Essential Linguistics: Freeman & Freeman

As Esther mentioned on D2L there is some information in the chapters that we read this week about "reading and retelling". I found the most interesting information about the subject on page 32 to be the "direct spillover" and the "delayed spillover". The direct spillover, as far as fairy tales are concerned, is very close to what seems like common sense because if a student is retelling a fairy tale that they read they will most likely use phrases such as "Once upon a time..." and "...they lived happily ever after". But the most intriguing concept on page 32 was the idea of delayed spillover or when those specific text features of a certain genre are found in the student's writing later on. I like this idea because it shows that when a student reads more they also tend to write and communicate through writing more effectively because they then pick up on the many different styles and techniques that have been effectively used to communicate meaning by other writers/authors. I saw this in my own writing as an undergraduate when I studied literature. I would read a few stories by a couple of my favorite authors and even though I couldn't write as well as they could I did end up using many of the same overall text structures and even some of the vocabulary in my own writing.

I also want to touch on another concept on page 19 of the Freeman text. On that page the authors state that, "Humans are born with an innate capacity for language, but explaining how language works is a real cognitive challenge. This is why so many students struggle in linguistics courses!". I wanted to quote this passage because it made me chuckle a little bit, but also because I agree with this statement. Over the course of the last 10 or 11 years I have become progressively more aware of my native language and how it works. This process of study hasn't been easy for me and I still tend to get confused about the smaller details in English grammar even though I generally know when I read something whether it is a correct form of English or not. So the question then becomes: why have I decided to go as far as consciously learning some of the detailed aspects of linguistics in English? The quick answer would be that I will be using this information to teach English in the near future, but the honest answer is that since I am also a writer I feel that by teaching English in other parts of the world and by being more aware of how my language works I will then be a more effective writer in that language. Of course being more aware of my native language alone does not guarantee that I will be a better writer, but I believe that as long as I continue to write, read, speak, and understand English as much as possible throughout my life then I will at least have the opportunity to improve my communication skills to the level that I desire.

Linguistics Week 1

So this first blog entry of the semester is supposed to be a reflection of what we did in our first week of class. Now since we didn't do too much I am going to make this particular entry short and sweet.

I think the most interesting part of our first week was just getting situated with all of this new technology. I've never had an online course before so it was pretty amazing to see that even though it was different than a face-to-face class it seems like it will still be an effective "classroom" type of experience. The only thing that I was wondering while we were in class was how we were going to take turns speaking since there is going to be very little visual information shared. For example, we can't raise our hands but since that doesn't always happen in a graduate course anyways I'm sure the turn-taking will be fine. Besides that I don't have much to say except for wishing everyone a good semester.