Week 15’s class (4/23)

Today we had an opportunity to look up an example with regard to the final project. It gave me a sense of how the final project is expected to look like. Also we should keep in mind that no finding every single error is needed. Just giving error examples is fine. Additionally, we also have friends who can give us support from our group. Then later on, we’re divided into three groups discussing the questions we had for our final project. I think this is a good idea to share and discuss our experience of where we are and what troubles we’re facing. I’m thinking to present my final project with PowerPoint. Hopefully I can figure out the place where I can park my PT file on PBWIKI page.

Week 15: Linguage Change Over Time: Historical Linguistics

This chaper mainly addresses two concepts. The first one is that language is always changing as is referred to the last vido we watched. All levels between generations such as vocabulary, phonology, morphology, and so on are changing too. The second concept deals with the language families, which Finegan spends a number of pages to talk about. It begins with Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Afroasiatic, and other language families of Asia and Europe. It's good to learn that Indo-European family includes English, German, Russian, French, and Hindi while Chinese language belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family, and the Austronesian family includes Malay while the Afroasiatic family contains Arabic.

Week 14’s class (4/16)

Today we’re divided into small groups comparing and examining the linguistic difference between Old English and Modern English based on the Scripture. Honestly, I had a hard time figuring it out. But while discussing in the main room, it’s beneficial to learn the discovery from group’s sharing. We also talked about our final project. We need to find a peer to support our questions from the project. I already transcribed the spoken sample and will analysis both writing and spoken samples in the coming week.

Week 14: The History of English

It was quite interesting to read the shifting history of the English language, from Old English, Middle English, and turn to now Modern English. In Old English, it was highly inflected. It also preferred the grammatical structure patterns “SVO” and “SOV”, where the exclusive use of the "SVO" pattern is used principally nowadays. Some word-initial consonant clusters were used; the subjunctive was used frequently. Word order was more flexible than in Modern English. Middle English was a transitional period. It had influenced by French due to the Norman invasion and had borrowed thousands of French words. Word order became fixed increasingly. Modern English has fewer inflections and it relies on word order. Also, a great many words have borrowed from Latin and Greek.

Week 13’s class (4/9)

First, we were divided in groups examining the given sentence based on Grice’s Maxims: manner, relevance, quantity, and quality. Each group also defined and explained the categories of speech act. Later on, we moved to discuss our trial final project. It seemed that I needed more time to read other group’ postings before this discussion. I cannot read it fast. It would be better if we could be informed of reading other groups’ positing before this class. Or at least I can know what we are expected to do in dicussion. I can prepare it in advance.

I like the idea of playing a game. It is always fun in class. I think it’s quite interesting and entertaining to me because we had to recall what you learnt from the textbook and applied it to these questions immediately, especially we had to type fast (in short seconds maybe). Classes are toward the end of this semester. I feel a little stressful because all things come together. But I know I will just be fine.

Week 13: Speech Acts and Conversation

I enjoy the reading for this week because I think the content of this chapter is reachable to our daily conversation. Speech acts we offer such as an apology, greeting, request, complaint, invitation, compliment, or refusal occur to our daily live. There are four cooperative principles to be considered in the chapter, and they are maxims of quantity, relevance, manner, and quality. Too much or less information, irrelevant or unrelated, miscellaneous or chaotic, or untruthful utterance will illustrate a violation of the maxims of the cooperative principle. Ironically, speakers sometimes are forced to violate a maxim due to their cultural norms, for example, being polite. People who are invited to someone's house for dinner may feel constrained to say compliments on the dinner if they think the foods are not their taste. It would be impossible to tell the truth. So indirect speech acts may result.

Week 12’s class (4/2)

At the beginning of this class, we discussed some questions from quiz 3 in the main room. After that, the whole class was broke down into two groups, and each group was assigned an exercise from the textbook to discuss. This discussion was mainly focused information structure and pragmatics. In our group, we were dealing with matter of the categories of information structure. We couldn’t finish all of questions in the activity because of time limit. But I like the idea of group discussion. We could see how people negotiate their different ideas/thoughts with one another and come to a compromising answer. Later on, we spent some time on the topic of definite and indefinite articles. For example, is there any meaning difference between “play a piano,” “play the piano,” and “play piano.” It’s quite interesting to learn that playing "a" piano work on English for what I’ve leant from my teachers, playing a piano didn’t never work out in a sentence.

Week 12: Pragmatics

Chapter 8 deals with language information structure, what is called “pragmatics.” While syntax and semantics are sentence base, information structure needs to take discourse context into account. In the textbook, Finegan lists six categories of information structure and gives a little explanation for each category. These categories are given information and new information, topics, contrast, definite expressions, referential expressions, and generic and specific expressions. In addition, Finegan refers seven strategies as well as giving examples of how these strategies are used differently in languages. These strategies are new-information stress, grammatical morphemes, fronting, left-dislocation, clefting transformations, passives, and word order.

Week 11’s class (3/26)

We had Dr. Kimberly Contag joined our class today. She shared her experience in Ecuador with our class. It was kind of surprise to learn that almost 30% of Ecuadorians do not continue beyond the 6th grade because they chose to work. In addition, more girls than boys who continue their education after they turn 12 years old so that the classes are populated with many more girls than boys.

Later, we moved to small group to go through and discuss the quiz questions which were assigned to each group. After few minutes, we moved back to the main discussion room again. I found that I didn’t really consider the relationship between a prepositional phrase and a verb phrase or a noun phrase. I was having a misunderstanding on the number 3 of diagram tree: I know the guy in this picture. In this case, “in this picture” is used to give more information about the guy so it should be under the noun phrase (the guy). Even though I was wrong in quiz, I’m glad that I knew it now.

Week 11: Registers, Styles, and Dialects

This week’s readings mainly deal with language variation across situations of use and among social groups. Each speech situation is determined by topics, locations, activities, goals, people, and their roles. These aspects will come together in a particular choice of language variety. Chapter 10 also talks about the speech situation in formality and informality and similarities and differences between spoken and written registers, and how they serve different purposes. On chapter 11, the differences in speech ways may result from geographical separation and social distance. These two views separate people and may eventually lead to distinct speech patterns. The example for geographical separation is Proto-Indo-European language. This language was spoken six thousand years ago, and has now come to many various languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Germanic, and so on. An example for social distance would be African-American English. The partly reason why it remains distinct from American English is because of the social distance between whites and African Americans. In addition, this chapter also examines the principal varieties of English throughout the world. English can be simply divided into British and American types. The difference is not just only between the spelling, but also between pronunciation as well as syntax and grammar. Moreover, it is quite interesting to learn a certain number of characteristics of African-American English and Chicano English.

Week 10’s class (3/19)

Today we’re divided into small groups to discuss semantic categories. At the beginning I was kind of lost because I thought I was assigned to antonym group. But after making it clear, I realized I should go to hyponymy room.

At the last section of today’s class, students are all divided into small groups and expected to work on the sample writing for our final project. It’s always good to have a sample practice before our quizzes and final project. You could learn from group work and have a taste of how the assignments should look like. Aaron, Brain, Rachel, and I are in the same group for this sample writing. We’ll work on it next week.

Week 10: Semantics

This week’s reading mainly covers the study of meaning: semantics. First, three types of semantics are introduced in the book, and they are: linguistic meaning, social meaning, and affective meaning. Our focus on this chapter is the very first one, which includes sense and referential meaning. Besides, Finegan also deals with a number of concepts of lexical semantics, such as hyponymy, part/whole relationships, synonymy, antonymy, converseness, polysemy, homonymy, and metaphor. I personally think, for me, metaphors are the hardest part of the English learning at the stage where I'm now. Metaphors are the use of a word beyond its primary sense and it is so living and creative that it sometimes doesn’t reach into my understanding. For example, “It is raining cats and dogs.” I would never know why cats and dogs are related to raining if my teacher didn’t explain it to me. But I know this is the interesting, rich, and highlighting part of languages.

Week 8's class (3/5)

I enjoy this week's reading and also like drawing tree diagrams. It is a good idea to use white board as a media of collaborative work. However, due to the technology problem we couldn’t accomplish much class work today successfully. But unless you try it, you would never know what is going to happen.

Week 8: Syntax

This week’s reading, the study of syntax, is quite interesting to me. In fact, it is much fun to draw tree diagrams. Tree diagrams are a good approach used to analyze a sentence structure and see what components form it. With the use of the tree diagram, it is a suitable pedagogical solution for beginning or intermediate learners to learn a languages like English, I think. I remember when I first got the United States; while reading textbooks, I took some long sentences apart and analyzed the grammatical structures on the books. Without the analysis, I couldn’t really get the whole sentence’s meaning. It took me a while to get familiar with the English structures, but now I seldom set them apart. Of course it is not necessary for ESL learners to draw a tree diagram, but it is one of ways for them to better their understanding of a sentence structure of English.

Week 7’s class (2/26)

We discussed our assignment in small groups today. After that, we moved back to the big discussion board and shared what we talked about and our questions. Even though I've learned these English lexicon knowledge in high school, I still had a few mistakes in the assignment activities. Taking an example, I was misunderstanding “this” only belonged to pronoun category, and never thought about it could be also in another category at the same time, which is in determiner category. With these activities, it gave me a clear picture of these lexical categories, and especially is helpful to taking quiz 2.

Week 7: Morphology & Implications

I enjoy this week’s reading. First, I think Chapter 7 of Freeman & Freeman has gone pretty much the same content as the last week’s reading. They both go through the importance of morphology, words’ classifications, and a number of ways that new words create. On chapter 8, there are two different insights of morphology between the word recognition view and the sociopsycholinguistic view. In the view of recognition, words can sometimes identified by looking for the meaning parts or morphemes, while in the view of sociopsycholinguistic view, words will be learnt by reading extensively. In my case, I think both have intertwined my learning of English. At the beginning of my learning, it was very useful to use some prefixes, roots, or suffixes to predict the meanings or classifications of words. In the book, it says that about 60% of English words have Latin or Greek roots, so I would think learning the meaning of the root "step by step" might be helpful for students to build up their word vocabulary. After students gain a certain amount of words knowledge, exposing them in different contexts can develop a sense of how the word is used, not just learning definitions.

Week 6’s class (2/19): The Beauty of Chinese Characters

Today I was so nervous to go through the Chinese writing activity with our fellow classmates. Even though I was sweating during the presenting, I really appreciate such a good opportunity like this for me to introduce my language to everyone in the online class. I know that my oral English speech was not intelligible enough, I hope it did not make other fellow classmates lose their interests on the Chinese language, which is one of the beautiful languages in the worlds.

At the end of this class, I am not quite clear of what we are going to do with Wiki site? Does anyone have any ideas?

Week 6: Lexicon and Morphology

The chapter mainly covers the concepts of lexical categories, three ways of how languages extend their words, and three morphological systems. There are three ways to identify words’ categories, and they are: related forms, the occurrence of words, and meanings. New words can be formed by adding morphemes to an existing word, borrowing from other languages, and invention. As for the morphological systems, isolating morphology, which is “one morpheme per word,” like Chinese and Vietnamese, agglutinating morphology, whose words can be segmented into parts such as English and Turkish, and inflectional morphology like German and some words in English.

While reading through this chapter it made me to think of my grammar books. It makes sense to me now that why my grammar books introduce these categories one by one: verbs, nouns, pronouns, determiners, prepositions, adverbs, and conjunctions. Ordinarily, verb category includes transitive and intransitive verbs. Noun category has singular and plural forms, and plural forms have regular, irregular, or same forms. Pronoun category has several subcategories, such as personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, relative pronouns, indefinite pronouns, while conjunction category has two principal, coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. So this reading reflects what I’ve learnt from English grammar somehow.

Week 5’s class (2/12): Chinese Writing

It’s quite interesting to discuss logographic writing like Chinese characters, which is my native language, during the small group discussion. After moving back to the main discussion room, we’re talking about a matter, is it difficult for Chinese people to learn alphabetic writing like English letters? In Chinese, several phonetic systems are designed to indicate Mandarin pronunciation such as the Wade-Giles spelling system, Postal spelling system, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, Yale spelling system, Chu-Yin Fu-Hao system, and is gradually being placed by Hanyu Pinyin in mainland China. But you can still find some primary school textbooks, dictionaries, and newspapers annotated in Chu-Yin Fu-Hao in Taiwan. So what I was learning is the system of Chu-Yin Fu-Hao. For me myself learning alphabetic experience, it wasn’t that hard at all but it took me a while to memorize those 26 letters. They are just different ways to write. I remember that my teacher used the picture as shown on Figure 1 to teach us the English vowel letters “a, e, i, o, u” and helped our memory. As a result of drawing the five vowels, it looks like a girl's face. Isn't it interesting? I'm sure I will never forget it. As for another question arose during the discussion, what does the Chinese keyboard look like? Figure 2 gives the answer.

[Figure 1]

[Figure 2]

Week 5: Writing & Orthography

The reading for this week is mainly focused on writing system. I would think it is a good idea to read Finegan first and then Freeman, because Finegan mainly talks about the writing systems, which is in general while Freeman & Freeman have gone deeper notions about English orthography, which is more specific. In Finegan textbook, three types of writing system are referred and they are a syllabic writing, a logographic writing, and an alphabetic writing. In syllabic writing system the written symbols represent whole syllables, such as cuneiform writing system, and the logographic graphic symbols represent words or morphemes, such as Chinese logographic system while the alphabetic graphs represent sounds or phonemes, such as Roman alphabet.

English is one of many languages which use the Roman alphabetic graphs to represent its writing letters. However, English orthography does not have close correspondence between letters and phonemes. English has twenty-six written Roman letters but it has at least thirty-six sounds. Due to the shortage of the letters, some phonemes must be presented by a combination of letters. For example, the letters “th” represent the phoneme /ɵ/. Hence, this causes confusion. In the textbook, Freeman & Freeman reach several implications of teaching reading, playing games to help students become more aware of graphotactics, exposing students read extensively, teaching the history of English language, improving students’ ability to recognize combinations of English letters, helping students understand the spelling system is logical and does follow rules, helping student investigate how the spelling system works, and involving students in linguistic investigations.

Week 4's (2/5/09) class: Jigsaw

I like this jigsaw activity very much. This is a cooperative game. At the very beginning of this class, we were divided into four groups, and each group was essential for the completion of a piece of IPA transcription which was assigned. We worked in our group first, and latter on, all of us were brought back to discuss and worked together as a whole team. Each group depended on all the other groups. It is definitely a good teaching technique which I can adopt and apply in my future classroom.

Week 4: Audiolingual Method (ALM)

On the chapter 2 of my APP, it is a contrastive study of phonemes in American English and Mandarin Chinese, and on my chapter 3, I was going to develop some lesson plans including exercise to give students practice with the phonetic errors or problem areas, which is based on my chapter 2. However, as I read on page 84, it is sad to know that audiolingual method (ALM) did not work well. I also looked up the Brown's book, and it seems that the popularity of ALM was not to last now. I’m now at the wit’s end of my chapter 3. I would appreciate it if I could hear some suggestion from you. Thank you.

Week 4: English Vowels & Consonants

It seems interesting to read the common topic “English vowels and consonants” twice from different authors. With the prior knowledge from the first reading, it was easy to read this time in spite that some phoneme symbols are used differently. To read from two authors' perspectives, it has bettered my understanding of the English phonology.

In Freeman & Freeman book, they basically divide vowels into three groups: short vowels, long vowels, and reduced vowels, and then go deep for each one. As for the consonants, the classifications are mostly same as Finegan. Besides, Finger refers to twenty-five consonants and twelve simple vowels with a Boston /a/ in their book while Freeman & Freeman include twenty-four consonants and fifteen vowels, including diphthongs. The consonant difference between Freeman & Freeman and Finegan is over the glottal /ʔ/, and it seems no numeral difference of vowels between them.

Week 3's (1/29/09) class

Today Aaron, Leping, Ling, Stephanie, and I were sitting in the front of computers taking this online class together on the basement of the library. Isn't it interesting that our small community is getting bigger and bigger?

I like the idea of using powerpoint as a visual aid to help us with some certain questions we have. It really bettered my understanding of it. Afterwards, we’re divided into small groups to discuss the given linguistic technical terms. I like the group idea because it makes me recall what I’ve learnt from the textbook immediately. I figured it out that I had a hard time explaining some technical words well despite the fact that I finished the reading before I came to the class. Is that meant I do not gain the meanings completely so that I cannot use my own words to describe that in detail well? I felt a little disheartened.

Week 2's Readings

I enjoy this week's reading a lot because it is related to my APP's topic: A Major-features Contrastive Study of Articulatory Phonetics between Standard American English and Mandarin Chinese. Besides, I’m also thankful to this reading for it helps me gain more understanding of phonetics and phonology on the need of my papers.

Chapter 3 is focused on phonetics while chapter 4 has major attention on phonology. At the beginning of chapter 3, it talks about the correspondence between writing and speaking. Some languages like English, for example, do not pronounce every sound straightforwardly according to its spelling. And then getting into the study of sounds, which is also called “phonetics.” To create differences among consonants language can exploit the features of voicing, aspiration, manner of articulation, and manner of articulation. Vowel sounds can be identified in terms of their articulatory properties: tongue height, tongue backness, tenseness, rounding, lengthening, nasalization, and tone. Each feature is addressed in text respectively. However, not every feature is applied to distinguish one sound from another in every language. For exmaples, English does not employ aspiration to its consonant system, and tenseness is not engaged in Chinese vowel phonetics.

While chapter 3 is centered on how human vocal apparatus work together in order to make sounds, Chapter 4 is a study of the sound systems of language. Firstly, it gives a focus on receiving part. How children decipher the code of distinctive sounds in their language, and what stages they might pass through. Then the distributions of phonemes and allophones are discussed. And then the author brings phonological rules and syllable structure to next step. Phonological process or rules can depend on stress and syllable structure. The interaction of morphology and phonology is addressed at the end.

Week 2's (1/22) class

Today’s class was very fun even though a couple of presenters were cutting in and out while presenting. I like the idea of group discussion and presentation to other group. We’re divided into small groups and each group was assigned a topic to discuss. We had to recall what we learnt from the weekly readings in short time and discussed it with our group members. In addition, we combined and condensed our reflections or thoughts, and posted it in 15 minutes. It was much fun despite the fact that it made me a little nervous.

It is a pity that this class is not taught face-to-face but I do enjoy listening to everyone’s English speech with colorful accents. I strain my ears to listen to the class. It is just something I haven't done much before.

Week 1: A Standard Variety & American Tongues

There are a number of certain reasons why some people want to learn the Standard English referred in the video "American Tongues”. (1) They don’t want people make fun of them because of their non-standard English. (2) They may have certain limitations in terms of job markets. (3) People may look down their ability to do things. (4) There is feeling that people speaking the Standard English sound smart. However, there is no such the Standard English in the world. English has many varieties of standard worldwide, such as British English, American English, Australian English, Canadian English, and so on. But none of them is being called the Standard.

Then the question "what is a standard variety?" arose on my head. According to Finegan, a standard variety is normally used in the media and taught in schools. In the video, it says that there is no such thing as one Standard English accent that is better than all others. But there is a type of English favored by actors and radio and TV announcements. It may lack something in personality, but everybody can understand it. Hence, I personally think that clear pronunciation lends accuracy to the message conveyed, and being understood is more important during conversation.

American Tongues Link

http://msustr0.campus.mnsu.edu:8080/cah/drescn/Linguistics/americantongues-1.wmv

Week 1: My reflections about the week's readings

The reading for this week covers the different theories of 1st and 2nd language development from different schools. Each school has its particular insights. Back to my language experience, my 1st language (Mandarin Chinese with a dialect called Min or Hokkien) is acquired more naturally, and my second language is learned through a conscious. As we learned English at school, the approach of English study is exactly same as the approach to other school subjects. First, teachers usually went through word bank listed on the side of books and identified or explained each word in Mandarin. And then after reading a paragraph to us, they broke a sentence into many component parts of grammar and taught each part. Afterwards, we several times did drills and exercises to practice English. In addition, we didn’t speak oftentimes, so teacher didn’t have chance to correct our oral speech. As I read the reading for this week, I feel my learning of English reading is more like the word recognition view mentioned in chapter two. Till coming to the states, I took ESL 202 classroom as I was enrolling at MSU. In fact, ESL 202 was a writing class. In class, we could choose a topic to write, and wrote drafts. After getting feedback from the instructor, we did a final editing. Sometimes we also had peers review. Then shared the finished piece with others by presentation. I tend to think that the instructor adopted the approach more from the acquisition view in process writing classroom.

Week 1: First & Second Language Acquisition

Chapter ONE pays attention to the first language acquisition with oral language skill while chapter TWO is more concerned about written and second language acquisition.

On the chapter ONE, for the most part, it gives views of how a first language is developed over three disciplines: developmental psychology, sociology & anthropology & education, and linguistics. Here I would like to summarize the key propositions of the three views about the first language development below.
- Development psychology has concentrated on the learning process of children’s early stages. Their research led a suggestion that humans have a special capacity for language, and children develop the physical capacity for speech during the first year.
- Sociology, anthropology, and education are more focused on the environment. Language always occurs in a social context, so they believe that children learn how to use language in social settings appropriately.
- Linguistics is more centered on the area of language. Two main concepts are brought up in the text. (1) generative grammar: is based in part on Chomsky’s observation that many sentences are structurally ambiguous: surface structure + deep structure (2) universal grammar=innate capacity for language =innate knowledge of language, that is, humans are born with built-in knowledge of language so that’s how children acquire language

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Chapter Two can be simply divided into two sections in discussion.
The first section debates whether a language, including writing and reading skills, can be learned or acquired. The opinions differ on this matter. With the learning view, reading is accomplished by recognizing words, and writing consists of producing words. So phonics rule, sight words, and structural analysis are practiced in reading class, and handwriting, spelling, punctuation, grammar, and conventional organizational forms are more emphasized in writing classrooms. With the acquisition view, they hold that readers acquire literacy in the same way they acquire oral language, by focusing on meaning. So in reading classroom students use their background knowledge and the cures from graphphonic system, syntax, and semantics knowledge to make and confirm prediction; in writing classroom teachers read to students and teach them strategies they can use to comprehend text. Teachers also provide many opportunities for students to produce and share their writing, such as read and retell method.

On the second section part, debating how much of language is acquired and what has to be learned is still over a second language teaching. Two views of second language arose on this matter. With the learning view, students are aware of their second language. However, in the view of acquisition students are not aware they are acquiring. They believe that acquisition is subconscious. Two professionals refer to their theories of second language acquisition in the text, and they are Krashen and Schumannare. Five hypotheses are represented with Krashen’s ideas, and these five hypotheses account for the psychological process of language development. Schumann have considered the broader social context. His concepts of social and psychological distance is said to be a complement of Krashen's theory.

Week 1's class

Today was the beginning of this class. I don't know why but for some reason I feel I left behind my school for so long. Well, it wasn’t that long but I just have very complex feeling about the school, and it’s beyond words. I cannot really explain it at this moment.

It’s so nice to receive an email from Binki before the class started. In the email she was wondering how I’m doing, and where I’ll be for the class. So we decided to meet each other in person at the second floor of library. Aron was there with us, too. So three of us sat beside one another taking the same class. Due to this reason, it made me feel much comfortable and secure with talking this online class. I feel that I won't miss anything important in this class because of the two friends. I also feel that I had a good start with this class, and have more confidence to take online classes now…=D To be honest, I usually don't like online classes much because I always miss or misunderstand something important. After the class, we decide to go to the basement of the library from next time since we’re not allowed to speak loud in the public computer area. Aron doesn't gurantee to us that he will show up next time. But it's just all right. I feel much better with talking online class this time. I also had a good conversation with Binki afterwards. This is actually one of the benefits to face-to-face classes: we can see and talk to each other in person.

This is pretty much about my first day of this class.

Brick Walls !!!

Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things.

The Bridge !!!

Just cross the bridge when coming to it !!!