Teaching
Reflective Essay: Skills for Life
(1303 Words)
Embedding Skills for Life in ESOL Teaching: A Reflective Perspective
Skills for Life, particularly literacy, numeracy, and information and communication technology (ICT), are increasingly recognised as essential components of education. These skills represent fundamental competencies that students require in order to participate effectively in learning, employment, and wider society. The importance of developing these skills was highlighted by the Moser Report, A Fresh Start (DfEE, 1999), which reported that approximately seven million adults in England had literacy skills below those expected of an 11-year-old. This concerning statistic emphasised the need for teachers to identify opportunities to embed literacy, numeracy, and ICT within their teaching rather than treating them as separate areas of learning.
This essay reflects on my experiences of embedding Skills for Life within my teaching practice. In particular, I consider how the principle of “learning by doing” can support learner engagement and motivation. Research has suggested that embedding key skills within vocational and subject-specific learning can contribute to increased learner motivation (Roberts et al., 2005). My own practice has been influenced by Gardner’s (1983) theory of Multiple Intelligences, which I explored through a research project examining the learning characteristics of students within an ESOL class. This experience encouraged me to consider how different teaching techniques could be used to accommodate learners’ individual characteristics while simultaneously developing their language and literacy skills.
Multiple Intelligences and Learner-Centred Practice
Gardner’s (1983) theory of Multiple Intelligences proposes that individuals possess different forms of intelligence and may demonstrate strengths in different areas. For example, some learners may respond particularly well to physical and practical activities associated with bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence, whereas others may benefit from visual materials associated with visual-spatial intelligence. Although the theory has been subject to academic debate, it provided a useful framework for me to reflect upon the diversity of learning preferences and approaches within my ESOL classroom.
In an ESOL context, language and literacy development are fundamental. However, I found that these skills could be developed more effectively when incorporated into learner-centred and active-learning activities. Such approaches encouraged students to remain engaged with the task while continuing to use English for meaningful communication.
For example, I provided each student with a picture of a famous person accompanied by a short piece of biographical information. Students were also given grammatically structured questions and answers which they used to interview one another about their assigned person. This activity incorporated verbal-linguistic skills while providing students with a meaningful opportunity to practise spoken English. In a higher-level class, I extended the activity by asking students to obtain their information independently from the internet, thereby incorporating ICT skills alongside literacy and language development.
Initially, students were required to read the information and identify answers to a series of questions. They then worked with other students to ask and answer questions about their famous person, including where the person was from, their age, and an interesting fact about them. I subsequently collected the pictures and divided the students into groups. Each group had to ask questions and use the available information to determine which famous person I was thinking of. The activity was structured as a game-show-style competition, with the group that identified the correct person first declared the winner.
Although the activity was designed to be enjoyable, it also provided a structured opportunity for language development. I guided students towards producing complete questions and answers and supported the discussions taking place within the groups. In this respect, the activity demonstrated how literacy and language development can be embedded within an engaging and collaborative learning environment. It also reflected the principles identified within LLUK Standard BS1, which emphasises the importance of maintaining “an inclusive, equitable and motivating learning environment”. The competitive element, combined with interest and challenge, encouraged participation while ensuring that the development of English language and literacy remained central to the lesson.
Embedding Numeracy within ESOL
My experience of embedding numeracy within ESOL teaching provided another opportunity to develop key skills through practical and contextualised learning. On one occasion, I was teaching a class about nouns. I initially organised an outdoor activity in which students worked in groups to identify and describe objects in their surroundings. The activity took the form of a treasure hunt and encouraged students to interact with their environment while developing their vocabulary. Following the activity, students wrote descriptions of the objects they had found and presented their findings to the class. This provided a progression from identifying concrete objects to using nouns in more meaningful linguistic contexts.
I subsequently developed this activity around the theme of shopping. I wanted students to become familiar with prices and the language associated with purchasing goods. I therefore collected newspapers, magazines, and door-to-door advertising flyers containing a combination of written information, images, and numerical data. Students were asked to examine the materials, read the information, and select eight objects. They then cut out the relevant images and attached them to a large sheet of paper. This incorporated a practical, bodily-kinaesthetic element into the activity while simultaneously requiring students to engage with written language.
The prices of the selected products were deliberately omitted. Students were required to write descriptions of their chosen objects in preparation for a subsequent selling activity. On some occasions, I adapted the activity by using computers and asking students to create their own catalogues. This variation also provided an opportunity to embed ICT skills while reducing the practical preparation and clearing-up associated with the paper-based activity.
Once the catalogues or displays had been completed, students worked in groups to estimate the prices of the products selected by other groups. The activity developed both spoken English and numeracy because students had to discuss possible prices, justify their estimates, and communicate their decisions to their peers. I structured the activity as a version of The Price Is Right, explaining that students could not guess above the actual price of the item. The student or group whose estimate was closest to the actual price was declared the winner.
This activity demonstrated how numeracy can be embedded naturally within an ESOL lesson rather than taught as an isolated skill. Students were required to interpret numerical information, estimate values, compare prices, and determine whether their answers were higher or lower than the actual price. At the same time, they were developing vocabulary, sentence construction, listening, speaking, and collaborative skills. The competitive and practical nature of the activity also appeared to increase student engagement, demonstrating the potential value of contextualising essential skills within meaningful activities.
Reflection and Continuing Professional Development
In conclusion, this reflective discussion has demonstrated how my exploration of Gardner’s (1983) theory of Multiple Intelligences contributed to my understanding of learner diversity and informed my approach to embedding key skills within ESOL teaching. This work formed part of my ongoing continuing professional development (CPD) and encouraged me to reflect critically on how different teaching approaches could respond to individual learners’ needs.
My experiences have reinforced my belief that literacy, numeracy, and ICT should not necessarily be treated as additional or separate components of an ESOL curriculum. Instead, they can be incorporated naturally into meaningful learning activities. Literacy can be developed through reading, writing, speaking, and listening activities, while numeracy can be embedded through practical contexts such as telling the time, handling money, comparing prices, and purchasing goods. Similarly, ICT can be incorporated through research activities, collaborative projects, and the creation of digital resources.
Embedding these skills within ESOL teaching can therefore provide learners with opportunities to develop several competencies simultaneously. It also enables learning to become more relevant to students’ everyday lives and encourages active participation. Most importantly, my experience has reinforced the importance of “discovering, respecting, and meeting individual needs” (FENTO, 1999). Through reflection and continuing professional development, I aim to ensure that my teaching remains inclusive, learner-centred, and responsive to the diverse needs of students.
References
Further Education National Training Organisation (FENTO, 1999)
Moser, C. (1999), A Fresh Start. London: DfEE. Retrieved on 15 June 2008 from http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/mosergroup/
Roberts, C., Baynham, M., Shrubshall, P., Brittan, J., Cooper, B., Gidley, N., Windsor,
V., Eldred, J., Grief, S., Castillino, C. and Walsh, M. (2005), Embedded teaching and learning of adult literacy, numeracy and ESOL: Seven case studies. London: National Research and Development Centre for adult literacy and numeracy.
Vocabulary building in young learners
(933 Words)
For this writing task, I was asked to give my response to 5 statements about how young learners can help build their vocabulary. I will answer true or false statements 1- 5 and explain why.
1. In a young child, a single word may constitute a considerable degree of meaning.
Is this True or False?
2. Words categories and concepts normally exist in isolation from each other.
Is this True or False?
3. Vocabulary development comprises at least three stages.
Is this True or False?
4. All languages have the same relationship between time and tense.
Is this True or False?
5. Where possible we should draw upon as many of the senses as possible when teaching vocabulary.
Is this True or False?
1. In a young child, a single word may constitute a considerable degree of meaning. T/F
This is true. The ability to use words is partly tied to the young child’s ongoing cognitive development, so the use of words will have a degree of meaning. Thus, for a child, a word stands for a concept, but that concept is open to interpretation in that they select a category of relatively similar objects and apply the lexical item throughout. A child can learn the word dog or as a young child puts it ‘doggy’. This refers to a four-legged animal. This word can exist for any type of dog either big or small or type of breed. For example, a dog may refer to beagles and scotties, but not to poodles. This aspect of children’s thought associates a word with an object, but they may then, in the future, use that word to describe a number of other similar objects in their environment. The child can also use the word ‘doggy to mean ‘there is a dog’ Notwithstanding, it can mean ‘come here’ said with a rising tone. Young children tend to utilise rising intonation to signal yes-no questions.
2. Words categories and concepts normally exist in isolation from each other. T/F
This is false. Words do not live in isolation, individual words can be categorised in many ways that remove the word from the original meaning or at least a child’s only idea of the meaning. The word ‘game’ can be attached to words such as card (game), ball (game), Olympic (games), and also football (game). As such the Olympic Games conjure up thoughts of many competitors from around the world competing together, although a ball game can involve one person banging a ball against a wall. This looks at two ends of the game spectrum. Winning the Olympic Games has men and women getting gold medals; the ball game respectively has no winner or loser. Furthermore, the game of poker has skills of a different kind compared to kicking a football around the football pitch as well as less physical energy.
3. Vocabulary development comprises of at least three stages. T/F
This is true. Word learning is the product of a set of cognitive and linguistic stages that include the ability to acquire concepts, an appreciation of syntactic cues to meaning, and a rich understanding of the mental states of other people. These capacities are powerful and early emerging. Firstly the child must make sense of new vocabulary. When words are first met by young learners, there are concepts that are given labels in English and may be new to the child, or only partially developed. The teacher or parent may not be merely teaching vocabulary, but teaching concepts. The labels and concepts need to be incorporated into schemas that already exist. The child has to learn this new vocabulary. Learning and retaining new vocabulary is made easier by grouping words together into families. While learning all this new vocabulary the child has to retain and recall this vocabulary for the various situation they will find themselves in. The single most effective way of helping students build vocabulary is by increasing the amount that they read. The child revisits the groups of words; adding to them and reorganising them provide ways of giving learners both the repetition and the development that is needed as they grow into English through the primary years and stages.
4. All languages have the same relationship between time and tense. T/F
This is false. Various countries of different lexis in different parts of the world that have relatively little contact with each other, will have experienced a different environment. Each country will invent words for the things in its environment that matter to it, and naturally, they find words for different things in their country. England has four seasons, other countries have three. Some countries are dark for many months. Learners from different countries don’t have some words in their vocabulary because they have never encountered such aspects of life. Basically, the learners have to develop categories and concepts for the new words they encounter. For this situation, when children encounter new words teachers need to provide support for understanding. New vocabulary needs to be presented in a context that helps the child understand the meanings and associations that help explain time and tense.
5. Where possible we should draw upon as many of the senses as possible when teaching vocabulary. T/F
This is true. Children learn words by seeing, feeling, tasting, listening, enjoying, and experiencing. These various means at a teacher’s disposal bring the reality of words to the fore. For example, a child can know the word ‘apple’ but this does not show the learner every aspect of the object. They can learn that it is a fruit and other fruits are in the same family. They can see pictures of apples so they see the shapes and colours. They can eat an apple then they know the taste and feel. Is it soft? Is it hard? It can be shown that the apple starts going rotten after a while, but it is also good for your health before going rotten. An apple pie can be cooked for the child to show how apples can be used. Granny Smith apples come from England. Other apples come from other countries. They can go on a field trip and see apples growing. The child realizes they grow in trees. They can go shopping at a supermarket and buy apples. They can be shown they are bought in weight.
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Syntax – a Reflective Essay
(589 words)
I see syntax as an important part of language study and reading books like The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker has inspired me to take a closer look at how we use our language and how a sentence is formed. I hope with this essay I can give a little insight into how syntax is used.
It is clear to see that the sentence ‘Man hits animal’ is not the same as ‘Animal hits man’. We know this because we use a code, or set of rules, to translate between orders of words and combinations of thoughts. Generally speaking, this set of rules is called a generative grammar. Syntax works on a prescriptive use of grammar although spoken English is not as formal as we think and works along the lines of a more descriptive method. Descriptive syntax is about understanding the rules that a speech community employs by examining the way that the members of that community actually do talk.
English language holds rules that can create larger more complex structures. It is by learning phrase and clause structures that gives us a clearer picture of syntax. These structures are what make the syntax rules. We find that it is possible to create an infinite number of sentences, all of which can express meaningful thought. Thus it is possible to construct sentences that the speaker has never used before. It can be said that English has a finite number of rules which facilitate an infinite number of sentences. Syntax shows that sentences and the relationship of their component parts works in English. To understand a sentence one cannot merely pay attention to the order of words. For example, in the class we learnt about complex, compound and simple sentences and components in them.
1. They were the boys who arrived to see and I knew all of them who came.
And = FANBOYS (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So)
Independent Clause (x2) = They were the boys / I know all of them
Dependent Clause (x2) = who arrived to see / who came
Who arrived = the WHO is subjective case
Infinitive phrase = to see
Sentence type = compound complex
As above, syntax is the system that speakers and writers use when they combine words into phrases and clauses, ultimately creating meaning in their structures.
To conclude I have noticed that all sentences have basic patterns. I can now say that in many respects there is a mechanical basis in the brain, and all thought has a syntax, or code. So, we see that our utterances represent this internal coding by way of our common syntax.
Explain Gagne’s Events of Instruction
(Words 1110)
It was during the 1960s which saw a flurry of activity in the study of instructional design that Gagne’s book the ‘condition of learning’ came out. In 1965 Robert Gagne published his book entitled The Conditions of Learning. In his book, Gagne (1965) described the analysis of learning objectives, and how these different classes of learning objectives relate to the appropriate instructional designs. Gagne famously tried to explain the methods of learning of students. His theory centered on the acquisition of language and how students do this through the process of learning and the different stages that are done. He exposed the stimulation that the students get or have to move onto the next stage of learning.
- Gaining attention (reception)
- Informing learners of the objective (expectancy)
- Stimulating recall of prior learning (retrieval)
- Presenting the stimulus (selective perception)
- Providing learning guidance (semantic encoding)
- Eliciting performance (responding)
- Providing feedback (reinforcement)
- Assessing performance (retrieval)
- Enhancing retention and transfer (generalization)
These changes that the students’ experience can move them onto further learning. Of course, all this was meant for the students to learn to their full potential. Internal and external factors were taken into consideration. In this piece of writing, I will explain the methods and how they work in the classroom.
A Study of Phonology/Syntax/Morphology
(4205 Words)
Language is one of man’s greatest abilities. It is a human instinct. Where would we be without language? Language is a complex system that is used in all its complexity in many facets around the world. The function of language is to build symbols for concepts by means of sounds. We can wonder, predict, order, and ask, from the myriad of verbal uses. One language may have various dialects, which is seen by those who use them as languages in their own right. There are about 6,000 languages spoken worldwide. These languages around the world still use the same kinds of grammar although different patterns were formed from the many races of people. This is what we come to recognize, as our own colloquial methods of using language, be it by rules or duplication of others. All known languages have words or word-like elements combined in accordance with certain rules into sentences. Nouns and verbs are the two fundamental grammatical categories that appear in all these language around the globe. Nouns and verbs are used in grammar which is the branch of language study or linguistics. It deals with the means of showing the relationship between words in use. It seems so simple to speak but underneath that simplicity marks rules that show how all the vocal sounds fall into place. It is below the surface of language that I will talk about in this paper. I will focus on syntax (order of words), morphology (the form of words), and phonology (speech sounds) which are some of the specific rules inside of language/grammar. I would like to show how language works in its fascinating way, looking at these three linguistic usages.
There are rules for grammar that, if some of us can remember, were studied at school. This is what we call prescriptive grammar that lays down rules of usage. Such prescriptions amount to a kind of linguistic etiquette that we are supposed to uphold but actually bear little to the underlying grammar that makes communications possible. On the other side, there are descriptive colloquial methods that are characterized in different dialects in conversation. ‘I seen’ or ‘I done’ may not conform to the standard of correctness demanded of cultivated speech, but these expressions cultivate a meaning. This is the study of how people communicate despite the rules. Wherever we live, in each person we are given the ability to say an endless amount of sentences that may never have been said by anyone before. Linguists study this language, their aim is to describe all the permissible patterns of combinations and formulate them as abstract rules that underlie everyday linguistic behavior. These studies notice the language’s syntax, morphology, and phonology. It is noticed that between human individuals, there can be wide differences in cognitive strategies and specifically in modes of perception or action. These differences between individuals, generalized to a language community, provide the basis for differences between the lexicons and syntaxes of different languages.
This paper will try to show how below the surface of our natural English language, lies a myriad of factors that are distinguished by linguists. For example, language was described by ‘Langacker’ who makes three fundamental assumptions: ‘that language is symbolic in nature that a linguistic community creates linguistic conventions, and that grammar is a speaker’s knowledge of linguistic conventions’. It is the linguistic community that creates language and grammar. The speaker uses sentences that are built by selecting appropriate words from their vast lexicon that are learned from his local language community. These are put in an accepted order and shaped according to morphological and phonological usages in their specific language. The rules (grammar) and word sounds (phonology) are common to the speaker and receiver. The term grammar is generally used to include syntax and morphology but may also be used in a wider sense to include rules of phonology. Grammar allows an infinite expression of ideas, makes language itself possible. A grammar is a collection of linguistic rules, which define a language.
It is the use of language that is so fascinating. We can use an infinite number of patterns from a finite amount of words. This is all molded into language. Language is a process of expressing joined and singular phonological sounds that are formulated into a meaningful expression that is understood by another. Each of the sounds is called a word. The baby first learns sounds (phonology) to make noises. Then the baby learns syntax and morphology where the language is formed into understandable words and sentences. The word-learning baby has a brain that forms all the things he sees into mental categories and lumps together objects that are of the same kind. Babies are designed to expect a language to contain words for kinds of objects and kinds of actions – nouns and verbs. There are things and kinds of things and actions out there in the world. Our mind is designed to find them and label them with words. Each person’s brain contains a lexicon of words and the concepts they stand for, in their mental dictionary. The brain stores all these remembered words/phrases. These stored words/phrases are, with time when the child grows, put into an order (syntax) that is interpretable as language.
So, what is inside language? We know it is a system of human communication using words. For people to communicate language must be put into a form that both parties understand. This involves the use of syntax. Syntax is the order of words that convey meaning collectively by their connection and relation in a sentence. Most theories of language syntax assume that words are units combined by certain rules. The simplest illustration of a parameter is the choice of Headfirst or Head last; depending on which choice is made, a language can be either SOV or SVO with many associated orderings in other aspects of syntax. In the Modern English language, the order is SVO (I love you) but in Old English, it was VS (love I). Syntax has a discrete combinatorial system, building clause and phrase structures. A clause in a sentence is a distinct part of a sentence including a subject and predicate, for example, ‘The police arrested the man’. A phrase can be any syntactic unit larger than a word and smaller than a sentence, for example, a prepositional phrase ‘in the morning’. Thus in this case we have a sentence pattern that says ‘The police arrested the man in the morning’. Sentences also have the means of embedding or subordinating one sentence within another as an included clause (e.g., “the man fell” and “we helped him”: “When the man fell we helped him”; “Tony was playing football” and “Tony broke his leg”: “Tony, who was playing football, broke his leg,” or “while he was playing football, Tony broke his leg”. Linguists break these types of sentences down, they study the elements of syntax. This is the study of the rules, or “patterned relations,”. It governs the way the words in a sentence are arranged. A characteristic of a sentence is the subject that is the important word in any sentence. In the sentence ‘the police arrested the man in the morning’, ‘the police’, is the subject of the sentence. ‘The police’ can also be said to be the noun. It is known that all languages distinguish in some way, noun-like and verb-like sentence components. Using parts of speech, we can also add adjective (relieved, dangerous, early) components that are used to designate an attribute and are added to a noun. In addition, we can use adverb (quickly) components that modify the verb. Thus we have the sentence that reads ‘ The relieved police quickly arrested the dangerous man in the early morning’. This underlies the use of syntax of the sentence working in many ways, giving it new meaning. We see in a sentence that words and morphemes are put into functional constituents such as the subject (the police) of the sentence, the predicate (arrested), the direct object (the man), and so on.
Furthermore, in the following example of using syntax, the changes to these two sentences can have different meanings from a statement to a question by simple word order change. By moving the two words you and are, the first sentence says that I am sure that you are from London, but the second show that I do not know:
1. (Statement) You are from London.
2. (Question) Are you from London?
“Syntax` is literally the arrangement of words in sentences as in the example above with the four words in each sentence. It is especially the arrangement of clauses/phrases within a sentence. It specifies the grammatical rules underlying the construction of sentences. A child can make the mistake ‘me go home’ but it is our background awareness of the rules of syntax that helps us decipher and edit out the mistakes in the utterances. Language in all its forms concerns how different words such as nouns, adjectives, and verbs are combined into clauses/phrases. These, in turn, are combined into sentences. For example, a simple sentence like I love you is assembled by the rules of syntax. In English we would not say ‘Love I you’, our rules of grammar do not follow this pattern. Syntax is at the heart of grammar. Syntactic plans require knowledge of grammar rules. A person must be able to understand an utterance from another person’s mouth. The words in the sentence are not unordered they are in a sequence that is familiar to both of them. For instance, definite articles (‘the’) come before a noun, not after (‘the car’, not ‘car the’). This means the structure in the sentence must be interpreted properly. The patterning of sentence structure can also be put in a particular ‘spin’ on reality. The use of passive syntax structure can deflect attention away from other people. For example, read these two sentences;
1. The Police beat the football hooligans.
2. The rioting football hooligans were beaten by the police
In syntax these two sentences above can be symbolized by the rule (1) N1 V N2 → (2) N2 be V + en by N1. In which N stands for any noun or noun phrase, V for any transitive verb, en for the past participle morpheme, and the arrow (→) instructs one to rewrite the construction to its left as the construction to the right. Both sentences seem to say the same information. But most people find the second sentence to be sympathetic to the police. It is the use of a different syntax, not the choice of words themselves, but the syntax that changes the meaning.
To explain these sentences more linguist Noam Chomsky came up with a theory of Transformational Generative Grammar. This is a system of language analysis that recognizes the relationship among the various elements of a sentence and among the possible sentences of a language and uses processes or rules (some of which are called transformations) to express these relationships. For example, transformational grammar relates the active sentence “The police beat the football hooligans” with its corresponding passive, “The rioting football hooligans were beaten by the police.” Although sets such as these active and passive sentences appear to be very different on the surface (i.e., in such things as word order), a transformational grammar tries to show that in the “underlying structure” (i.e., in their deeper relations to one another), the sentences are very similar.
The meaning of a sentence can also be changed by the formation of words. Inside the sentence, sounds are combined into words and parts of words into bigger words that are part of the rule system called morphology. Morphology is a combinatorial system building words. For example, in English, a suffix is used. This element is placed at the end of a word or stem to form a derivative or as an inflection (e.g. want-ed, clever-est, play-ing, kind-ly, fresh-ness). Speakers of a language make morphological changes to words that change the meaning of the sentence. For instance ‘He is the bright student’ (there could be other bright students in the class) is not the same as ‘He is the brightest student’ (he is the best in the class). These examples of building words use an adjective (bright) that can change in forms by using suffixes. They can change their form through comparative (brighter) and as shown superlative (brightest) degrees. The endings -er, -est, denoting degrees of comparison, are better regarded as non-inflectional suffixes. Likewise, we can also refer to the word, prefix, that is an element (e.g. re-write, dis-organised) placed at the beginning of a word or stem to adjust or qualify its meaning or (in some languages) as an inflection. For example ‘He is happy’ to ‘He is unhappy’. By the simple addition of the prefix ‘un’, it makes the two sentences the opposite in meaning. This is morphology at work, making these words.
Furthermore, a common instance of the morphology in practice is the past tense verbs (want+ed) and plural nouns (book+s). The examples in parentheses have morphological word inflection. English inflection indicates, as shown earlier comparatives (big, bigger, biggest), as well as third person singular present tense (I, you, we, they buy; he buys), past tense (we walk, we walked), verbals (called, calling), and plural nouns (cat, cats), Language teachers use the term ‘declension’ that is the variation of form or inflection of a noun, adjective, or pronoun. This constitutes its different cases; each of the classes into which nouns are divided on the basis of these inflections; the action of declining or of setting out in order the different forms of a noun etc. They also use the term ‘conjugation’ which is the scheme of all the inflectional forms belonging to a verb; a division of verbs according to general inflectional differences. In English, verbs can have at least 13 different roles but four forms are used in all of these. English speakers use for example:
Infinitive Verb – work
Work+s
Work+ed
Work+ing
These forms are used in their different forms with:
Present tense with subjects – she, he, it – He work+s
Past tense with all subjects– He work+ed
Present Continuous with all subjects – He is work+ing
Morphology builds complex words for past tense forms (want – wanted). A simple sentence like ‘I loved you’ uses morphological rules because the verb has been inflected to agree with the past tense rule. Inflection is the modification in the form of a word by means of affixation, vowel change, etc. In English, only nouns, pronouns, and verbs are inflected. This is the change in its formation to change the meaning. It was formerly customary to explain these as part of the verb do, as though I worked was originally I work – did. These morphological additions to the verbs and the pronunciations of them are where mistakes can happen. The child who says ‘I knowed’ is trying to form the regular past tense for verbs. The pattern past tense is mistaken because there are so many verbs in English that are inflected with the ‘ed’ ending. The sentence ‘I loved you’ has the ‘ed’ morpheme ending for past tense. The ‘ed’ ending in phonological rules is pronounced with a /d/ sound with the verb ‘love’. Furthermore, the ‘ed’ ending only has two more ways of pronouncing the ‘ed’ ending. These are the sounds /t/ (watched) and /ID/ (wanted). Morphology builds these complex words by adding to the original word.
Mostly all of the endings of verbs (wanted), nouns (cats), and adjectives (friendly) require morphological knowledge. The ‘ed’ ending is associated with regular verbs; this is different to the irregular verbs in past tense that change their form (say – said, go – went). In English, there are only 150 to 180 cases of irregular verbs. A language maven called Richard Lederer highlighted an example of verbs and all their endless pronunciation and morphological changes that sometimes do not follow patterns. He wrote a poem entitled ‘Tense Times with Verbs’:
The verbs in English are a fright.
How can we learn to read and write?
Today we speak, but first we spoke;
Some faucets leak, but never loke.
Today we write, but first we wrote;
We bite our tongues, but never bote.
Each day I teach, for years I taught,
And preachers preach, but never praught.
This tale I tell; this tale I told;
I smell the flowers, but never smold.
If knights still slay, as once they slew,
Then do we play, as once we plew?
If I still do as once I did,
Then do cows moo, as they once mid?
So, it is true that words are composed of many parts (suffix, prefix, inflection) including sound changes, some complicated as above. Words are basic units of language. A person’s brain memorizes words in all their forms in their mental lexicon. All the assembled morphological words and phrases and sentences are massaged by a set of rules into a sound pattern using pronunciation. There is an interface between the language and the mouth and ear that is called phonology. A phonological component describes the sound structure of the sentences generated by the syntactical component. Any word can be broken down into sound chunks. For instance the word ‘book’ can be broken down to a consonant phoneme in the initial position such as the /b/ in this case (i.e., what is described more technically as bilabial stop), Phonetically speaking this consonant will be at least partially voiced (i.e., there will be some vibration of the vocal cords). It will be without aspiration (i.e., there will be no accompanying slight puff of air. Following is a vowel /oo/ which can be classed as a diphthong. We then end the word with another consonant /k/ (i.e., what is described more technically as voiceless velar plosive consonant). A plosive is a stop consonant pronounced with a sudden release of air. Linguists look at all these parts of a word and find distinctions.
Moreover, In English for instance, we do not find the sound /n/ followed immediately by /g/ at the beginning of a word which is opposed to Thai which has the consonant sound /ng/ to start a word. In the English language, we can distinguish one thing from more than one, such as 1 dog (singular) and 2 dog+s (plural). Most plural nouns in English differ from the corresponding singular forms in that they have an additional final segment (2 dog+s). In the written forms of these words, it is either -s or -es (e.g., “cat” : “cats”; “dog” : “dogs”; “fish” : “fishes”). This is where the phonology of the final consonant is different. The noun+s ‘dogs’ has an /s/, at the end, the phonetic sound spoken would be a /Z/ like the initial letter in the word zoo. The plural noun actually has three phonetic sounds. The /iz/ for plural nouns like ‘bridges’ and /s/ for ‘rats’. The plural noun rule for /s/ is also seen in verbs where the 3rd person singular present simple verbs take an /s/ sound. We see verbs with /s/ like; He bats (/s/) for the cricket team, He jogs (/z/) everyday, He fishes (/iz) in the sea. But staying with nouns, there are other plural nouns in English that differ from their corresponding singular forms in other ways (e.g., “mouse” : “mice”; “criterion” : “criteria”; and so on) or not at all (e.g., “this sheep” : “these sheep”). These are examples of morphology as well as phonology change.
The combinations of sounds are put into words and then sentences. Looking at sentences, they are concerned with how different words categorized as nouns (cat), adjectives (good), verbs (go), etc are combined into clauses, which, in turn, are combined into sentences. A speaker assembles all the words and phrases and sentences that are massaged by a set of rules into a sound pattern using pronunciation. A word is a pure symbol; the relation between its sound and meaning is utterly arbitrary, a wholly conventional pairing of a sound with a meaning. ‘Dog’ means dog only because every English speaker has undergone an identical act of rote learning in childhood that links the sound to the meaning. Words are in the family of phonology; phonological objects comprise units or segments called phonemes. Phonemes are idealized units of speech in that they stand-alone and need to be combined with certain effort.
The combination of a word is usually represented as a ‘sequence’ or ‘chain’ of phonemes. Some variation in the pronunciation of these sequences could be attributed to a difference of dialect or accent. Also due to the fact that the first utterances of an English language were spoken some 5000 years ago by the nomads that roamed the South Eastern European plains. After all those years it is now spoken or learnt in nearly every country in the world. This goes to show how phonology works by looking at how words have changed over the 1000’s of years of use. For example, the short vowel /e/ under certain conditions has remained since Old English times; bedd is now bed today. On the other hand, to take a fairly simple case, the /a/ in Old English stan (stone) became about 1100 a sound like /or/ in law, in central and southern England. This is all different to the present day English ‘stone’ which uses the /o/ sound as in the word ‘go’. These days the English language is a global language and phonological changes are salient from country to country where one word can have many phonological changes. A good example is the American pronunciation as compared with that of London that is noticed to be at times somewhat old-fashioned. It has qualities that were characteristic of English speech in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The preservation of the /r/ in general American and flat /a/ in fast, path etc. were abandoned in southern England at the end of the eighteenth century. In many little ways, standard American English is reminiscent of an older period in the language due to its phonological characteristics. Most Americans pronounce either and neither with the vowel of teeth or beneath, while in Britain an alternate pronunciation is now with an initial diphthong /ai/. These words still have meaning and are understood by the people using them. There is a gradual change in word phonology that cannot be noticed as it is spoken by the masses.
So, phonology can change a word in many ways. Second language students always make the mistake of saying the past participle ‘driven’ with the /i/ from the word ‘five’. They just follow on from the pronunciation of the verb drive. So in English, we have rules but they do not always follow what we think is right. For example looking at the strangeness of phonology in practice, George Bernard Shaw showed how phonological sounds vary in the English language. You can certainly see how some students get confused.
English spelling poem
A moth is not a moth in mother
Nor both in bother, broth or brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose
Just look them up – and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn’t learned at fifty-five.
To conclude, it has been shown that under the surface of the English language, there is a myriad of factors. It is true that new sentences are created from all these words into syntactic processes for communication. We can see that there is a universal grammar underlying language, with auxiliaries and inversion rules, nouns and verbs, subjects and objects, phrases and clauses, cases and agreement, and so on. It seems to suggest a commonality in the brains of speakers. It is reasonable to ask if changes in English can be predicted, there will doubtless be modifications in phonology. New words will enter the lexicon. These will take forms of verbs, nouns etc. The more people talk the more we come to realize that there are many differences even in the one language that we call English. Remember, we do not all speak like the Queen of England. The global influence will also contribute toward the narrowing of the gap in languages: advanced technological education, computer programming, machine translation, and expanding mass media. Will this alter our language? I have touched on the American influence on English. This is a scratch on the surface of one variation of the English language that has millions of other English speakers around the globe. They all have their way of speaking English, using their own syntactic, phonological characteristics. The English language is no mere historical document like the bible to be religiously preserved as a relic of the past. The English language is a living entity, not constantly buried. Shakespeare and Chaucer transformed it in their time, we may fairly hope, a future still greater than its glorious past.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Phonological constraints and morphological development
Joseph Paul Stemberger, University of Minnesota, Barbara Bernhardt, University of British Columbia
Chomsky’s Revolution in Linguistics
John R. Searle – The New York Review of Books, June 29, 1972
Vowel dominance and morphological processing
Joseph Paul Stemberger – University of British Columbia
Christine Setchell Middleton
Lind, Jensen, Sullivan & Peterson, P.A.
Short Title: Vowel Dominance and Morphology
Contact Address: Department of Linguistics
University of British Columbia
E270-1866 Main Mall
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada V6T 1Z1
E-mail: stemberg@interchange.ubc.ca
Grammar Puss
Steven Pinker
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_01_24_thenewrepublic.html
Universal Grammar and Linguistics
by Michael Albert
Words and Rules – The Ingredient of Language
Steven Pinker
Weidenfeld and Nicolson
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