The Structure of Language
Language is humanity's amazing and unique achievement!
Noam Chomsky called language
our "human essence."
Here are some different ways that people think about language and language learning:
*** You can think about language in terms of its ***
purposes:
We speak differently when with our friends than we do with teachers or bosses. BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) refers to a person's ability to navigate everyday situations using language. Some examples of
BICS situations would be going through the lunch line in the cafeteria, asking a friend to play, or telling the bus driver that this is your stop.
CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) refers to a person's ability to carry out academic activities, typical for his/her age and grade level, using language. Some situations that require CALP would be retelling a story, writing a paragraph comparing and contrasting two characters, or presenting a research project in a video. Generally these are more formal situations and call for more grammatical correctness and higher-level vocabulary words.
*** You can think about language in terms of its ***
actions:
*** You can think about language in terms of its ***
features:
The phonology of a language is its use of sounds. Phonology includes knowing which sounds make up the language, rules for how those sounds may be combined, and how they are pronounced. Different languages are made up of different inventories of sounds, for example English does not have the trilled “rr” sound which makes Spanish sound so musical.
The morphology of a language describes individual sounds or sound combinations that convey meaning. Morphemes may be as small as one sound, for example a final –s on the end of a word in English indicates a plural. Morphology also includes the rules which describe how morphemes may be put together to create words.
The syntax of a language is its rules for ordering words in sentences. Different languages have different rules for combining adjectives with nouns, or for indicating tense. When ELLs make syntactical errors in English, it is likely to be because they are following the syntax of their home language.
Semantics describes how meaning is conveyed by combining words and phrases into sentences. A sentence may be syntactically correct but semantically incorrect, for example Tadpoles score truthfully (noun-verb-adverb) has correct word order but makes no sense.
Graphonics refers to the way that a language translates its oral form into a written form. Some languages are written phonetically while others are written with symbols or characters.
Teachers of reading know these last three as the three cueing systems for determining unknown words while reading: meaning (semantics)/does it make sense?; visual (graphophonic)/does it look right?; and structure (syntactic)/does it sound right?
Intelligibility
Some English sounds do not exist in other languages! Click here for a list of articulation challenges that may arise for speakers of various home languages.
Forvo, a fun website, allows you to hear words pronounced in many different languages!
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to learn English?
It can take up to ten years to become fully proficient! Click for more.
What language should ELLs speak at home?
I encourage families to speak their primary/home language at home. Click for more.
