ESL Resources Flashcards
Cognates
Words which have a common origin.
Discourse
A continuous stretch of speech or written text, going beyond a sentence to express thought.
Graphophonics
Language Registers
Situational context of language use is referred to as a language register.
Situational context is influenced by what is being talked/written about and the relationship between those speakers.
Lexical Ambiguity
Some words may have two or more meanings such as:
pen- a writing instrument or
pen- a place where pigs live
fall- a season of the year or
fall- to tumble down, plunge
Lexicon
The knowledge that a native speaker has about a language. This includes information about:
the form and meanings of words and phrases
lexical categorization
the appropriate usage of words and phrases
relationships between words and phrases, and
categories of words and phrases.
Morphology
The study of the internal structure of words.
The study of meaningful parts of words and how they are put together.
Phoneme
The distinctive sounds in words are called phonemes.
Phonics
The system of relationships between letters and sounds in a language.
Phonological Awareness
The ability to recognize that words are made up of a variety of sound units
Pragmatics
The study of the aspects of meaning and language use that are dependent on the speaker, the addressee and other features of the context of utterance, such as the following:
The effect that the following have on the speaker’s choice of expression and the addressee’s interpretation of an utterance:
Context of utterance
Generally observed principles of communication* The goals of the speaker
Semantics
Semantics, generally defined, the study of meaning of linguistic expressions.
Semantics, more narrowly defined, the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions apart from consideration of the effect that pragmatic factors, such as the following, have on the meaning of language in use:
Features of the context
Conventions of language use
The goals of the speaker
Syntax
The way words are put together in a language to form phrases, clauses, or sentences.
The syntax of a language can be divided into two parts:
Syntactic classes such as noun, verb, and adjective
Syntactic functions, such as subject and object
Transformational Grammar (Noam Chomsky)
Children are able to learn the superficial grammar of a particular language because all intelligible languages are founded on a deep structure of grammatical rules that are universal and that correspond to an innate capacity of the human brain.
Cognitive Approach to Language Acquisition
Emphasizes extemporaneous conversation, immersion, and other techniques intended to simulate the environment in which most people acquire their native language as children.
