Reviewing Essential Linguistics by David Freeman and Yvonne Freeman

Presented Kathryn Jesser and
Abigail Bloem

Overview

Why this Book is important according to Halliday and Freeman and Freeman

First and Second Language Acquisition

The technical aspects of linguistics and how they work in the classroom

Why This Book is Important to Teachers

According to Halliday, cited in Freeman and Freeman, we all learn:

Through Language

About Language

Language

Freeman and Freeman: Teachers with linguistic knowledge can help their students learn language. (xi)

What Does it Mean to Know a Word?

Phonological recognition

Morphological recognition

Syntactic understanding

Semantic understanding

Pragmatic understanding

We have to know what these things are in order to teach them.

First Language Acquisition: History

Skinner and Behaviorism:all learning is a process of stimulus and response

However, Lindfor Believed:Environments vary, and children learn at about the same time all around the world

Animals would also speak if this were the case

Children do not imitate adults

Learning language is too speedy to be done this way!

First Language Acquisition: Chomsky: A Door to Current Views

Cognitive Science Children are born with innate cognitive abilities

Evidence for the innate:Quick learning

Limited amount of evidence for hypotheses

Limited feedback (mostly from caretakers)

Children never maker certain mistakes

Chomsky's Grammars: How children acquire language:Universal Grammar: we're born with the qualities of all languages (the one we learn is the dominant one)

Generative Grammar:the rules of the dominant language that make up any given sentence. These must be learned.

First Language Acquisition: Current Views

Psychology: Children have a specific way of learning: babbling, first words, 2 word phrases, then rapid growth into fluency.

Sociology, Anthropology and Education: Do we let children make mistakes?Children who are corrected more often dont use more error free language. Actually, their language didnt develop as well, and they did not succeed to the same degree academically as children whose parents focused on understanding and extending...meaning (9)

Second Language Acquisition: Two Ways to Learn in the Classroom

Merriam Webster:To Learn: to gain knowledge understanding or skill but study, instruction or experience

To Acquire: to come into possession or control ofto have as a new characteristic or trait

Learning Language: teachers will use correct form versus content (how it is said is better than understanding the meaning)

Acquiring Language: making meaning is more important than how it is said.

The Views of the teacher greatly affect how the student learns

Phonology

Phonology and Teaching

Phonemic Awareness: words are made up of individual sounds which can be perceived and manipulated

The Five Levels:Hear rhymes and alliteration

Do oddity tasks

Blend or split syllables

Perform phonemic segmentation

Perform phoneme manipulation tasks

Second Language Learning:Learning:phonology is acquired through audiolingual (repetition and drills)

Acquisition: phonology is acquired by using the language to communicate

A Note on Phonics

There are at least 5 approaches to teaching phonics:Synthetic: letters to sounds to words

Analytic:analyzing known words and sounds to make new words

Analogy based: use word families to make new words

Spelling: segment words into phonemes and write the words with the sounds

Embedded: letter-sound correspondences while reading

Onset-rime: connect sounds of new words and rhymes to the letters that spell them

Some Issues with Phonics

The Student:Readers need to see the whole word to know it's meaning and pronunciation

Some words are spelled the same but sound different and have different meanings

Sounding out doesn't always work

The Teacher: Often assumes a child having trouble needs more phonics. Actually, these problems could be a result of an over reliance on phonics.

A Note on the Book

Orthography

Morphology

Morphology in the Classroom
Key in Second Language Learning

Front loading: learning, talking, wondering, reading and writing about a new subject/word.

2 Types of Language:Conversational

Academic

Academic Language:Content Specific

Cognates

Text Analysis

Syntax

Cautions and Awesomes

Issues on the Cover

Missing information

Charts and Text

Easy to understand and Strong Purpose

Conclusion

Resources

Freeman, David E and Yvonne S. Freeman. Essential Linguistics. Portsmouth, NH. Heinneman, 2004.

Merriam-Webster Online. Merriam-Webster Inc. 2009.

Halliday, M. A. K. Three Aspects of Children's Lanugage Developement: Learning Language, Learning Through Language and Learning About Language. In Oral and Written Development Research: Impact on Schools. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.