DESCRIBING THE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Didactics I
Where did English come from?
Outline

A. Language in use
B. What we want to say
C. Language as text and discourse
D. Grammar
E. Lexis
F. The sounds of the language
G. Paralinguistic features of language
H. Speaking and writing
 A. Language in use
• Rules
• Styles
• Constraints
 B. What we want to say
The words we use What we mean

Example: At the hospital

Receptionist: The doctor will arrive late.

Patient: It’s Ok. I will wait.
 B. What we want to say
B1. Form and Meaning (grammatical constructions)
• Future: I will arrive at 8 o’clock. (statement or fact)
I am going to arrive at 8 o’clock. (a plan)

B2. Purpose
• Language performs certain functions (inviting, apologizing, offering, suggesting, and the like)
teaching materials
• The study of language functions syllabus
teaching techniques
 B. What we want to say
B3. Appropriacy and register
• Setting (at work, at the park with family,etc)

• Participants (people involved in the exchange of information)

• Gender

• Channel (written or spoken language/face to face or by telephone, etc.)

• Topic (depends on the register-type of language)

• Tone (depends on the situation-formal/informal)

 C. Language as text and discourse
C1. Discourse organization
• Coherence (following the right order/make sense)
• Cohesion ( having unity or stick together)
✓ Using anaphoric reference (pronoun references)

✓ Substituting by paraphrasing

✓ Having tense agreement

✓ Using linking words (and, however, first, then, Etc)

✓ Ellipsis (the omission of one or more words that are obviously understood. Ex. Ready?=Are you ready?)

✓ Discourse markers (anyway, to continue, etc)

✓ Intonation (speaking)
 C. Language as text and discourse
C2. Genre

“a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style,

form, or content “
Merriam Webster Dictionary
Examples: advertisements, letters, poems, magazines articles, etc.

❖Each type of genre is easily recognized by its discourse community.

Eg. Poems—Poets (discourse community)
 D. Grammar
Grammar: “Knowledge of what words can go where and what form these words should
take”

Grammar is governed by:

• A system of rules Syntax

• Word formation Morphology

 D. Grammar
D1. Choosing words
• Singular or plural

• Countable or uncountable

• Present or past

• Transitive or intransitive

“Students need to create language awareness”

 E. Lexis
Lexis= vocabulary of a language

E1. Language corpora: a collection of written or spoken text

E2. Word meaning

• Polysemy= having multi-meaning (word in context) (Ex. book)
• Antonyms =(a word opposite in meaning to another (e.g. bad and good ).
• Synomyms= (a word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another Ex. happy, joyful,
elated)
• Hyponyms= belonging to the same category
• Connotations= an idea or feeling that a word invokes in addition to its literal or primary meaning.
 E. Lexis
E3. Extending word use
• Metaphors
• Idioms

E4. Word combination = Collocations

“Words that co-occur with each other and which language users have gotten used to and have
adopted them as normal and acceptable”
• Lexical phrases (prefabricted language units)
➢ Functional phrases (by the way, let me tell you that, etc.)

➢ Fixed expressions (in love, an only child, etc)

➢ Verbal expressions (not supposed to, don’t mind)

 F. The sounds of the language
F1. Pitch: a device by which we communicate emotion and meaning
• High voice or deep voice

F2. Intonation: the music of speech

• Shows the grammar of what we are saying

• Conveys attitude

• Indicates agreement or disagreement

 F. The sounds of the language
F3. Individual sounds
• Sounds = phonemes

F4. Sounds and spelling

• The correlation between sounds and spelling
✓ Schwa = shortening of the vowel and stressing elsewhere

✓ Elision = sounds disappear into each other

✓ Assimilation = the ending and the beginning of the words are combined
 F. The sounds of the language
F5. Stress

“It describes the point in a word or phrase where the pitch changes, vowels lengthen and
volumen increases”
 G. Paralinguistic Features of a language
G1. Vocal Paralinguistic features
• Volume, stress, intonation

G2. Physical paralinguistic features

• Facial expressions

• Gesture

• Proximity, posture, and echoing

H. Speaking and writing

➢List examples of differences between speaking and

writing.
THANKYOU!