“To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.”
― Frantz Fanon
“Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law”
― de Saussure, Ferdinand
"The vocabulary of endearment, complaint, and abuse, provides, I think, almost the only specimens of words that are purely emotional, words from which all imaginative or conceptual content has vanished, so that they have no function at all but to express or stimulate emotion, or both. And an examination of them soon convinces us that in them we see language at its least linguistic. We have come to the frontier between language and inarticulate vocal sounds. And at that frontier we find a two-way traffic going on.”
― C.S. Lewis, Studies in Words
viernes, 22 de marzo de 2013
martes, 19 de marzo de 2013
VOCABULARY CARDS AND GAMES!
PARADIGMATIC AND SYNTAGMATIC RELATIONS
Well, I apologized to my followers but I was kind of busy at work!
Anyway today at work, I was using a common game that is used in spanish and it is called El Baúl de Mi Abuela, I named it in English "My Grandma's Box".
This game is for learning and remembering vocabulary, the idea is that the Teacher has to say in "My Grandma's Box" there is a Lion for example then teacher points at their students at random and they have two options which depend on the teacher instruction, the first one is to say words which start with the same letter in this case "L" such as: love, lamp, last, late, like, lord, lemon, little, etc; and the second option that is two say words which corresponds to same family words for example Lion is an animal so students would have to say animals as well, such as: dog, snake, pig, cat, cow, etc.
This is a great game, and today my students were having fun when they were playing, and while they were playing I started thinking about the reading of Hedge, T (2009) about Vocabulary, and I remember the PARADIGMATIC AND SYNTAGMATIC relations that he mentioned in this chapter, and I realized that students were able to use the meaning of the vocabulary according to these two realtions in a unconscious way. It was surprising for me because, students were using their mental lexicon in English using these relations among words to play and get points in this simple but useful game. Every time I feel more and more amaze for our capacity of having and developing our MENTAL LEXICON
Finally, I let you know this game, if you want you can use it in your classes, chikdren will have fun and they will practice vocabulary at the same time.
jueves, 14 de marzo de 2013
MENTAL LEXICON
Hi everybody, I invite you to check out this video about the last Linguistics Class topic conversation about Mental Lexicon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8HIAVTeGNk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8HIAVTeGNk
jueves, 7 de marzo de 2013
Getting prepared for our great Linguistics class!
Linguistics has become for me in a great interest subject to study, and every day I want to learn more and more.
Let's see what new concepts, and information our next Linguistics class brings for us!
Let's see what new concepts, and information our next Linguistics class brings for us!
martes, 5 de marzo de 2013
VOCABULARY Hedge. T (2008)
It is incredible how we learn a language and sometimes we don't realize about all the strategies, and processes that we follow for getting that language, in addition many time we ask our students to get involved in some activities that we already used for learning something but we don't know that all these strategies and activities have a theory and a support.
As it is mentioned in this chapter, there are some useful strategies for learning Vocabulary, such as COGNITIVE, KEYWORD, INFERENCING, AND METACOGNITIVE STRATEGIES, in this last one Metacognitive we use some important activities like: Consciously collecting words from authentic contexts, making word cards, categorizing words into list, and many other.
I confess I have used these strategies in personal learning and in my classes an others like the Vocabulary notebook, as Hedge mentioned, but I added to the vocabulary pictures of it, for making easier to remember the words by doing association, other strategy was to label some things that were in my visual range.
I invite you, my dear M.A in Languages Teaching Partners to share the strategies and activities that you use to learn and to teach vocabulary!
How could NEUROLINGUISTICS STUDIES benefit teaching and learning?
Good question!
If we start talking about how NEUROLINGUISTICS STUDIES benefit teaching and learning, we will have a lot of things to say. As far as we know Neurolinguistics investigates "Brain activity and Brain damage", according to this, nowadays, it is easier for educators when they are teaching, to understand what are the problems, or difficulties that some of their students could present in their learning process, by recurring to neurolinguistics studies, theories and discoveries.
For instance, we can mention some very common brain disorders like:
Dyslexia
Disgraphia
Aphasia
Stuttering
Autism
All of these atypical languages developments have already been disovered and studied by Neurolinguistics, and for that reason in most if the causes, we can identify, what are the manifestations, the visual evidence of these problems and likewise the symptoms of each one of them, so Neurolinguistics have done a lot in research allowing the people who are in charge of the learning and teaching processes have the possibility to read, get informartion about the difficulties and at the same they can use strategies that have already proved in people with this kind of disabilities, in order to help them to learn and over come most of the language problems, and in this way to give a better option of education.
If we start talking about how NEUROLINGUISTICS STUDIES benefit teaching and learning, we will have a lot of things to say. As far as we know Neurolinguistics investigates "Brain activity and Brain damage", according to this, nowadays, it is easier for educators when they are teaching, to understand what are the problems, or difficulties that some of their students could present in their learning process, by recurring to neurolinguistics studies, theories and discoveries.
For instance, we can mention some very common brain disorders like:
Dyslexia
Disgraphia
Aphasia
Stuttering
Autism
All of these atypical languages developments have already been disovered and studied by Neurolinguistics, and for that reason in most if the causes, we can identify, what are the manifestations, the visual evidence of these problems and likewise the symptoms of each one of them, so Neurolinguistics have done a lot in research allowing the people who are in charge of the learning and teaching processes have the possibility to read, get informartion about the difficulties and at the same they can use strategies that have already proved in people with this kind of disabilities, in order to help them to learn and over come most of the language problems, and in this way to give a better option of education.
FOXP2
FOXP2 -- visit this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnYik52Y5rI
It is very interesting to hear about this gene because I have never read or known about it. I didn't even think that existed genes of language. So it is surprising for me to know that there is a gen call FOXP2, which is related to the speaking in a person. So all the problems for speaking a language are because this gen is modified?
I think this is a revolutionary discovery for Neurolinguistics studies, because until know all the language problems were because of deficiency of human brain. Likewise it is very curious for me to know that this gen could have a thousand of years of antiquity and I have just read a little bit about it.
I don't know, I am very confused about everything, Fox P2 changes my mind about the innate ability of the language in only human beings because, if animals have this gen too, it is possible that in some time, if scientist get how to modify this gen in animals, they could start developing the ability to apeak.
Kind of strange, revolutionary and amazing sounds the discovery of FOXP2 to me!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnYik52Y5rI
It is very interesting to hear about this gene because I have never read or known about it. I didn't even think that existed genes of language. So it is surprising for me to know that there is a gen call FOXP2, which is related to the speaking in a person. So all the problems for speaking a language are because this gen is modified?
I think this is a revolutionary discovery for Neurolinguistics studies, because until know all the language problems were because of deficiency of human brain. Likewise it is very curious for me to know that this gen could have a thousand of years of antiquity and I have just read a little bit about it.
I don't know, I am very confused about everything, Fox P2 changes my mind about the innate ability of the language in only human beings because, if animals have this gen too, it is possible that in some time, if scientist get how to modify this gen in animals, they could start developing the ability to apeak.
Kind of strange, revolutionary and amazing sounds the discovery of FOXP2 to me!
lunes, 4 de marzo de 2013
Where is Language?
Where is Language? What a good question!
Language is everywhere, in our brains, in our minds, in our tongue, in our mouth, in our eyes, in our hands, in our body. Language can be verbal or non verbal, that is why I say Language is in our body, many times people say a look can say more than a thousand of words, so language is everywhere.
Since, we wake up in the morning, we find language, in our cellphone, on tv, in pictures, in calendars, on the street, at work, at the school, language is around us, wherever we walk we find language, it is part of the world, it is part of us.
Language is something really precious, and the most important is that we can have access to it everyday, we do not have to go so far to live it.
So let's enjoy this opportunity that we all the human beings have!
Language is everywhere, in our brains, in our minds, in our tongue, in our mouth, in our eyes, in our hands, in our body. Language can be verbal or non verbal, that is why I say Language is in our body, many times people say a look can say more than a thousand of words, so language is everywhere.
Since, we wake up in the morning, we find language, in our cellphone, on tv, in pictures, in calendars, on the street, at work, at the school, language is around us, wherever we walk we find language, it is part of the world, it is part of us.
Language is something really precious, and the most important is that we can have access to it everyday, we do not have to go so far to live it.
So let's enjoy this opportunity that we all the human beings have!
What is Language?
Language.... what can I say?
Language is everything for me! It is what allows me to interact with other people, what allows me to know and be part of a culture, Language is a group of organized signs, like Chomsky says Language is a system of phonology, syntax, and semantics, but it is a means of functioning in the society Halliday(1973).
Language is everything around us, language is power, language is a cultural device, language is the most beautiful ability, possession and instrument that human beings have.
As well, for Vivian Cook (1940) a professor of Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom, Language is a human representation, an external entity, a set of sentences, a shared possession of a community, a mental system, a form of action, so there is not just one definition about what language is! for this reason we cannot give a strict concept about Language, we just can enjoy this gift that has been given to all of us, and use it to do of this world a better place to LIVE!
Language is everything for me! It is what allows me to interact with other people, what allows me to know and be part of a culture, Language is a group of organized signs, like Chomsky says Language is a system of phonology, syntax, and semantics, but it is a means of functioning in the society Halliday(1973).
Language is everything around us, language is power, language is a cultural device, language is the most beautiful ability, possession and instrument that human beings have.
As well, for Vivian Cook (1940) a professor of Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom, Language is a human representation, an external entity, a set of sentences, a shared possession of a community, a mental system, a form of action, so there is not just one definition about what language is! for this reason we cannot give a strict concept about Language, we just can enjoy this gift that has been given to all of us, and use it to do of this world a better place to LIVE!
domingo, 3 de marzo de 2013
AWAKENINGS by Penny Marshall
AWAKENINGS is a movie directed by Penny Marshall and its main stars are Robert de Niro, Robi Williams, Julie Kavner and many others.
This is a great movie that talks about how the Doctor Sayer when noticed the encephalitis epidemic that some patients had, he decided to start researching in order to get a solution to that problem, he did not give up, he read a lot and tried to figured out what was the neurolinguistic problem of those patients. And after a while he got a possible solution, he realized that if he used a new drug maybe the patients could get a positive response to it and in this way they would be able again to control their movements, their bodies and recover their ability to talk.
This movie shows us what is the real spirit of a researcher, likewise it shows us how the neurolinguistics can help people to recover the language. Nowadays, neurolinguistics has gotten many advances in the linguistics field, for this reason more and more people with neurolinguistic problems, and step by step they have recovered their ability to communicate with other people,
WHAT IS LANGUAGE? according to Edward Sapir
“Language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations.”
― Edward Sapir, Language: an Introduction to the Study of Speech
― Edward Sapir, Language: an Introduction to the Study of Speech
FORENSIC LINGUISTICS
I confess you I love forensic things that is why I invite you to watch this video about a Detective as Linguist and Expert witness "Forensic Linguistics"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBrmMAdsR8c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBrmMAdsR8c
LINGUISTICS FOR ME!
Well, to talk about linguistics is not easy because there are many terms, concepts and authors that have already done studies about it, and after reading a little bit about Linguistics I realized that I was not even close to what the word LINGUISTICS involved, but what I know in this moment is that I would like to be a linguist as Crystal. D. (2009) mention in his book "To be a linguist doesn't mean to learn lots of foreign languages like Harold Williams did, who knew 58 languages, but it does mean to be interested in all of them". So, I would like to do that to be interested in many foreign languages; by now I have just interested in three languages English, French and Spanish but there are other languages such as Italian, Russian and Portuguese that I would like to know, and study at least a little bit.
The really important is that when I took the seminar of LINGUISTICS in the second semester of the FOREIGN LANGUAGES PROGRAM, I did not like it, maybe because the teacher showed us the subject as something complicated and boring, but now after listening to Professor Alberto Fajardo, and after reading and understanding more about Linguistics I have changed my mind, and now I feel like reading and searching more information in order to be more literated in this subject.
I do not know if I was the only one who got that feeling for the Linguistics but I feel better because for the first time in my life when I think about Linguistics I want to know more and I do not feel scared ,not anymore.
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