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.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
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?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
