Grammar and vocabulary: showing the connections by Suzan Hunston, Gill Francis, and Elizabeth Manning (1997)
New words
-He amassed a fortune from silver mining.
-We did not want to put away any undue pressure on them.
-Polio has been virtually eradicated in Brazil.
-Over-cultivation has impoverished the soil.
Summary
Teacher should pay attention to patterns as an important aspect of grammar and vocabulary. A pattern consists of a combination of words and a word has a particular meaning in a particular pattern. Patterns promote understanding because some of them have a clear meaning. Learners can guess the meaning through the pattern when they come across an unfamiliar word. In addition, the knowledge of pattern promotes accuracy, fluency and flexibility.
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Friday, 7 November 2008
Some misconceptions about communicative language teaching
Some misconceptions about communicative language teaching by Geoff Thomson (1996)
New Words
-Poverty is a recurrent them in her novels.
-From the vintage point of the present, the war seems to have achieved nothing.
-How do you put this into words?
-Colours like red convey a sense of energy and strength.
-With hindsight it is easy to say they should not have released him.
-The excellent menu is complemented by a good wine list.
-I came to London for preliminary survey.
-The product was called in because of a defect in construction.
Communicative language teaching (CLT)
-‘It is established as the dominant theoretical model in ELT’.
-There are a lot of confusion and completely different perceptions in CLT.
Misconception1-Explicit grammar teaching is avoided.
Grammar is essential to communicate effectively. Learning grammar through CLT leads a natural development. Learners could communicate quite naturally by being conducted in English.
Misconception 2-Only speaking is emphasized.
It is thought teacher talking time (TTT) should be reduced and student talking time (STT) should be increased. However, communication should be thought broadly because ‘communication does not only take place through speech’.
Misconception 3-CLT means pair work (role play)
Role play is useful as a follow-up pair work, but pair work can be used for a preliminary activities as well such as doing a grammatical exercise and analyzing the new language structures.
Misconception 4-CLT depends on the teacher’s language proficiency.
‘CLT is an approach developed by and for native speaker teachers’. However, teachers need a different balance of proficiency skills and they have an opportunity to develop their skills.
New Words
-Poverty is a recurrent them in her novels.
-From the vintage point of the present, the war seems to have achieved nothing.
-How do you put this into words?
-Colours like red convey a sense of energy and strength.
-With hindsight it is easy to say they should not have released him.
-The excellent menu is complemented by a good wine list.
-I came to London for preliminary survey.
-The product was called in because of a defect in construction.
Communicative language teaching (CLT)
-‘It is established as the dominant theoretical model in ELT’.
-There are a lot of confusion and completely different perceptions in CLT.
Misconception1-Explicit grammar teaching is avoided.
Grammar is essential to communicate effectively. Learning grammar through CLT leads a natural development. Learners could communicate quite naturally by being conducted in English.
Misconception 2-Only speaking is emphasized.
It is thought teacher talking time (TTT) should be reduced and student talking time (STT) should be increased. However, communication should be thought broadly because ‘communication does not only take place through speech’.
Misconception 3-CLT means pair work (role play)
Role play is useful as a follow-up pair work, but pair work can be used for a preliminary activities as well such as doing a grammatical exercise and analyzing the new language structures.
Misconception 4-CLT depends on the teacher’s language proficiency.
‘CLT is an approach developed by and for native speaker teachers’. However, teachers need a different balance of proficiency skills and they have an opportunity to develop their skills.
Thursday, 6 November 2008
How culturally appropriate is the communicative approach?
How culturally appropriate is the communicative approach? By Greg Ellis (1996)
New words
-The astronaut was attuned to weightlessness in space.
-Shyness inhibited the new student from talking freely in class.
-They needed to assimilate their way of thinking to new surroundings.
-Promotion is dependent on ability. (=Promotion depends on ability.)
-She was vacillating between two possible courses of action.
-The movie based on the novel distorted the original story.
Summary
Communicative approaches help students communicate with native speakers and communicative competence is regarded as linguistic knowledge and ‘the skill in using this knowledge’. This is used for Asian students as well. However, it has unsuitable aspects because groups are focused, process is important, meaning is emphasized rather than form and approach is teacher-centered in Asia. There is misunderstanding between ESL and EFL. English as a second language (ESL) is for development of communication competence within an English-speaking environment. The role of the ESL teacher is a facilitator using student-centred approach. On the other hand, English as a foreign language (EFL) is designed for the national curriculum or government policy and students don’t have to communicate using the target language outside the classroom in a daily life. Due to the cross-cultural interaction, students tend to experience culture shock and various kinds of responses are observed; ‘over-assimilation’ and ‘self-segregation’ (Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson, 1983), rejection or exaggerating their first culture; rejecting or exaggerating their second culture; vacillating between the two culture or synthesizing them (Bochner, 1982), and so forth. Therefore, the ideal role of the EFL teacher is a cultural mediator. ‘Integration between Western and Eastern teaching practices’ can be useful in an Asian setting.
New words
-The astronaut was attuned to weightlessness in space.
-Shyness inhibited the new student from talking freely in class.
-They needed to assimilate their way of thinking to new surroundings.
-Promotion is dependent on ability. (=Promotion depends on ability.)
-She was vacillating between two possible courses of action.
-The movie based on the novel distorted the original story.
Summary
Communicative approaches help students communicate with native speakers and communicative competence is regarded as linguistic knowledge and ‘the skill in using this knowledge’. This is used for Asian students as well. However, it has unsuitable aspects because groups are focused, process is important, meaning is emphasized rather than form and approach is teacher-centered in Asia. There is misunderstanding between ESL and EFL. English as a second language (ESL) is for development of communication competence within an English-speaking environment. The role of the ESL teacher is a facilitator using student-centred approach. On the other hand, English as a foreign language (EFL) is designed for the national curriculum or government policy and students don’t have to communicate using the target language outside the classroom in a daily life. Due to the cross-cultural interaction, students tend to experience culture shock and various kinds of responses are observed; ‘over-assimilation’ and ‘self-segregation’ (Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson, 1983), rejection or exaggerating their first culture; rejecting or exaggerating their second culture; vacillating between the two culture or synthesizing them (Bochner, 1982), and so forth. Therefore, the ideal role of the EFL teacher is a cultural mediator. ‘Integration between Western and Eastern teaching practices’ can be useful in an Asian setting.
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Learning and teaching different types of grammar
Second Language Learning and Language Teaching by Vivian Cook (2008)
Keywords
Focus on FormS by Long (1991): deliberate discussion of grammar without reference to meaning
Focus on form (FonF): discussion of grammar and vocabulary arising from meaningful language in the classroom
Interesting points
-Prescriptive grammar (spelling and punctuation), traditional grammar (school grammar), structural grammar (phrase structure), grammatical competence (knowledge in the mind)
-‘Japanese does not have plural forms for nouns.’
-content words (in a dictionary), function words (in a grammar book)
-‘The morpheme is the smallest element that has meaning.’
-Universal Grammar (UG) is ‘the knowledge of grammar in the mind as made up of two components: ‘principles’ that all languages have in common and ‘parameters’ on which they vary’.
-Children start to say sentences without subjects at the beginning.
-Japanese is a pro-drop language. Japanese sentences do not have to have subjects.
-‘Japanese has the order phrase + head of phrase. e.g. noun phrase followed by postposition ‘Nihon ni’ (Japan in)’
The order of difficulty for the eight grammatical morpheme
plural ‘-s’, progressive ‘-ing’, copula forms if ‘be’, auxiliary form of ‘be’, definite and indefinite articles ‘the’ and ‘a’, irregular past tense, third person ‘-s’, possessive ‘’s’
-‘L2 learners have the same order’ regardless of the first language.
-‘Adults have roughly the same order as children.’
Principles of language
-locality (how to make questions)
-‘Japanese does not form questions by moving elements of the sentence around.’
Parameters of variation
-pro-drop parameter
-In ‘non-pro-drop’ languages such as English and German, the subject is needed in declarative sentences.
Keywords
Focus on FormS by Long (1991): deliberate discussion of grammar without reference to meaning
Focus on form (FonF): discussion of grammar and vocabulary arising from meaningful language in the classroom
Interesting points
-Prescriptive grammar (spelling and punctuation), traditional grammar (school grammar), structural grammar (phrase structure), grammatical competence (knowledge in the mind)
-‘Japanese does not have plural forms for nouns.’
-content words (in a dictionary), function words (in a grammar book)
-‘The morpheme is the smallest element that has meaning.’
-Universal Grammar (UG) is ‘the knowledge of grammar in the mind as made up of two components: ‘principles’ that all languages have in common and ‘parameters’ on which they vary’.
-Children start to say sentences without subjects at the beginning.
-Japanese is a pro-drop language. Japanese sentences do not have to have subjects.
-‘Japanese has the order phrase + head of phrase. e.g. noun phrase followed by postposition ‘Nihon ni’ (Japan in)’
The order of difficulty for the eight grammatical morpheme
plural ‘-s’, progressive ‘-ing’, copula forms if ‘be’, auxiliary form of ‘be’, definite and indefinite articles ‘the’ and ‘a’, irregular past tense, third person ‘-s’, possessive ‘’s’
-‘L2 learners have the same order’ regardless of the first language.
-‘Adults have roughly the same order as children.’
Principles of language
-locality (how to make questions)
-‘Japanese does not form questions by moving elements of the sentence around.’
Parameters of variation
-pro-drop parameter
-In ‘non-pro-drop’ languages such as English and German, the subject is needed in declarative sentences.
Monday, 3 November 2008
Background to second language acquisition research and language teaching
Second Language Learning and Language Teaching by Vivian Cook (2008)
Keywords
Second language: ‘A language acquired by a person in addition to his mother tongue’ (UNESCO)
Contrastive analysis: this research method compared the descriptions of two languages in grammar or pronunciation to discover the differences between them; these were then seen as difficulties for the students that needed to be overcome
Second and foreign language: broadly speaking, a second language is for immediate use within the same country; a foreign language is for long-term future use in other countries
Interesting points
-‘Language is at the centre of human life. We use it to express our love or our hatred, to achieve our goals and further our careers, to gain artistic satisfaction or simple pleasure, to pray or to blaspheme. Through language we plan our lives and remember our past; we exchange ideas and experiences; we form our social and individual identities. Language is the most unique thing about human beings.’
-‘Knowing another language may mean: getting a job; a chance to get educated; the ability to take a fuller part in the life of one’s own country or the opportunity to emigrate to another; an expansion of one’s literary and cultural horizons; the expression of one’s political opinions or religious beliefs; the chance to talk to people on a foreign holiday. A second language affects people’s careers and possible futures, their lives and their very identities.’
-Children who learn a second language can understand better in their first language.
-‘People who speak a second language are more creative and flexible at problem solving than monolinguals.’
-‘The majority of an English class will be conducted in English’ (MEXT, 2003) in Japan. MEXT stands for Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, science and Technology.
Meaning of ‘language’ (Cook, 2007)
-Lang1: a representation system known by human beings-‘human language’
-Lang2: an abstract entity-‘the English language’
-Lang3: a set of sentences-everything that has been or could be said-‘the language of the Bible’
-Lang4: the possession of a community-‘the language of French people’
-Lang5: the knowledge in the mind of an individual ‘I have learnt French as a foreign language for eight years’
Useful links
www.hoddereducation.com/viviancook.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/index.htm
Keywords
Second language: ‘A language acquired by a person in addition to his mother tongue’ (UNESCO)
Contrastive analysis: this research method compared the descriptions of two languages in grammar or pronunciation to discover the differences between them; these were then seen as difficulties for the students that needed to be overcome
Second and foreign language: broadly speaking, a second language is for immediate use within the same country; a foreign language is for long-term future use in other countries
Interesting points
-‘Language is at the centre of human life. We use it to express our love or our hatred, to achieve our goals and further our careers, to gain artistic satisfaction or simple pleasure, to pray or to blaspheme. Through language we plan our lives and remember our past; we exchange ideas and experiences; we form our social and individual identities. Language is the most unique thing about human beings.’
-‘Knowing another language may mean: getting a job; a chance to get educated; the ability to take a fuller part in the life of one’s own country or the opportunity to emigrate to another; an expansion of one’s literary and cultural horizons; the expression of one’s political opinions or religious beliefs; the chance to talk to people on a foreign holiday. A second language affects people’s careers and possible futures, their lives and their very identities.’
-Children who learn a second language can understand better in their first language.
-‘People who speak a second language are more creative and flexible at problem solving than monolinguals.’
-‘The majority of an English class will be conducted in English’ (MEXT, 2003) in Japan. MEXT stands for Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, science and Technology.
Meaning of ‘language’ (Cook, 2007)
-Lang1: a representation system known by human beings-‘human language’
-Lang2: an abstract entity-‘the English language’
-Lang3: a set of sentences-everything that has been or could be said-‘the language of the Bible’
-Lang4: the possession of a community-‘the language of French people’
-Lang5: the knowledge in the mind of an individual ‘I have learnt French as a foreign language for eight years’
Useful links
www.hoddereducation.com/viviancook.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/index.htm
Introduction to the Study of Bilingualism
Bilingualism by Suzanne Romaine (1995)
New Words
-The book was written for professional and layman alike.
-Yoruba is a language spoken by the Yoruba people of Africa, now an official language of Nigeria.
-He was stigmatized as a coward and a liar.
Main Points
-‘Bilingualism exists within cognitive systems of individuals as well in as families and communities’
-‘Bilingualism has been treated as a special case,’ but from a global societal perspective, most of the world population speak more than one language. Therefore, monolingualism is a special case.
-‘Many bilinguals might know one language better’.
-Bilinguals tend to lack in some aspects of communicative competence including phonology, grammar, lexicon and semantics for one of the languages.
-Bilinguals might not know when and where their speech style should be changed.
New Words
-The book was written for professional and layman alike.
-Yoruba is a language spoken by the Yoruba people of Africa, now an official language of Nigeria.
-He was stigmatized as a coward and a liar.
Main Points
-‘Bilingualism exists within cognitive systems of individuals as well in as families and communities’
-‘Bilingualism has been treated as a special case,’ but from a global societal perspective, most of the world population speak more than one language. Therefore, monolingualism is a special case.
-‘Many bilinguals might know one language better’.
-Bilinguals tend to lack in some aspects of communicative competence including phonology, grammar, lexicon and semantics for one of the languages.
-Bilinguals might not know when and where their speech style should be changed.
Sunday, 2 November 2008
The concept of ‘World English’
The concept of ‘World English’ and its implication for ELT by Kanavillil Rajagopalan (2004)
New Words
-The cat was poised to jump on the bird.
-Some children undergo a complete transformation when they become teenagers.
-He had long coveted the chance to work with a famous musician.
-The monarchy is seen by many people as an anachronism in the modern world.
-This taste evades explanation.
-Make a note of it lest you might forget (in order not to forget).
-This is a history book sui generis.
-It was an altogether different situation.
-There are phenomena in nature that seem to defy logic.
-It is by no means possible to finish this work today.
-The newspaper has become the official mouthpiece of the opposition party.
-The constitution vests in the Japanese people the right of free speech.
-I would like to convey my gratitude to you on behalf of my family.
-No matter what happens, do not lose hope.
Summary
World English (WE) is a language spoken all over the world and nobody’s mother tongue. In other words, WE has no native speakers. It is estimated that WE speakers are twice as many as English native speakers and the number of WE speakers is growing faster and faster. WE is a completely unique linguistic phenomenon in that more and more people will use WE to communicate with non-English speakers rather than native English speakers. Now we need to cope with a large variety of accents of WE, though English has been studied in order to communicate with English native speakers,. WE is a mishmash of a wide variety of dialects and accents. Therefore, English native speakers will lose the status as EFL professionals because they are no longer model speakers of WE.
New Words
-The cat was poised to jump on the bird.
-Some children undergo a complete transformation when they become teenagers.
-He had long coveted the chance to work with a famous musician.
-The monarchy is seen by many people as an anachronism in the modern world.
-This taste evades explanation.
-Make a note of it lest you might forget (in order not to forget).
-This is a history book sui generis.
-It was an altogether different situation.
-There are phenomena in nature that seem to defy logic.
-It is by no means possible to finish this work today.
-The newspaper has become the official mouthpiece of the opposition party.
-The constitution vests in the Japanese people the right of free speech.
-I would like to convey my gratitude to you on behalf of my family.
-No matter what happens, do not lose hope.
Summary
World English (WE) is a language spoken all over the world and nobody’s mother tongue. In other words, WE has no native speakers. It is estimated that WE speakers are twice as many as English native speakers and the number of WE speakers is growing faster and faster. WE is a completely unique linguistic phenomenon in that more and more people will use WE to communicate with non-English speakers rather than native English speakers. Now we need to cope with a large variety of accents of WE, though English has been studied in order to communicate with English native speakers,. WE is a mishmash of a wide variety of dialects and accents. Therefore, English native speakers will lose the status as EFL professionals because they are no longer model speakers of WE.
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