity to learn, but it can also make it more difficult when trying to find out how we can best help these students.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Learning Phonetics
I tend to have a reading habit, that is, always connecting what I am reading with my prior experience. Maybe this just matches the theories of our literacy development: new information interacts with our existing background knowledge, then this interaction contributes to the L2 literacy development.
To be frank, I would have no idea about what IPA is if I did not enroll in this program. The time I began to learn English pronunciation was the 1st year of my middle school. My teacher learned English almost all by himself and at that time, British English was very popular in our country. In my university course, I don't have the memory that one of professor mentioned IPA symbols as well. Actually, what I learned at university is kind of a combination of American English, British English and New Zealand English, since I have professors who studied in US, from US & New Zealand, who studies British English in his whole life. When I began to teach English in middle school, American English was popular and all the textbooks are in American English. I don't think they used IPA symbols, either. That's why I was kind of struggling to get those symbols which are different from what I've already feel familiar with. Unfortunately, I usually messed them up easily. This is consistent with a Hungarian proverb: " What is learned in the cradle lasts until the grave."
Anyway, I really liked the part about the place and the manner of articulation. These knowledge help people to get the right sound in a comparatively easy way.Fro example, I think I have problem in produce dark /l/. I tried to do it as the what Finegan talks about the features of this sound, my friends said I was able to get it now. I strongly believe these knowledge could be very helpful to adult learners. However, I need to carefully think about how to integrate this knowledge in our pronunciation teaching to younger learners, especially elementary kids.
To be frank, I would have no idea about what IPA is if I did not enroll in this program. The time I began to learn English pronunciation was the 1st year of my middle school. My teacher learned English almost all by himself and at that time, British English was very popular in our country. In my university course, I don't have the memory that one of professor mentioned IPA symbols as well. Actually, what I learned at university is kind of a combination of American English, British English and New Zealand English, since I have professors who studied in US, from US & New Zealand, who studies British English in his whole life. When I began to teach English in middle school, American English was popular and all the textbooks are in American English. I don't think they used IPA symbols, either. That's why I was kind of struggling to get those symbols which are different from what I've already feel familiar with. Unfortunately, I usually messed them up easily. This is consistent with a Hungarian proverb: " What is learned in the cradle lasts until the grave."
Anyway, I really liked the part about the place and the manner of articulation. These knowledge help people to get the right sound in a comparatively easy way.Fro example, I think I have problem in produce dark /l/. I tried to do it as the what Finegan talks about the features of this sound, my friends said I was able to get it now. I strongly believe these knowledge could be very helpful to adult learners. However, I need to carefully think about how to integrate this knowledge in our pronunciation teaching to younger learners, especially elementary kids.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
L1 Acquisition
After reading only a couple of chapters of Essential Linguistics by Freeman & Freeman (2004), I found this is a book that you feel easy to get into. Linguistic knowledge is explained in an interesting and lively way which immediately moved my fear of feeling bored when reading linguistics away.
As for the views of the first language (L1) acquisition, I think the insights from different researchers are valuable. L1 learning does relate to developmental psychology and the importance of environment. However, neither of the above theories could give us a full picture of how L1 is learned. That is why they were challenged by the theories of linguistics. Chomsky’s Generate Grammar indicates that many sentences may have a surface level and a deep level meaning, which is kind of similar to Finegan’s two of the three faces of language. I cannot help thinking if the meaning of a sentence or the way to express a meaning (active or passive) is situational. If a child just says something without any context, s/he could make it really ambiguous; while, if the sentence is said in a particular situation, would that be confusing as well? Universal Grammar (UG) always sounds too hard for me to believe. My question is: If there is a universal grammar for children to develop their L1, why would some children have much more difficulties in L1 learning than other children, even some of them have defect on this issue? Why would this built-in knowledge not seem helpful to them? Or maybe this is a question we need to ask cognitive psychologist?
Freeman & Freeman’s views of reading, writing and 2nd language (L2) learning reminded me of my own language learning experiences when I was young. I think I was taught to read in the way that word recognition view describes. Chinese pinyin system came first in my first grade’s Chinese language class; then we began to learn vocabularies and read aloud after the teacher or classmates or read by ourselves. Understanding a text was the last thing. Comparing to “sociopsycholinguistics view”, I certainly can see the drawbacks of the way I learned. However, I still think that reading aloud should be a part of learning to read, because I do not think silent reading can help develop our phonology skills as well as reading aloud, especially for beginners. I learned writing in a traditional way, too. I was curious about my current writing skills if I was taught in a process way. Maybe I could see that if I teach my future students through this method.
I guess it is known that traditional method in English teaching was quite popular in China. Actually, it still is in some areas. We had to do a lot of drills and exercise in our English learning. Imagine if more communicative activities were used in our classrooms, there would not be so many English learners are so struggling to improve their speaking skills, I think.
The last point I want to make here is about the Critical Period (CP) Hypothesis. On Page 41, it says: “Once past that period, people are not able to acquire a second language.” I was wondering if there is a bias here. I believe there are examples in our real life that people who past that period came to the US and they can still “acquire” English. It depends on how long and how much effort it takes. The CP might exist; however, a young child and an adult both have advantages in their L2 learning. These are just my thinking, though.
As for the views of the first language (L1) acquisition, I think the insights from different researchers are valuable. L1 learning does relate to developmental psychology and the importance of environment. However, neither of the above theories could give us a full picture of how L1 is learned. That is why they were challenged by the theories of linguistics. Chomsky’s Generate Grammar indicates that many sentences may have a surface level and a deep level meaning, which is kind of similar to Finegan’s two of the three faces of language. I cannot help thinking if the meaning of a sentence or the way to express a meaning (active or passive) is situational. If a child just says something without any context, s/he could make it really ambiguous; while, if the sentence is said in a particular situation, would that be confusing as well? Universal Grammar (UG) always sounds too hard for me to believe. My question is: If there is a universal grammar for children to develop their L1, why would some children have much more difficulties in L1 learning than other children, even some of them have defect on this issue? Why would this built-in knowledge not seem helpful to them? Or maybe this is a question we need to ask cognitive psychologist?
Freeman & Freeman’s views of reading, writing and 2nd language (L2) learning reminded me of my own language learning experiences when I was young. I think I was taught to read in the way that word recognition view describes. Chinese pinyin system came first in my first grade’s Chinese language class; then we began to learn vocabularies and read aloud after the teacher or classmates or read by ourselves. Understanding a text was the last thing. Comparing to “sociopsycholinguistics view”, I certainly can see the drawbacks of the way I learned. However, I still think that reading aloud should be a part of learning to read, because I do not think silent reading can help develop our phonology skills as well as reading aloud, especially for beginners. I learned writing in a traditional way, too. I was curious about my current writing skills if I was taught in a process way. Maybe I could see that if I teach my future students through this method.
I guess it is known that traditional method in English teaching was quite popular in China. Actually, it still is in some areas. We had to do a lot of drills and exercise in our English learning. Imagine if more communicative activities were used in our classrooms, there would not be so many English learners are so struggling to improve their speaking skills, I think.
The last point I want to make here is about the Critical Period (CP) Hypothesis. On Page 41, it says: “Once past that period, people are not able to acquire a second language.” I was wondering if there is a bias here. I believe there are examples in our real life that people who past that period came to the US and they can still “acquire” English. It depends on how long and how much effort it takes. The CP might exist; however, a young child and an adult both have advantages in their L2 learning. These are just my thinking, though.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
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