English Language Overview

The Realm of English

• English is a lingua franca, facilitating communication between speakers of different native languages, especially where at least one speaker uses it as a second language.
• False friends are words from different languages that sound similar but have different meanings.
• English gained popularity through colonial history, economics, travel, and pop culture.
• Some predict English will lose its status as the most used language worldwide.

Varieties of English

• Kachru's Three Circles model categorizes English varieties: the inner circle, outer circle, and expanding circle.
• The inner circle includes countries where English is a first language, such as the USA, UK, and Australia.
• The outer circle includes countries where English is a second language, such as Singapore, India, and Pakistan.
• The expanding circle includes countries where English is learned for cultural or commercial importance, like China, Sweden, and Greece.
• Teachers should use the English variety most relevant to their students' needs and likely interactions.
• Teachers should reveal students to various English language through listening and reading materials.
• General English is an all-purpose language without a specific focus.
• English for Specific Purposes (ESP) caters to clearly defined learning goals such as English for Academic Purposes, Business English, or English for Science and Technology.

Describing Language: Grammar

• Grammar describes how words change form and combine into sentences.
• Competence refers to a native speaker's knowledge of language grammar.
• Performance is the application of that competence.
• Morphology, using morphemes to change word meaning, and syntax, ordering words, is key for effective communication in speech and writing.
• Spoken language has interruptions, jokes, non-grammaticality, hesitators, echo or condensed questions, interjections, and polite speech formulas.
• Ellipsis, omitting words without changing the meaning, is a common feature of informal speech.
• Speech and writing need different grammar rules.
• Descriptive grammar describes everything.
• Pedagogic grammar simplifies the rules for teachers and students.
• According to Michael Swan a pedagogic grammar rule should have simplicity, truth, clarity, and relevance.

Describing Language: Vocabulary

• Polysemy refers to words with multiple meanings, the correct meaning is indicated via context.
• Word meaning is defined by its relationship to other words.
• Synonyms are words with similar meanings, but are context-dependent.
• Hyponymy relates words as types of a category: banana, apple, and pear are hyponyms of the superordinate fruit.
• Word connotations vary depending on their context, as shown by "chubby baby" versus "chubby teacher".
• Idioms are fixed metaphors with non-obvious meanings like "She kicked the bucket" meaning "she died."
• Clichés are overused idioms such as "Money doesn’t grow on trees."
• Collocations are word combinations.
• Lexical phrases or language chunks are memorized phrases (e.g., "ironic" in "It is ironic that...").
• Grammatical terms include phrasal verbs, compound words, functional phrases, idiomatic or fixed expressions, and verbal expressions.
• Words in combination can act as single meaning units.
• Some words can function as multiple word classes, for example anger as a noun or verb.
• Adding affixes can change a word's meaning or class.

Language in Use

• Word choice varies effects based on purpose, appropriacy, discussion topic, and genre.
• Performatives are verbs that achieve an action through their utterance.
• Language functions encompass inviting, apologizing, offering, and suggesting.
• Variables influencing language choices include setting (informal/formal), participants (family/friends/superiors), gender, and channel (telephone/email/face to face).
• The topic influences the vocabulary used.
• Discourse markers include topic markers, shifters, summarizers, exemplifiers, relators, evaluators, and qualifiers.
• Discourse analysis is key to understand texts.
• Identifying patterns improve our student's speech, reading, and listening.
• Different genres mean different texts.

The Sounds of Language

• Pronunciation involves pitch, intonation, sounds, spelling, and stress.
• Intonation is crucial for expressing emotion and engagement when speaking.
• English has inconsistent sound-spelling pairings.
• Elision occurs when sounds combine like "I can’t dance."
• Assimilation involves the ending sound of a word changing to match the beginning sound of the next.
• Juncture marks where two sounds meet, as in "I scream" versus "ice cream."
• Stress is variations in pitch, vowel duration, and volume.

Paralinguistic Features of Language

• Vocal paralinguistic features encompass whispering, breathiness, huskiness, nasality, and extra lip rounding.
• Physical paralinguistic features encompass facial expression, gesture, proximity, posture, and echoing.

Describing Learners: Age

• Age impacts learning needs, competencies, and cognitive skills.
• Brain plasticity in children helps learn languages faster than adults.
• Young children learn directly, are curious, like talking about themselves, have limited attention spans, need individual attention, and learn from everything.
• Bright, colorful classrooms with varied activities support them.
• Adolescents are less motivated due to their identity search, they appreciate peer approval, but are passionately creative if provoked.
• Intellectual ability allows adult learners to handle abstract ideas and concepts.
• Positive adult traits include great life experience, focused self-learning, and discipline.
• Negative characteristics include criticism, anxiety, and fear of lost power.

Learner Differences

• Aptitude affects language-learning proficiency, aptitude tests are not always reliable indicators.
• Good learners tolerate ambiguity, are task oriented, have ego involvement, high aspirations, goal orientation, and perseverance.
• Creativity, intelligent guesses, and contextual clues correlate with good learning.
• Enthusiasts, oracular, participator, and rebel styles affect learning.
• Language levels include convergers, conformists, concrete learners, and communicative learners.
• The Plateau Effect means limited progress for some, appropriate methodology is therefore extremely important.

Individual Variations

• Primary representational systems to understand the world include the visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory methods- NLP considers using these, VAKOG.
• Gardner's MI theory says there are seven intelligences: musical/rhythmic, kinaesthetic/bodily, visual/spatial, verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, interpersonal and intrapersonal + naturalistic intelligence (+ religious, emotional, etc).
• Each student has a preferred intelligence, but can use all of them.
• Recognize individual, and group learning styles.
• Adapt classes depending on student needs.
• Assess progress via questionnaires and observations.
• Student feedback informs future instruction.

Motivation

• Motivation is an internal drive toward achieving goals as per Brown.
• It is cognitive arousal leading to sustained effort, according to Williams and Burden.
• Adults set goals with more clarity relative to children.
• Extrinsic motivation comes from outside influence like test or job requirements.
• Intrinsic motivation comes from individual progress or passion.
• Motivation is affected by the environment, others' influence and teacher method.
• Teachers must influence motivation by enabling environment, goal setting, and interesting classes.

Describing Teachers: What is a Teacher?

• Teachers perform as actors and orchestra conductors or facilitate like gardeners do.
• Effective teachers have maturity, intuition, educational skills, are open to student input and tolerant for uncertainty.

The Roles of a Teacher

• Controllers direct and organize lessons, yet can stifle student autonomy.
• Organizers provide information to provide structure.
• Assessors give feedback and grades, therefore should be fair in judgement.
• Prompters offer discrete help to allow for encouragement.
• Participants can engage to ensure better activity.
• Resources give key information but allows for self-discovery.
• Tutors give personal instruction.
• Observers take notes on student learning

The Teacher as a Performer

• Performance requires different roles.

The Teacher as a Teaching Aid

• Use mime, expressions, and gestures to effectively and carefully convey meaning.
• Language serves as a model for speaking.
• Teachers provide comprehensible input to allow for student expression

Some Background Issues

• Watson's behaviorism views learning as stimulus → response → reinforcement.
• Chomsky criticized behaviorism believing in a language acquisition device, LAD
• Allwright claimed learning is possible through opportunity and motivation with student interaction.
• Krashens Monitor Theory says Conscious knowledge needs to be used as subconscious knowledge.
• Teacher action therefore needs to raise languge awareness
• Success or failure depends on a student's personal outlook.
• Personal input contributes to aquisition.
• Provide oppurtunities to allow for language discovery.