Linguistics and Language Teaching. Essay Example for Free

Linguistics and wording Teaching. EssayIntroduction Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication. The scientific study of manner of speaking in any of its senses is called linguistics. Linguistic theory has traditionally considered ingrained speakers as the only reliable source of linguistic data (Chomsky 1965).It is wherefore not surprising to ? nd only a limited number of whole shebang focusing on non- primordial speakers prior to the 1990s. The ?rst attempt to put(non)nativism onto the centre stage of linguistic inquiry by challenging current undisputed assumptions on the matter was Paikedays (1985)The native speaker is dead , in which it is argued that the native speaker exists only as a ? gment of linguists imagination (Paikeday 1985 12). Paikeday suggested using the verge pro? cient user of a oral communication to refer to a ll speakers who digest successfully use it. A few years later, Rampton (1990) similarly proposed the term expert speaker to take on all successful users of a wording.Davies (1991, 2003) further delved into native speaker identity, and thus formulated the key question of whether a second speech communication (L2) learner can fit a native speaker of the target language. His conclusion was that L2 learners can become native speaker of the target language and master the intuition, grammar, spontaneity, creativity, pragmatic control, and interpreting attri exactlye of born native speakers. Generally, face educated Malayansians of all ethnic and family language background speak and move a wish well.However, with the implementation of the case language policy of Bahasa Malaysia as the national language of Malaysia and as the language of instruction, (except in the cases of Chinese or Tamil medium primary shoals), the status of face Language in Malaysia is una cargon from the e arlier years.The position language covered a continuum from start language through second language to a unusual language. Bahasa Malaysia is replacing English in most of its previous functions, but English may be expect to remain as a continuum from second language to foreign language according to the background and blood line of the speaker.In Malaysia, presently the use of English is less common than in Singapore and is likely to slump steadily with the implementation of the national language policy. However, English still remains as a language of considerable importance and is still being utilise in various spheres of every(prenominal)day activity. The role of English has changed from its earlier status as the precise language of the colonial era and the decades after the Second existence War to a second language.At the moment, it is still considered as an international code to be used for diplomatic and commercial negotiations and as a language necessary in many fields o f ordinal study and research. Not surprisingly, the non-native English language speakers among Malaysians take up grammatical mistakes from clip to time. These usually happened among Malaysian self-aggrandising students and even among some Malaysian English teachers. 1. The transcript of a recorded conversation. The following excerpt is a recorded conversation among teachers and will be analysed of the mistakes made by some teachers during discussion.Our discussion was on the quality and effectiveness of a programme called Program Penutur Jati or English Language Teacher Development forecast (ELTP). Briefly, the aim of the project is to enhance the lower primary ESL teachers ability to plan and deliver quality English lessons based on the new National English Language Curriculum in 600 schools across east Malaysia. The teachers involved in discussion come from various races, ethnic groups, ages and teaching experiences. Kamel That is my opinion. I slangt ac bonkledge yours. Ok. president I agree . laugh Kamel But , as I said just now now.I dont like that the fixture.. ok. For example aaaa as my instruct come to our school .. every Monday ok.. my mark start at nine oclock. 7. 30.. that consider one and half hour accept the preparation for my lesson, so I dont think that I have an ample time for me to prep atomic number 18 the things ok . Moreover, the one hour and one and half hour is the .. for all to prepare.. the whole calendar week not only , the one day. So I dont think that will be effective. Chairperson Emmmm Kamel So Chairperson Did you tell him around it? Kamel Aaaaaa So far not yet. Chairperson Do you have the chance to talk about it.Kamel Because, I dont have any.. I dont have the opportunity to.. Chairperson Then, you should tell him. Kamel I was thinking. Why dont the mentors like them to be .. have qualification in teaching, so that they can come to the trainee teachers training college rather than Chairperson For your i nformation, ahh Chairperson Overall, it seems to be working with you Naga The ideas (cough) is good and different he is friendly. Chairperson So.. ahh. If supposing .. You have a mentor to this.. who doesnt speak.. doesnt speak like Morrocan.Alright Naemah Yehhh Chairperson Right.. Alright, if.. Chairperson Who? Chairperson Madam soya bean? She is from where? Others Bulgaria.. (together) Chairperson Bulgaria? Does she have the accent? Chairperson What do you think? Do you think 2. Common grammatical mistakes and errors by non-native English speakers. The types of errors can be categorised into two descriptive and surface structures. Descriptive errors include noun phrase, verb phrase and complex sentence. While surface structure errors include thoughtlessness, addition, misinformation, misordering and blends.After analysing the recorded conversation, there are few mistakes or errors made by Mr. Kamel during the said discussion. a. The use of unmarked forms instead of marke d forms is far more frequent, as can be seen in the examples as follows. * I dont know yours. * I dont know about you. * .. as I said just now. * .. as I have said just now. One possible cause of these errors is merely interlingual errors which is the result of puzzle tongue influences Saya tak tahu awak punya and seperti yang saya kata tadi. respectively.In his article, A Role for the Mother Tongue in Language Transfer in Language Learning, Professor Corder (1981) reinvestigated the phenomenon and questions the term transfer of training. He suggests that mother tongue influence as a neutral and broader term to refer to what has most ordinarily been called transfer. Corder says that since most studies of error were made on the basis of the performance of learners in formal situations where it appears that errors related to mother tongue are more frequent, it was inseparable that an explanation of the phenomenon was of considerable concern to the applied linguistic.It was out o f this concern that the whole industry of contrastive studies arose. He also claims that as far as the scholarship of syntactic knowledge is concerned, no do by appropriately called interference takes place, if by that we mean that the mother tongue actually inhibits, prevents, or makes more difficult the acquisition of some feature of the target language. The term interference is now most often used to mean what is no more than the presence in the learners performance in the target language of mother-tongue-like features which are incorrect according to the governs of the target language.b. Obviously. Mr. Kamel has the problem in pronouncing certain delivery especially in the pronunciation of the initial strong of common words like the, there, then and that. It is also the middle concordant sound in feather and the final sound of bathe. These sounds are formed with the tongue tip lavatory the upper front teeth. The initial sound of that and the final sound of both are both severe dental. This problem arises because Mr Kamels tongue is not merely touches the teeth. Thus, his pronunciation of these particular words are incorrect.Besides, worry in phonology can caused by mother tongue interference. Eltrug (1984) affirmed that mother tongue interference can contribute to a large number of pronunciation errors made by students. An English sound does exist in the native language, but not as separate phonemes. This simply means the first language speakers do not perceive it as a distinct sound that makes difference to implication. For example The sound /? / does exist in Malay, but whether the vowel is long or short does not make any difference in signification.For instance, the English phonemes/? / and /i/ differ very much in meaning as in the words leave and live, sheep and ship. The great amount of vocabulary of English really makes the second language learner suffer in reading. There is a lot of words unknown and the most confusing point is even the second language learner know the meaning but they cant really understand the meaning of the whole sentence. It is because an English word gives different impressions in different situations. This makes things so confusing about the meaning of the word.Grammatical interference is define as the first language influencing the second in terms of word order, use of pronouns and determinants, tense and mood. Interference at a lexical level provides for the borrowing of words from one language and converting them to sound more essential in another and orthographic interference includes the spelling of one language altering another. In Malay grammar, it does not require one to have any form of determiner in front of instruments like computer, mild, internet.English grammar, however, requires the instruments mentioned above (computer, piano, internet) to be preceded by determiners and if neither a possessive determiner nor a gushing(prenominal) determiner is used, the use of either a def inite article or an indefinite article is necessary. Thus, the ill-formed sentences in could be the result of interference of the cultural transfer from Malay language structure on English. Erroneous form Correct form She plays piano while I sing. Malay Dia bermain piano sementara saya menyanyi. She plays the piano while I sing She stay at home.Malay Dia tinggal di rumah She stays at home. Table 1 Examples of interference from the learners first language. c. Subjects also exhibited errors in subject-verb agreement as is shown in the examples as follows * Every Monday, my class start at nine oclock. * Every Monday, my class starts at nine oclock. The omission of -s can be attributed to the fact that Bahasa Malaysia does not require verbs to agree with subjects. However, the ending free form is mouth for all persons to make the learning task easier and this is a common intralingual made by people with different native languages like Mr Kamel.3. Causes and sources of errors and mistakes Interlingual errors are the result of mother tongue influences. Learners transfer/borrow some forms but not others due to two factors such as proto-typicality and language distance (Kellerman, 1979). Malay learners of English commonly make errors in negative sentences. For example Adryna no coming today. Adryna tak datang hari ini. Such errors are common in pre-verbal negation using no, the same negative construction as in their L1.In order to determine whether transfer is the cause for the occurrence of errors, James (1998), demonstrates that learners with a particular L1 make an error that those with a different L1 do not. He provides a useful summary of these strategies which includes the following a. False analogy b. Misanalysis c. Incomplete rule employment exploiting redundancy d. Overlooking co-occurrence restrictions e. System-simplification It is not clear which strategy is responsible for a particular error. Errors can also be viewed as natural or as induced. F or example a. He play football yesterday.b. He goed home at six. c. He drinked milk. d. He eated dinner. e. He sleeped at eight. Conclusion To conclude, learners errors are a part of the learners language learning process. Hence, teachers should not penalise students for the errors they made. Instead, teachers should note those errors and devise ways to take to heart learners to overcome their problems in language learning. It is difficult to decide whether grammatically or acceptability should serve as the criterion for error analysis. If grammatically is chosen, an error can be defined as breach of the rule of the code (Corder, 1967).Defining errors in terms of grammatically also necessitates giving consideration to the distinction betwixt overt and covert error In the field of methodology, there are two schools of thought with move to learners error. Firstly, the school which maintains that if we were to achieve a perfect teaching method, the errors would have never be committ ed and therefore the occurrence of errors is merely a sign of inadequacy in our teaching techniques. The philosophy of the second school is that we live in an imperfect world and consequently errors will always occur in elicit of our very take up teaching and learningmethods.One effect has been perhaps to shift the emphasis away(p) from a preoccupation with teaching towards a study of learning. The differences between the two are clearly defined that the learning of the mother tongue is natural, whereas, we all know that there is no such inevitability about the learning of a second language that the learning of the mother tongue is part of the whole maturational process of the child, whilst learning a second language normally begins only after the maturational process is complete.A childs incorrect utterances can be interpreted as being severalise that he is in the process of acquiring language and the errors provide these evidences. Brown and Frazer (1964), point out that the b est evidence a child possesses construction rules is the occurrence of systematic errors, since when the child speaks correctly, it is quite possible that he is only repeating something that he has heard. In the case of the second language learner, it is known that we do know some knowledge of what the input has been which we call as the syllabus.The simple fact of presenting a certain linguistic form to a learner in the classroom does not necessarily qualify it for the status of input, for the conclude that input is what goes in, not what is available for going in, and we may reasonably suppose that it is the learner who controls this input. This may well be determined by the characteristics of his language acquisition mechanism and not by those of the syllabus. References Mariam Mohd Nor, Abdul Halim Ibrahim, Shubbiah, R (2008). OUM-Linguistics and Language Teaching. Seri Kembangan, Selangor.Open University Malaysia. Corder, S. P. (1967). The significance of learners errors. Inte rnational Review of Applied Linguistics, 5, 161-70. Corder, S. P. (1981). Error analysis and interlanguage. Oxford Oxford University Press. Ames, C. (1998). Errors in language learning and use Exploring error analysis. London Longman. Kellerman, E. (1979). Transfer and non-transfer Where are we now? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2 37-57. Eltrug, N. S. (1984). Analysis of the Arab Learners Errors in Pronunciation of English Utterances in Isolation and Context.Ph. D Dissertation. The University of Kansas. Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of phrase structure . Cambridge, MA MIT Press Paikeday, T. (1985). The native speaker is dead Toronto Paikeday Publishing. Rampton, M. B. H. (1990). Displacing the native speaker Expertise, af? liation, and inheritance. ELT Journal 44. 2, 97101. Davies, A. (1991). The native speaker in applied linguistics . Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press. Davies, A. (2003). The native speaker of World Englishes. Journal of Pan-Paci? c joinin g of Applied Linguistics 6. 1, 4360