English Flashcards
Acquisition of language skills
Acquisition of language skills: is a series of stages in learning a second or native language. Although how children learn to speak is not completely understood by psycholinguists, developmental psychologists and linguists such as Noam Chomsky and Stephen Krashen have developed theories through observation that children copy what they hear and that humans have a natural ability for understanding grammar.
Activating prior knowledge
Activating prior knowledge: Proficient readers try to make sense out of what they read by finding how it connects with what they already know. When educators help students make connections to their prior knowledge before, during and after they read, they are teaching them a comprehension strategy.
Adjective
Adjective: is a word that describes, or modifies, a noun or a pronoun.
How Adjectives Modify Nouns
What kind? We studied Modern Middle East.
How many? I read five practice tests.
Which one? That linguist changed history.
Adverb
Adverb: is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.
Where? The bride said the Conga line started here.
When? Tom promptly rounded up the skiers.
How? The violinist played methodically.
To What Extent? Ms. Hawkins was quite proud of her tennis team.
Adverb clause
Adverb clause: is a subordinate clause that modifies an adjective, an adverb, or a verb. It tells how, where, when, why, to what extent, or under what condition.
Example: If it snows tonight, we will go to Snow Summit tomorrow.
Affective factors
Affective factors: are emotional factors that can have a positive or negative impact on learning. Some theorists believe Affective Factors may be as important for learning as the ability to learn. For example, a student’s attitude towards his/her teacher is an Affective Factor and has an impact on how well he/she learns.
Anthropomorphic qualities
Anthropomorphic qualities: the attribution of human form to a thing or being not human.
Example: The Tooth Fairy.
Antonyms
Antonyms: is a word opposite in meaning to another. Wet is an antonym to dry.
Appositive
Appositive: is a noun placed next to another noun to identify it, or give additional information about it. Appositives and appositional phrases identify or rename nouns.
Example: a. George Whitney designed the stage at Rockefeller Center.
b. He was an engineering student.
George Whitney, an engineering student, designed the stage at Rockefeller Center.
Appositional Phrase
Appositional Phrase: is a group of words that includes an appositive and other words that modify the appositive.
Example: Washington, our first president, held many other offices.
Base word
Base word: is a word to which other word parts may be added to form new words. The terms base and root word are one in the same.
Example: Base word-verb that means “ride the surf,” + “ing” suffix that indicates ongoing action
Surf + -ing = surfing
Word describes the action of surfing
Borrowing
Borrowing: is a word or phrase from one language that is used in another language.
Example: She is creating a list of German borrowings in English.
British spelling
British spelling: British English and American English differ in the way some words are spelled.
Example: American
Theater color favorite
British
Theatre colour favourite
Chomsky, Noam-Universal Grammar
Chomsky, Noam-Universal Grammar: is a professor of linguistics at MIT and is known for his language development theory of “Universal Grammar.” The Universal Grammar theory proposes that when humans are born they contain universal grammar and the basic structures to learn any language. The human brain is like a “little black box,” ready to be configured and molded by experiences with the outside world through the senses. As a result of the encounters, corresponding language patterns form.
Code-switching
Code-switching: is a linguistics term referring to switching back and forth between two different languages in a conversation. It also refers to the ability to switch from one dialect or language, from one conversation to the next, depending on the situation or person one is talking with. For example: Dr. Green spent her childhood in Louisiana and earned her doctorate in Education. She teaches theory classes at a university in Utah. While talking to her colleagues, Dr. Green has the ability to code-switch from her Coastal Southern Dialect to a Western Dialect in the course of a conversation. When talking to her friends back home in Louisiana, Dr. Green has the ability to code-switch from a Western dialect to a Coastal Southern Dialect.
Cohesion analysis
Cohesion analysis: Some patterns of words have a characteristic known as cohesion. They form coherent units. Cohesive words act not as individual words, but as a single unit. Coherent groups are all phrases, as are clauses, sentences and discourses.
Example: three o’clock
Compound sentence
Compound sentence: combines two simple sentences that have related ideas. A conjunction joins the two sentences usually by using the words (and, but, or or).
Example: The Romans were fine soldiers, and they had the best artillery in the world.
Compound-complex sentence
Compound-complex sentence: contains two or more independent clauses and at least one subordinate clause.
Example: When Craig left, he locked the doors, but he forgot to turn off the stove.
Context-embedded
Context-embedded: context in language offers help to comprehension such as non-verbal communication (expressions, gestures, certain location, visual clues). With context embedded language meaning becomes obvious due to help from the physical or social nature of the conversation.
Coordinating clause
Coordinating clause: is a clause connected to a series of two or more clauses.
Example: Spencer likes hamburgers, but Justin prefers hot dogs.
Coordinating conjunction
Coordinating conjunction: join words or group of words that are used in a similar way.
Example: Wirehaired Dachshunds make good pets, but they require a lot of grooming.
Creole
Creole: a language that originated from a simplified language (pidgin) or a combination of other languages.
Creolization
Creolization: is when two different cultures with different languages spoken join together which result in modifying some aspects of their respective languages and creating new forms. Cultures joined together for various reasons are continually engaged in creolization.
Critical Period Hypothesis:
Critical Period Hypothesis: believes the first few years of life is the crucial time for an individual to learn a first language fluently, if given the proper stimuli and support. If after the first few years the language does not occur, they will never accomplish grammatical systems and ultimately mastery of a language. In the late fifties and sixties, Penfield and Roberts (1959) and Lenneberg (1967) were the first to propose that there was a critical period for language acquisition. Originally the hypothesis only included first language acquisition, but later researchers included second language acquisition. In second language acquisition researchers believe that the window of opportunity is learning a second language before puberty. Both hypotheses are highly debated amongst developmentalists, linguists, and language educators.
Critical reading
Critical reading: is reading with the intention of finding deep meaning and understanding of a reading piece regardless if the piece is fiction or non-fiction. A critical reader analyzes, reflects and evaluates what they read as they continue reading. Some techniques critical readers use are becoming part of the writers audience by learning about the author, reading with an open mind, analyzing the title, reading slowly, using a reference for words or terms not understood, making notes as they read and keep a reading journal.
Decoding
Decoding: is the ability for a reader to interpret letter-sound relationships to help them correctly pronounce written words. Understanding these relationships allows early readers to recognize familiar words and to interpret words they have not seen before.
Deep structure
Deep structure: Noam Chomsky’s, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965) set the precedent for all that has occurred in generative linguistics since. A key point of Aspects reflected the idea of Deep Structure that stated in addition to the surface form of sentences, there is another level of syntactical structure, referred to as Deep Structure which reveals syntactic consistencies of sentences.
Dependent clause
Dependent clause: or subordinate clause does not express a complete thought and cannot by itself be a complete sentence. Words that indicate the beginning of a dependent clause are since, that, or what.
Example: what he saw
A subordinate clause is only complete when it is connected to an independent clause.
Example: The innocent bystander told the sheriff what he saw.
Dependent marker word
Dependent marker word: are usually the first words in the clause and signal that a given clause is dependent. There are two kinds of Dependent Marker Words: relative pronouns and subordinate conjunctions.
Example: After we swam out to the buoy, we jumped on the boat.
Dialect
Dialect: A form of speech belonging to a particular region.
Example: Cockney is a dialect of English.
Dialectical Knowledge
Dialectical Knowledge: the art of examining the truth of opinions. “Knowledge,” is referred to as the highest stage of our mind and is referred to as dialectic in the central book of the Republic.
Direct object
Direct object: A direct object is a pronoun, noun, or word group that tells who or what receives the action of the verb. A direct object answers the question of “what?” or “whom?” after a transitive verb.
Example: Ms. Parsons greets whoever comes into the salon.
Elision
Elision: is to leave out a vowel or syllable in pronouncing as in (It’s, let’s I’m).
English orthography
English orthography: Orthography broken down helps one to understand the meaning of English Orthography: ortho- (fr. Gk.) straight, right and graphy (fr. Gk.) writing. The representation of the sounds of English by hand-written or printed symbols. Also:
British spelling or orthography: The British spell some words differently from the way people in the United States do.
Example: United States
Theater color favorite
British
Theatre colour favourite
Enumeration
Enumeration: is to count one by one, to specify, or to specifically catalog each item.
Etymology
Etymology: is the history of how a word and its meaning were formed.
Euphemism
Euphemism: a benign expression substituted for a harsher one.
Example: “The teacher was laid off from his job.” Euphemism: “The teacher is between jobs.”
Fluency
Fluency: is a smooth, easy flow and mastery of a language in reading, writing or speech. Fluent readers recognize words automatically making reading faster, more efficient and ultimately more expressive.
Gender neutral
Gender neutral: is a linguistics term to alleviate references to gender specifics.
Example: Stewardess, Mailman and Policeman are gender specific words.
Corresponding Gender-neutral words are: Flight Attendant, Mail Carrier and Police Officer.
Genre
Genre: A style of literature such as: Autobiography, Poetry, Fantasy, Science Fiction etc…
Gerund
Gerund: A gerund is a verb ending in –ing and is used as a noun.
Example: SUBJECT Running down that hill was fun.
Grammatical change
Grammatical change: Any language can develop a grammatical nuance, not always noticeable to listeners, over time. Lexical (word changes) change more rapidly over time then grammatical changes and as a result, conservative forms of speech may continue without change in regional dialects.