General Concepts about Language, Its Components and Features

BENEFITS OF MOTHER TONGUE BASED-MULTILINGUAL EDUCATION

Aspects of Development Benefits of MTB-MLE

Language  Education begins with the use first language of the learners, a
language that they understand.
 The macroskills in communication are developed for effective
meaning-making and accuracy.
- Listening: Learners listen to understand and use what they hear.
- Speaking: Learners speak with understanding to communicate
their thoughts and ideas clearly.
- Reading: Learners read to understand, apply, analyse, critique
and use information from printed or digital materials.
- Writing: Learners write creatively to communicate thoughts and
feelings clearly and accurately to others.
 School children will have a good language bridge to the next
language which is needed to succeed in school and for lifelong
learning.
 The first language that children master will provide a strong
educational foundation.
Cognitive  The first language become the language of thinking, doing, applying
and creating.
 School children in the early years beyond the who, what, when, and
where and progress to higher order thinking skills because they use
the first language.
Academic  Beginning school learners express themselves easily and freely.
 School learners participate actively in class activities.
 Learners are able to process instruction easily without doing mental
translation.
 Beginning school learners academically perform better than those
using the second or third languages.
 Parents are most likely to participate in the children’s learning.
 Teachers can easily scaffold the learning of children.

Socio-Cultural  School learners bring to the class prior knowledge, lived

experiences, language, and culture.
 Lessons incorporate the best of cultural values in arts, music,
literature, tradition and others.
 The daily experiences of the learners are included and developed in
the various concepts in the curriculum.
 Learners preserve their heritage and culture.
 General Concepts about Language, Its Components and Features
It is the step that will guide you to a better view of a language used to communicate so that you can function
well in the speech community. It is because we are humans who live in a world where we commune and interact
with others.

Structure of a Language

This lesson is designed to make you understand what language is and the components that compromise it. You
will be introduce to the rich linguistics culture of the Philippines as well through a guided reflection of your
own mother tongue in the light of its phonemic and syntactic structures, its orthography, and its peculiarities.
This would lead you to strengthen your appreciation of you own mother tongue.

Language is primarily spoken.

Language is a system of human communication which consists of the structured arrangement of strings of
sounds (or their written representation) that are put together to form a code. This labels a concept or an
object and which can be put into larger units such as words and utterances (Richards, 1993).
- as a linguistics system has components such as: phonology, morphology and syntax.

Phonetics looks into how the actual sounds of a language are produced.
- looks into the raw materials out of which language is made.
Phonology, on the other hand, is sound patterning.
- refers to how each sound is put together to form a string of sounds in order to produce the word.
Syntax is how these strings of sounds are put together in a broad term. This is the arrangement and form of the
words.
- is the part of the language which links together the sound patterns and the meaning.
Semantics refers to the meaning of words or how these words are used in the speech community.
Pragmatics is another growing discipline in language study. It deals with how members of speech community
use language to communicate in ways that cannot be predicted from linguistic knowledge alone.
- is the area that supports the fact that more is expressed than what words could carry.

The Phonological System

The Phonological system of language is composed of speech sounds known as phonemes.
Phonemes are subdivided into segmental phonemes and suprasegmental phonemes.
The segmental phonemes are the vowel sounds, consonant sounds, diphthongs, and triphthongs.
 General Concepts about Language, Its Components and Features
Suprasegmental phonemes include the stress, the intonation, pauses and junctures. These are rules that
combine phonemes to form words and to express something based on the “tune” of the utterance, all of
which can affect the meaning intended by the speaker.

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

The IPA is a universally and standardized set of codes or system that can be used to represent the sounds of
human speech. It can be employed in transcribing the speech sound of any language.

There are varied phonemes in a language: vowels, consonants, diphthongs, triphthongs, pauses or junctures,
stress and intonation.
 General Concepts about Language, Its Components and Features

The consonant phonemes are basic speech sounds can be produced through the articulations of the mouth but
with certain oral impediments. A consonant phoneme can be combined with a vowel to form a syllable.
 General Concepts about Language, Its Components and Features

The Morphological System

- studies the smallest unit of meaning.

Morpheme is the second component of language.

- called as the smallest unit of meaning.

Root word is considered as a free morpheme which functions independently.

e.g. pencil, rain, study

Bound morpheme is another kind of morpheme which must be used with other morphemes such as affixes or
inflections.
e.g. – s in pencils, -ing in raining, -ed in studied.

The Syntactic System

Syntactic System is the third component of language.

- is the grammatical structure or the order in language.
- expresses an idea or content as captured by what the words mean.
- includes the governing rules of words formations as well as the rules explaining the relationship of words
within the sentence or between and among sentence structures.

The Content

Content is the meaning intended by the speaker.

 General Concepts about Language, Its Components and Features
- varies its word meaning across cultures because members of a speech community capture their view of
reality using the morphemes or words as labels of their experiences.
-
Language is a rich representation of their world and of reality.

The Use of the Language

Language is therefore used to negotiate meaning and achieve the intention that primarily drives the speaker to
talk.

Pragmatics is the study of how speakers use language to accomplish task.

- is the branch of linguistics which studies those aspects of meaning which cannot be captured and
predicted from linguistics knowledge alone.
- deals with how the listeners arrive at the intended meaning of the speakers.
- tries to explain how interlocutors (speaker-listener) observe the principles of communication by applying
various language devices to reach a common understanding.

Seven Language Functions

- as identified by Halliday of the young listeners.
- tend to show the personal, social, and academic aspects of human development.

1. Instrumental
Children use language to express his needs or to get things done. (eg. I want my toy.)
2. Regulatory
Children use language to influence the behavior of others such as persuading, commanding, ordering
requesting others to do things. (e.g. Please give me the ball.)
3. Interactional
Children use language to develop social relationships and facilitate the process of interaction. (e.g . Will
you play with me?)
4. Personal
Children use language to express personal preferences and individual identity. (e.g. I am going to be a
marine biologist when I grow up.)
5. Representational
Children use language to convey information. They are concerned with relaying or requesting facts and
information. E.g. I saw a green turtle in the pond.)
6. Heuristic
Children use language to learn and explore the environment to be able to understand it. This may be
questions and answers. (e.g. What is the most dangerous shark?)
 General Concepts about Language, Its Components and Features
7. Imaginative
Children use language to tell stories, express fantasies, and to create an imaginary environment. These
may accompany imaginary worlds or storytelling. (e.g. In a faraway place, there lived a hermit)