Tali Mann Integrating linguistic insights into any level of EFL teaching makes the teaching more effective by developing learners' meta-linguistic awareness. Learners' consciousness of the grammatical differences between languages, and of the resulting difficulties and errors, is increased. Common errors are thus minimized and productive use of English is promoted.

1. ETAI INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE, JERUSALEM 14/7/2010, ‫ג' אב תש"ע‬
IS LINGUISTICS JUST FOR LINGUISTS?
Tali Rubovitz-Mann, Hemdat Hadarom Academic College, Netivot
Talimann1@013net.net
☺ META-LINGUISTIC AWARENESS: awareness of the nature and structure of language.
• Note: Sentences marked with are ungrammatical/unacceptable.
A. Letters vs. Sounds
1. There is an university in the city
2. France is an European country
3. They live in a old building.
4. an umbrella VS. a union; an hour VS. a hat
B. Time, Tense and Aspect
5. I’m going to school every day.
6. I wear a blue dress today.
7. If it will rain tomorrow, we will not go to the beach.
8. When she will come here, I will tell her the news.
9. I will open the door; Be careful – it's going to fall; She is leaving tomorrow;
The bus leaves at 8:00 tonight.
10. I can help you tomorrow; You should speak to him this evening; She must call her
teacher tomorrow morning; I might join you.
11. I know him for 20 years.
12. She has seen this man; Elle a vue cet homme hier.
C. The Verb BE
13. She clever; He policeman;
14. Hebrew: ‫ ;היא חכמה, הוא שוטר‬but: ‫היא הייתה חכמה, הוא יהיה שוטר‬
(Based on Levy, 2006)
D. Lexical Categories (Word Classes)
15. Jill glonks every morning, but right now she is not glonking.
16. Tronks are very cheap these days, so I bought a beautiful tronk last week.
17. He is a nurgy boy. He often speaks nurgily.
18. It's depend on the weather; It's belong to me; It's mean that it's important.
19. You late to school every day.
20. This man is a Jewish.
21. The cat was died.

2. 22. I'm used to swim a lot.
23. The girls are beautifuls; The government said that she will change her policy.
24. He go to work every day; She call me every morning.
E. Modals
25. I can to swim.
26. He cans (to) do it.
27. Modals do not display the following grammatical properties: He has to go; He had to
go; He doesn’t have to go; He didn’t have to go; He will have to go; He won’t have
to go.
28. ? There is no possibility for me to accept it; ? Now it's possible to see it.
(Inappropriate or excessive use of possible as a translation of Hebrew ‫ ,אפשר‬based on
Levenston, 1970)
F. Passive vs. Impersonal Subject-less Sentences in Hebrew
29. Their car has been stolen; I was asked/invited to give a lecture;
The errors must/can be corrected.
G. Syntactic Differences between Languages – Word Order
30. I saw yesterday your brother.
31. .‫כואב לי את הבטן / נשבר לי את הכוס‬
MAYBE, BY TAKING A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE, WE COULD CHANGE
AT LEAST SOME OF THE FACES INTO BIG ☺ FACES AMONG OUR
STUDENTS AND US? ☺
Selected Bibliography
Ellis, Nick (2006) “Cognitive Perspectives on SLA – The Associative-Cognitive CREED”.
AILA Review, 19.
Levenston, E. A. (1970) English for Israelis. A Guide for Teachers.
Israel Universities Press.
Levy, Tali (2006) “Language Transfer as a High Order Thinking Tool for Learning in SLA”.
The Hebrew University of Jeruslaem Seminar Paper.
Rosenstein, David (1993) Ta'ita? Tikanta! Eric Cohen Books.
Ziv, Yael and Tali Rubovitz-Mann (2008) "Hotting about HOTS in Language Teaching".
Lecture at the Annual Study Day of the Forum of English Department Heads, Mofet
Institute