Light bown and Spada (2013) state that educators are unable to read their students' minds and must instead make inferences about student knowledge through observations. They continue by arguing:

"Like those who study first language acquisition, we observe learners’ spontaneous language use, but we design procedures that help to reveal more about the knowledge underlying their observable use of language. Without these procedures, it is often difficult to determine whether a particular behaviour is representative of something systematic in a learner’s current language knowledge or simply an isolated item, learned as a chunk" (p. 41).

Linguistic Analysis involves the examination of language on the linguistic level. According to Frascarelli & Puglielli (2001), "A fruitful analysis should rely on the observation and systematic description of linguistic data in order to provide explanatory hypotheses. These hypotheses should enable the researcher to relate the various phenomena to a finite (and limited) number of principles, and to make predictions about parts of the system which have not yet been observed" ( pg. 6). An analysis can be conducted on various levels included phology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics (Frascarelli & Puglielli, 2001, pg. 5).

This descriptive approach to lingiusitc Analysis focuses on morphological (morphology) and syntactic (syntax) level of linguistics.

Linguistic Analysis has many different theory-based frameworks in which how an analysis is conducted and reviewed is determined (edited by Heine & Narrog, 2012).

This professional development has adopted a theory-free framework for linguistic analysis and the processes discussed.

Theory frameworks include but are not limited to the following:

• Generative Grammar
• Cognitive Grammar
• Construction Grammar

Instead of a theory based framework, this project has instead Maggie Tallerman’s descriptive approach as laid out in her text Understanding Syntax.

• This descriptive approach involves a morphological and syntactic level of analysis that includes the categorization and ordering of morphemes and a discussion of syntactic rules in a non theory specific notational system.
• In addition this Linguisitic Analysis approach is derived from Linguistic Analysis assignments constructed by Hamline University’s Professor Feride Erku, which were also based on Tallerman (2015).

This approach will be discussed in greater detail in the following PD, titled Professional Development # 3: How to conduct Linguistic Analysis.