Collaborative work 1 language forms and function
- 1. LANGUAGE FORMS AND FUNCTIONS Collaborative Work 1 ALFONSO ROJAS DAIRO MADARIAGA MARIA ORTEGA Tutor CAMILO CENDALES HERRERA OPEN AND DISTANCE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION SCIENCES BACHELOR IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE 2015
- 2. When it comes to the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language, it is necessary to think about the complex processes of language. Language can be understood in terms of grammar, phonetics, phonology, semantics, syntax and pragmatics. Language is interactive, is the tool from which human beings communicate; language is a distinctive feature of humans. If we think about language, in the educative contexts, it is important to point out, teachers must offer the best possibilities for learners to construct and create knowledge meaningfully. This work reviews some of the conceptualizations found in the study materials of the Language forms and functions course. Individual as well as group work was crucial for the development of this activity. Reflections and strategies for the teaching and learning of English will be exposed here. The topics all the members have chose, will be exposed here: special emphasis on the three most difficult of them will be made in this work.
- 3. The Nature of Language and Linguistics. The Internal Structure of Words and Processes of Word Formation in English. Grammatial categories and Word Classes.
- 4. All humans have fundamental beliefs about language. Fundamental beliefs tend to be wrong but, How language can be defined? From linguistics point of view, language is seen as a system of arbitrary vocal signs; language is rule-governed, creative, universal, innate, and learned, all at the same time. When we begin to study language, bring some misconceptions: As literate beings, we tend to equate language with writing. But there are significant differences, not only between oral sounds and written symbols, but also between spoken and written syntax or vocabulary. We assume that there is some necessary, inevitable, or motivated connection between a word and the thing it names. Names tell us something about the bearer of that name. A foreign language is somehow perverse and idiotic, while our own language is natural and sensible. There is an inevitable connection between a word and the thing it represents, the word is very powerful, names are extremely important and the possession of language can be very dangerous.
- 5. On the other hand, linguistics sustain language consists of sings, which are defined as things that stand for or represent something else. Linguistics sings involve: Sequences of sounds which represent concrete objects and events as well as abstractions. Signs may be related to the things they represent in a number of ways. The philosopher C. S. Peirce recognized three types of sings: Iconic, which resemble the things they represent as do, for example, photographs, diagrams, star charts, or chemical models. Indexical, which point to or have a necessary connection with the things they represent as do for example, smoke to fire, a symptom to an illness, or a smile to happiness. Symbolic, which are only conventionally related to the thing they represent, as do for example a flag to a nation, a rose to love, a wedding ring to marriage.
- 6. Functioning to give expression to our thoughts: language is a vehicle for thought. To transmit information: the communicative function. To provide the raw material for works of literature: the narrative function. To maintain social intercourse as greetings or talk about the weather: the “phatic” function.
- 7. As well as having a number of misconceptions about the nature of language, lay people often have a different definition of the term grammar than linguists do. Grammar can be defined as the rules of principles by which a language works: it systems of structure. Linguistics points out there are two types of grammar. Prescriptive: The prescriptive grammar involves attempts to establish and maintain a standard of correctness in the language, to “prescribe” (dictate) and “proscribe” (forbid) certain ways of speaking. Prescriptive grammar involves value judgments based on factors external to language-such as, social class or level of education. Descriptive grammar: Looks at the way language is used by its speakers and then attempts to analyze it and formulate rules about the structure. Descriptive grammar does not deal with what is good or bad language use; forms and structures that might not be used by speakers of Standard English would be regarded as valid and included.
- 8. Phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics Pragmatics
- 9. Phonology, sound, voice: Phonetics it is the study of the speech sounds of human language in general, either from the perspective of their production (articulatory phonetics), their perception (auditory phonetics), or their physical properties (acoustic phonetics). Other aspects of phonetics are: -Types of sounds: consonants, vowels and semivowels. - Features of sound: stress and pitch. Morphology: It is the study of the structure or forms of words and of their classification. Considers principles of word formation in a language: how sounds combine into meaningful units such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots; and what processes of word formation a language characteristically uses.
- 10. Pragmatics: It is the study of the functions of language and its use in context. Language, in addition to serving to communicate information, actually has a variety of functions, including the expression of emotion, the maintenance of social ties, and even the performance of action. Semantics: Is the study of how meaning is conveyed, focusing either on meanings related to the outside world (lexical meaning) or meanings related to the grammar of the sentence (grammatical meaning). Syntax: is the study of the order and arrangement of words into larger units, as well as the relationships holding between elements in these hierarchical units. It is an extensive and complex area of language. Syntax studies: -The structure and types of sentences: questions or commands. -The clauses: relative or adverbial clauses. -The phrases: as prepositional or verbal classes.
- 11. We have exposed conceptual elements about language and grammar. As this work is based on collaborative interaction, it is important to justify the reason for choosing this topic, why grammar has chosen to be studied here? The main reason is that as ESL students, we need to have the knowledge about the language because this is important for having good language domain and perform adequately in the communicative context. Grammar is complex; we need to acknowledge studying grammar can be difficult. For this reason we’ve chosen to learn about grammar: to comprehend, expose and investigate about how grammar is organized, defined and what are its constituent elements
- 12. We are concerned with the study of grammar. In our professional field grammar plays a crucial role: we are preparing and getting the necessary tools for teaching not only grammar, but also all the communicative components of language, and allow our students to globally domain the target language. Grammar is a set of rules. These rules are often difficult for students to learn, especially if they’re not native speakers. When students come in contact with grammar they’re sometimes unmotivated and that obstructs their learning experience. For this reason we have decided to study grammar: to prepare ourselves to get the tools that are needed to involve students in a meaningful learning process where they can construct their own knowledge. The group has developed a learning strategy that makes emphasis on the teaching and learning of grammar from a didactic approach.
- 13. An alternative for teaching grammar and allowing students to learn grammar meaningfully is by the incorporation of didactic methodologies and student-centered approaches. A lesson plan based on grammar should be according to student’s level but also it should be challenging enough to allow learning to take place. The collaborative group has come to the conclusion that teaching grammar should be an interactive not a static process. We have created the following strategy and it is aimed to young learners. Young students are explorers, and teachers need to take advantage of that.
- 14. Strategy: Teacher enters the classroom; she introduces the topic to students. She presents a short story written by herself which make emphasis on a grammar that is informal and natural for students. With the short story, student’s imagination and writing skills will be fostered. Also they’ll learn about grammar in a funnier context. Materials and sources: Worksheets, paper, cardboards, colors and markers. Students and setting: This is a private school; English is practiced 45 minutes lessons every day. The grade is 4 and there are 28 students in the classroom. Teacher asks questions, she explains students how grammar is used for communicating ideas. She presents the short story and making emphasis on the verbal categories chooses one student to perform that verb.
- 15. She explains students verbs are actions. E.g. if one student got assigned the word “dance” she/he must perform that action so the rest of classmates can guess what action is. After a student has performed the action, and the whole class has guessed what is, teacher is going to introduce the verbs that were studied by taking into account their different form. E.g “dance”, teacher introduces: I like to dance I danced yesterday I’m dancing… and so on. After this, teacher is going to introduce a song. She plays the song. She selects the easiest verbs of the song and she performs them: e.g. “to read” teacher picks up a book from her desk and students are required to guess what she is doing. Again, teacher introduces verbs in their different forms: I love to read. I read a good book yesterday. I am reading…and so on. At the end of the activity, teacher will assign students a worksheet to be developed as homework.
- 16. We all have an intuitive feel for the words of the language and we think immediately of the written word, but even non-literate speakers can divide the speech chain into words. Thus, there must be some formal criteria for word-hood which all speakers use. These might be of various kinds: Orthographic: a word is what occurs between spaces in writing. Semantic: a word has semantic coherence; it expresses a unified semantic concept. Phonological: potential pause: a word occurs between potential pauses in speaking. Though in normal speech, we generally do not pause, we may potentially pause between words, but not in the middle of words. stress: a word spoken in isolation has one and only one primary stress.
- 17. Morphological: a word has an internal cohesion and is indivisible by other units; a word may be modified only externally by the addition of suffixes and prefixes. Grammatical: words fall into particular classes. Syntactic: a word has external distribution or mobility; it is moved as a unit, not in parts. When trying to understand what words are, we need to take into account the conceptualizations of morphology. Morphology is the study of word structure.
- 18. We begin the study of morphology by taking words as given and examining their internal structure. Morpheme versus morph: We must start by identifying the morpheme, the smallest meaningful unit in a language; the morpheme is not necessarily equivalent to a word, but may be a smaller unit. Like the phoneme, the morpheme refers to either a class of forms or an abstraction from the concrete forms of language. A morpheme is internally indivisible; it cannot be further subdivided or analyzed into smaller meaningful units. Morphemes are represented within curly braces { } using capital letters for lexemes or descriptive designations for other types of morphemes.
- 19. There are a number of types of morphemes: Lexical morphemes express lexical, or dictionary, meaning. They can be categorized into the major lexical categories, or word classes: noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. They constitute open categories, to which new members can be added. Lexical morphemes are generally independent words (free roots) or parts of words (derivational affixes and bound roots).
- 20. Grammatical morphemes express a limited number of very common meanings or express relations within the sentence. They do not constitute open categories; they can be exhaustively listed. Their occurrence is (entirely) predictable by the grammar of the sentence because certain grammatical meanings are associated with certain lexical categories, for example, tense and voice with the verb, and number and gender with the noun. In the case of the morpheme —which is an abstraction —we must also recognize the level of the morph, the concrete realization of a morpheme, or the actual segment of a word. Morphs are represented by word forms or phonetic forms. We say that a morpheme is “realized” as a morph.
- 22. Free morphemes: These are called bound roots. Bound roots are often foreign borrowings that were free in the source language, but not free in English. Bound morphemes: Morphemes that can only be attached to another part of a word (cannot stand alone) are called bound morphemes. Morphemic Analysis versus Morphological Analysis: The importance of the distinction between morph and morpheme is that there is not always a one-to-one correspondence between morph and morpheme, and morphemes can combine or be realized in a number of different ways. We can thus analyze words in two different ways: in morphological analysis, words are analyzed into morphs following formal divisions, while in morphemic analysis, words are analyzed into morphemes, recognizing the abstract units of meaning present.
- 23. Allomorphs and Morphemic Rules Let us turn now to a further aspect of morphemes. Just as phonemes have predictable variants, called allophones, morphemes have predictable variants called allomorphs. Allomorphs are the members of the class, morpheme, or the phonetic realizations of the abstraction, morpheme. Allomorphs are semantically similar and in complementary distribution. They needn’t be phonologically similar, however. Allomorphs are predicted, or “conditioned”, in one of three ways: Phonologically conditioned: the appearance of a particular allomorph is predictable from the phonetic environment. Grammatically conditioned: the appearance is unpredictable phonologically but is determined by the grammar of the language or; In free variation: allomorphs may be used interchangeably in a particular environment.
- 24. English has a number of means by which morphs combine or are altered to form new words: The addition of a derivational affix (a prefix, a suffix, and, in some languages, an infix) is called derivation. The addition of a derivational affix to a root produces a new word with one or more of the following changes: Phonological change (including stress change): reduce - reduction, photograph -photography, relate – relation. An orthographic change to the root: pity - pitiful, deny- denial, happy- happiness. A semantic change, which may be fairly complex: husband -husbandry, event – eventual. A change in word class. In English, derivational affixes are either prefixes or suffixes. They may be native (deriving from Old English) or foreign (borrowed along with a word from a foreign language, especially French).
- 25. Is a process similar to derivation, in which the initial syllable or the entire word is doubled, exactly or with a slight phonological change. Reduplication is not a regular process of word formation in English. In English, reduplication is often used in children’s language (e.g., boo-boo, putt-putt) or for humorous or ironic effect (e.g., goody-goody, rah-rah, pooh-pooh). Three different kinds of reduplication can be identified: Exact reduplication: papa, mama, goody-goody, so-so, hush-hush, never- never. Ablaut reduplication: in which the vowel alternates while the consonants are identical: crisscross, zig-zag, Ping-Pong, tick-tock, flip-flop. Rhyme reduplication: in which the consonants change while the vowel remains the same: Helter-skelter, hodge-podge, fuddy-duddy, razzle- dazzle, boogie-woogie, nitty-gritty, roly-poly. Reduplication
- 26. Compounds: compound is the combination of two or more free roots (plus associated affixes). Both phrases (such as kick the bucket, hit the road, sit tight, run the gamut, under the weather) and compounds consist of more than one free root and may be semantically opaque. Blends: blend involves two processes of word formation, compounding and clipping. Two free words are combined and blended, usually by clipping of the end of the first word and the beginning of the second word, although sometimes one or the other morpheme is left intact.
- 27. We have chosen the processes of word formation to be exposed here because knowing how words are classified is important in both our professional and informal context. When we studying English grammatical aspects, we need to have understanding of how words are used to convey meaning and act as the principal element of the communicative act. Words are signs, and words are classified according to different categories. We can teach words from a semantic approach as well as pragmatic. We choose this topic, because as learners of English as a foreign language, we sometimes struggle in finding the exact words to express the things we want. But studying what words are, and how are formed, gave us a strong understanding of that. Now, we are concerned in teaching our students to understand the morphological aspects of English. If we teach morphology, students will know about the nature of language, also they will acquire more vocabulary and their writing skills will improve too.
- 28. Students: This is a 9th grade classroom (about 30 students) the lesson plan is for teenagers (between 13 and 15 years). They’ve been receiving instruction in the language since the early ages of their school life. Their English level is B1. Settings: This is a public school, where the teacher has the same students daily. English is practiced in 30-45 minutes lessons every day. She can build vocabulary from day to day with English lessons and activities. The chairs and desks are lightweight and easily moved around to different configurations for whole-class or pair/group work.
- 29. Lesson background: This lesson introduces a new subject for the first time: morphology and morphemes. Students are going to use flash cards, prints and other materials. This will help them to learn the contents didactically. Learning objectives: Students will work with the guidance of teacher. They will be able of identifying basic aspects of morphology, morphemes and word formation as a result of the lesson. Continued practice in later lessons will help them to acquire the language and be able to remember the formation of words. Materials and sources: Scissors, pencils, paper, and markers will be used in the lesson. Worksheets and flashcards will be used too. Teacher made the printed worksheet and flashcards.
- 36. A grammatical category is a set of syntactic features that express meanings from the same conceptual domain, occur in contrast to each other, and are typically expressed in the same fashion. Grammatical morphemes may be either free roots (function words) or bound affixes (inflectional suffixes). Semantically, grammatical morphemes express grammatical notions such as number or tense, what are called grammatical categories. Itn synthetic languages such as Classic Latin or Greek, the grammatical categories are expressed almost exclusively by inflectional endings, whereas in analytic languages such as present-day English, the grammatical categories are expressed primarily by word order, and by function words. The following list of grammatical categories will be exposed through the nominal categories (number, gender, person, case, degree, definitiness) and then the verbal categories (tense, aspect, mood, and voice).
- 37. Number: This first category is relatively simple. There are two terms of this category in English: singular (the concept of one) and plural (the concept of more than one). Number is expressed by inflection, generally by –s. In count nouns (dog/dogs) In demonstratives (this/these, that/those) In the 1st and 3rd p of personal pronouns (I/we), possessive determiners (my/our), possessive pronouns (mine/ours), and reflexive pronouns (myself/ourselves), but not in the 2nd person. Number is also expressed by distinct forms of certain pronouns and adjectives: Singular: every, each, someone, anybody, a/an Plural: all, many, few, several, most
- 38. Gender: English has a rather straightforward system of gender called natural gender, as opposed to the seemingly less motivated system called grammatical gender. Grammatical gender, the system found in earlier stages of English. Person: The category of person is quite simple. Three terms are recognized: 1st person: the speaker, person speaking; 2nd person: the addressee/hearer, person spoken to; and 3rd person: the person or thing spoken about. Person distinctions are expressed by the inflected forms of the pronouns, for example: Personal pronouns: I You He, they Personal possesive determiners: my your His, their Personal possesive pronouns: mine yours His, theirs Personal reflexive pronouns: Myself Yourself Himself, themselves
- 39. Case: is one of the more difficult categories. It may be defined rather simply as an indication of the function of a noun phrase, or the relationship of a noun phrase to a verb or to other noun phrases in the sentence. Case is most fully expressed in the personal and interrogative/relative pronouns, which distinguish nominative case (the function of subject). Genitive case (the function of possessor), and Objective case (the function of object). Degree: is a category that relates to adjectives and adverbs. It has three terms, positive, comparative, and superlative. Superlative degree expresses greatest degree or intensity of the quality in one of three or more items.. Comparative and superlative degrees are expressed either by inflection or by periphrasis (using more, most):
- 40. Definiteness: The concepts of definiteness and indefiniteness are intuitively quite simple: Definite denotes a referent (a thing in the real world denoted by a noun) which is known, familiar, or identified to the speaker and hearer. Indefinite denotes a referent which is novel, unfamiliar, or not known. Verbal categories. Tense is a linguistic category, it has two different forms: a). I saw a movie last night b). I wish you would go. Past tense expresses past time in (a),but it expresses future time in (b). We see that the present time expresses a timeless habit in (a) and a future time in (b), neither expressing an action ocurring at the present moment.
- 41. Aspect: is a category applicable to English since the so-called “compound tenses”, the perfect and the progressive, are better treated as expressions of the aspect. Aspect can be defined as the view taken of an event, or the “aspect” under which it is considered, basically whether it is seen as complete and whole (perfective aspect) or as incomplete and ongoing (imperfective aspect). Mood: is an indication of the speaker’s attitude towards what he or she is talking about, wether the event is considered fact or non fact. The indicative is the mood of fact; it is expressed by the simple and compound tenses of the verb. Nonfact enompasses a number of different degrees of reality, including whises, desires, requests, warnings, prohibitions, commands, predictions possibilities, and contrary to-fact occurrences. Voice: The category of voice, though usually considered a category of the verb, is actually relevant to the entire sentence. Voice is an indication of whether the subject is performing action of the verb or being something (active voice) or whether the subject is being affected by the action or being acted upon (passive voice).
- 42. Verb: A group of words cannot be described as a sentence or a clause unless at least one of the words is a verb. In some ways, we can describe it as the most important part of speech because it is the 'action' word that tells the listener or reader what is happening in the sentence. An adjective: gives the reader or speaker extra information about a noun or delimits it in some way. Prepositions allow us to talk about the way in which two parts of a sentence are related to each other. They include words like in, on, under, beside, through, inside, before, opposite. Conjunctions: serve to connect two or more clauses, phrases or words together to make longer constructions. An interjection: is a word used to express a particular emotion or sentiment on the part of the speaker.
- 43. It is known that learning the grammar of another language can be a complex- difficult process. In the case of English, grammar is formed by a variety of elements. What happens if students don’t have sufficient knowledge of the language grammar? They won’t be able mastering the target language adequately. For this reason we have chosen grammatical categories as one of the most difficult topics for a student to learn. We are going to expose a different strategy for teaching grammar. When students have knowledge of grammar, they can perform better by making use of the three English skills (writing, listening, speaking and reading). Grammar knowledge will allow students to communicate better and master the language as native speakers do. Grammar is important; it facilitates the communicative process. If students master English grammar, they will be able of acquiring the language with fluency.
- 44. The following is an activity that emphasizes on the teaching of grammatical case. It is prepared for middle school students. The activity is based on a previous lesson Materials and sources: Post-Its and large easel paper or newsprint. Teacher divide students into groups, she gives them paper. On each paper teacher writes the following sentences: Aisha meowed, chased a mouse and then found the dog's toy. Robert kicked the ball in Mr. Wilson's yard. Jane made cookies in Grandma's new oven. Stephanie took the football and ran to Grant's house. Samantha gave Jodi a present.
- 45. Step 1: Teacher divides students into groups. A leader is elected to help the group make quick decisions. Step 2: Teacher gives each group an easel paper with the five sentences and a stack of Post-Its. Step 3: The group will need to identify each underlined noun as object, subject or possessive with Post-Its. Each group has 60 seconds. Step 4: When the 60 seconds is up, teacher will turn over the sheets that are correct. The groups that have the papers facing up have 60 more seconds to re-arrange the Post-Its to get them all correct. Step 5: Teacher will do this in 60-second increments until all groups have the sentences correctly identified. The teams that had the nouns labeled correctly can make up five new sentences for other teams to identify using the first set as a model. For fun: The winner group will help teacher tell the other teams if they have any wrong each time they complete the task.
- 46. Doing this work was crucial for our learning process. We have learned important issues about the nature of language. We know now, that language can be understood in terms of grammar. Morphology, pragmatics, syntax, and semantics; language is complex and studying the way is conformed is crucial for having a good domain of it, and having the necessary tools to transmit all knowledge to our students. Designing the teaching strategies gave us clear understanding of our responsibility as teachers. Students need to be involved in activities that are relevant for them. Students need to enjoy the learning experience with activities that are according to their learning needs and are challenging enough; this is crucial for learning to take place.
- 47. Laurel J. Brinton, Donna Brinton. The Linguistic Structure of Modern English. Jobn Benjamins Publishing, 2010. Pages 1-358 Stacia Ann. Teaching Morphology. Busy Teacher. Web online. Retrieved from: http://busyteacher.org/9530-my-brother-is-very-success-teaching-morphology.html Lisa Philips. Activities in Morphology. Retrieved from: http://www.phillipsspeechtherapy.com/pdfs/Activities%20in%20Morphology.pdf Duquesne University. (n.d). Morphology. Retrieved from: http://www.mathcs.duq.edu/~packer/Courses/Psy598/Ling-Morphology.pdf Mary Beth Calhoon. (2012). Morphology for the Classroom. Pennsylvania Department of Education. Retrieved from: http://www.pattan.net/Videos/Browse/Single/?code_name=morphology_classroom Kelly Hayden. (2012). Identifying noun case activity. BRIGHT HUB EDUCATION. Retrieved from: http://www.brighthubeducation.com/middle-school-english- lessons/21427-identifying-noun-case-game/