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.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
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.
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