Abstract: This article focuses on the ideas for enriching the language learning by teaching metalinguistic skills. The only skills that focused here is syntactic, morphology and pragmaticfor understanding a language and its importance. Activities is also provided in this article that can be helpful for classroom teachings.
INTRODUCTION Language as a communication system is thought to be fundamentally different from and of much higher complexity than those of other species as it is based on a complex system of rules relating symbols to their meanings, resulting in an indefinite member of possible innovative utterances from a finite number of elements. Language primarily as the mental faculty that allows humans to undertake linguistic behavior: to learn languages
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Phonological metalinguistic skill include recognition of phonemes that comprise a particular language, how sound combine to form words. Syntactic metalinguistic skills manifest in judgments of sentence types and word order in sentences and also subject- verb agreement. Pragmatic metalinguistic skill allows one to determine if a message is said out of context is inadequate or does not maintain contextual relevance. Morphological or word metalinguistic skills determines the appropriate use of morphemes. Of these metalinguistic skills phonological skill have received most attention. Because most of them believe that phonemic or phonological awareness is powerful for learning the language. But this paper have chosen to focus only on enhance the learning process by teaching morphological, pragmatic and syntactical metalinguistic skills.
SYNTACTICAL AWARENESS Syntactical awareness is knowledge that is utilized to judge syntactic correctness. Roth.et.al (1996) found that it may have highest influence on learning
From the most basic of functions like recognition and storage to the complexities of discourse and cultural expression, language functions are an integral and pervasive component of the human experience. In these pages I have sought to describe the operation of the six language functions through the analogy of a figure skater and a dancer. Each skill builds upon the next to weave the intricate set of skills and abilities that humans have uniquely developed to share information and each other’s experiences of the world.
Phonemic Awareness is when a person is able to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in words. In the article Tell Me About Fred’s Fat foot Again, Geri Murry did a study on phoneme awareness. It started with Geri working with a four year old on a tongue tickler, getting her to manipulate the sounds. Geri also made the learning fun, relatable, and intriguing to get the little girl Jenny interested in the lesson. Then, the article went into detail over four things that should be included in phonemic awareness lesson plans. The first thing is to focus on the individual phoneme. Second, make the phoneme memorable. To help out with making the phenome stand out, the article suggested analogies, illustrations, gestures, graphemes,
Phonological awareness is the ability to be aware of the sounds certain letters in words make. Sue Bredekamp and Carrol Copple explain, “Another strong predicator of phonological awareness; that is, noticing the sounds of spoken language- beginning speech sounds and rhythms, rhyme and other sound similarities, and, at the highest level, syllables and phonemes (the smallest units of speech that make a difference in communication)” (Bredekamp & Copple, 2009, p. 147). An example of something I can use in the classroom will follow standard LAFS.K.RF.2.2 Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes). a. Recognize and produce rhyming words. By teaching children to listen to the ending sounds of a word, I can use a felt board to hang up pictures of a cat, bat, rat, hat, mat, and images showing pat, sat, and splat. I will ask the class to listen for ending sounds and find the similarities. I can assess them by adding pictures of a dog, chair, fan, and pen on the mat and see if they can match the rhyming words and omit the non-rhyming
Throughout history, language has been a significant part of how humans are able to communicate with each other. Communication is a vital part to the way humans live and even survive with each other. Languages are all unique, and they can possibly be a factor in the way humans solve problems or think in general. In the essay “How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think?,” Lera Boroditsky delves into this complex topic. She specifically focuses on the topic of language and how people’s thinking can actually change depending on the language that they speak. To effectively prove her argument, she has conducted many experiments with her students and colleges that test the way that groups of people complete tasks differently based on their language.
“Language learning is a process of developing new resources for meaning-making, and language learners need opportunities for participation in meaningful activities and interaction supported by consciousness-raising and explicit attention to language itself in all its complexity and variability” (Schleppegrell, 2013.
Phonemic Awareness is very important part of literacy. Phonemic awareness includes sounds of a word, the breakdown of words into sounds. It includes rhyming and alliteration, isolation, counting words in sentences, syllables and phonemes, blending words, segmenting, and manipulating.
Language is an important requirement for a child’s cognitive, social and emotional development. This is why our education system is designed in a manner that ensures that during formative years children are exposed to more direct teaching of pragmatic knowledge, phonetics, semantic and morphemic. However, there has been disagreement among scholars of human growth and development. Some believe that children’s natural development is stinted by the regimented rote memorization of phonics and manipulation of language while others believe a systematic approach like phonics instruction is the most effective way to increase language acquisition during primary years.
Since, until we have proof to the contrary, human intelligence is more developed than animal, it would seem easier for us to learn animal language than for animals to learn our speech. Moreover, once a human scientist has decoded an animal language, he is able to understand all the members of his own species, present and future” (Borgese 4). Another point that has influenced some linguists to believe that animal language is not a language is the fact that animal language is not as complex as human language, however, one linguist gives evidence to support that animal language is complex, “Complex forms of communication are found among socialized, communal insects, such as ants, bees, wasps, and termites, and among social animals, such as antelopes, wild horses, wolves and beavers” (Brown 18). The way that Vinson Brown views the complexity of animal language is that all animals in a socialized setting are capable and have a complex system of language ability already in place. The way that other linguists view the complexity or lack thereof with animal language is because of the fact that the animals are unable to form thoughts and feelings to convey to others; their movements are meant for the basic emotions as discussed with the
Human languages and animal communication systems have been studied immensely, and it is intriguing to study how similar animal communication systems, such as those of elephants, are to human languages. Elephants have several methods of communicating, including acoustic, visual, tactile, seismic, and chemical communication (Acoustic Communication). The acoustic method of communication in elephants is most similar to most human language systems, and will therefore be the focus of this paper. First, human language must be defined and parameters must be set for what human language really is. Timothy Jay explains that human language must be communicative, arbitrary, structured, multilayered, productive, and evolutionary (Jay 2). In addition, two more features of human language should be considered when discussing communication systems, which are discreteness and displacement (Hutchins, Class Notes).
Philosophical Psychology, 21:5, 641-671. doi: 10.1080/09515080802412321. Chomsky, N. (1976). The Species of the World. Reflections on the language of the ages.
According to Bursuck & Damer (2011) phonemes are “the smallest individual sounds in words spoken.” Phonemic awareness is the “ability to hear the phonemes and manipulate the sounds” (p. 41). Phonemic awareness is essential because without the ability students are not able to manipulate the sounds. According to the National Institute for Literacy (2007), “students with poor phonics skills prevent themselves from reading grade-level text and are unable to build their vocabulary” (p.5) Agreeing with the importance of phonemic awareness, Shapiro and Solity attempted to use whole class instruction to improve students’ phonological awareness. The intervention showed that whole class instruction assisted not only the students with poor phonemic awareness, but also on-level developing readers.
"[H]uman knowledge is organized de facto by linguistic competence through language performance, and our exploration of reality is always mediated by language" (Danchin 29). Most higher vertebrates possess ‘intuitive knowledge’ which occurs as the result of slow evolution of species. However, the ability to create knowledge through language is unique to humans. According to Benjamin Whorf, "language…. is not merely a reproducing instrument from voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas…. We dissect nature along lines laid down by language" (Joseph 249). In addition, the development and acquisition of language seems to be related to "complex sequential processing, and the ability to form concepts and to classify a single stimulus in a multiple manner" (Joseph 178). Antione Danchin suggests that the knowledge we create through language allows us distinguish ourselves from the rest of the world to produce models of reality, which become more and more adequate due to the "self-referent loop" which enables us to understand ourselves as objects under study. This "path from subject to object," which is common to all humans, Danchin claims, suggests the existence of a universal feature of language (29).
Traditional grammar describes the syntax of a language in terms of a taxonomy (classification). This approach is based on the assumption that phrases and sentences are built up of a series of constituents, each of which belongs to a specific grammatical category and serves a specific grammatical function. In contrast to the taxonomic approach, linguist Noam Chomsky developed a cognitive approach to the study of grammar in which the study of language is part of the wider study of cognition. The goal of the linguist in the cognitive approach is to determine what is it that enables native speakers to speak and understand the language fluently. Any native speaker of a language can be said to know the grammar of his/her language. Native speakers have grammatical competence in their native language – they have tacit (subconscious) knowledge of the grammar of their language, they know how to form and interpret words, phrases and sentences.
Scheffler, P., & Cinciaa, M. (2011). Explicit grammar rules and L2 acquisition. ELT Journal, 65(1), 13-23.
In linguist and psychologist Noam Chomsky’s Language and Mind, he asserts that a “universal grammar provides a highly restrictive schema to which any human language must conform” (55). The theory of universal grammar that Chomsky proposed states that the ability to comprehend and produce a language is already built in the human brain before birth. Even from an early age, children’s brains are programmed to constantly analyze grammar and syntax. To back up his claim, Chomsky elaborates on “the intrinsic structure of a language-acquisition device” (99).