Linguistics and the teacher

Linguistics and The Teacher
Yaseen Taha

 Is linguistics a method of teaching?
 Many language teachers and learners tend to
ask this question: Why should we teach or learn
linguistics?
 What is the importance of linguistics?
 What do linguistics and teacher deal with?

What is Linguistics?
 What are the main branches of linguistics?
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. There are three
aspects to this study: language form, language meaning, and
language in context

 phonetics (the study of the production, acoustics and
hearing of speech sounds)
 phonology (the patterning of sounds)
 morphology (the structure of words)
 syntax (the structure of sentences)
 semantics (meaning)
 pragmatics (language in context)

Linguistics?
Phonetics
sounds
Phonology
sounds
Morpholog
y words
Syntax
sentence
Semantics
meaning
Pragmatics
meaning

 Linguistics is a major that gives you insight into one of the
most intriguing aspects of human knowledge and behavior.
Majoring in linguistics means that you will learn about
many aspects of human language, including sounds
(phonetics, phonology), words (morphology), sentences
(syntax), and meaning (semantics). It can involve looking
at how languages change over time (historical linguistics);
how language varies from situation to situation, group to
group, and place to place (sociolinguistics, dialectology);

 how people use language in context (pragmatics,
discourse analysis); how to model aspects of
language (computational linguistics); how people
acquire or learn language (language acquisition);
how people process language (psycholinguistics,
experimental linguistics); how language relates to
historical, social, and cultural issues
(anthropological linguistics); how language is
taught in a classroom setting, or how students
learn language (applied linguistics).

One very good reason for studying linguistics is that
language is what makes us distinctly human. Lederer (1991)
puts it in the strongest terms: “The birth of language is the
dawn of humanity …. before we had words, we were not
human beings”

 The relationship between linguistics and second language
teaching has always been a controversial one. Many linguists
have argued that linguistics has nothing to say to the teacher.
Sampson (1980, p.10), says: "I do not believe that linguistics has
any contribution to make to the teaching of English or the
standard European languages.
 Johnson (1982,p.10) points out that language teachers have
always looked to the linguist for guidance on how to teach
languages.
 Language after all, is what both the language teacher and the
linguist are concerned with: the teacher is concerned with
"teaching something which is the object of study of linguistics,
and is described by linguistic methods" (Halliday, McIntosh and
Strevens 1964, p.166).


Why should teachers study linguistics?
• The more they know about how language works, the more
effectively they can use language to help their students
learn.
• As Halliday (1981) writes, “A child doesn’t need to know
any linguistics to use language to learn; but a teacher
needs to know some linguistics if he wants to understand
how the process takes place—or what is going wrong when
it doesn’t” (p. 9).
• The greater a teacher’s understanding of basic language
structures and processes, the easier it is for that teacher to
make good decisions on tough topics like phonics, spelling,
and grammar.

 The more teachers understand language, the more effectively they can
help their students develop their knowledge of language.
 a well-educated person should know something about language. It is
usually only when students study foreign languages that they begin to
learn how their own language works.
 The study linguistics is that “the study of language is ultimately the study
of the human mind” (Akmajian, Demers, et al. 1979, p. 5).
 As Chomsky (1975) puts it, “language is a mirror of mind in a deep
and significant sense. It is a product of human intelligence,
created anew in each individual by operations that lie far beyond
the reach of will or consciousness” (p. 4).


 Pit Corder (1973: 30) also points out
that the role of linguistics in language
teaching is to provide the most detailed and
comprehensive description of language
 As Wilkins(1972: 229) says that the real contribution of
linguistics is to increase one’s understanding
of the nature of language.

 As David S. Taylor (1987: 8) says that some specific
linguistics knowledge is required by the language teacher – for
assessment, for choosing learning activities, for course planning
and design. There is a need for the teacher to know about
language and how it is learned.
 Julian Edge (1988: 9) says, “Knowledge about language and
language learning still have a central role to play in English
language teacher training for speakers of other languages”. It
means that linguistics and applied linguistics have a place in a
teacher education programme for language teachers.

 Halliday, (1964: 166) points out that the role of linguistics
and phonetics in language teaching is not to tell the
teacher how to teach. The teacher of the language is as
much a specialist in the field as the linguist is in his, and
will remain so. He is not teaching linguistics. But he is
teaching something which is the object of the study of
linguistics, and is described by linguistic method.

By studying linguistics he will have deeper insights into
the nature of language, and act accordingly in teaching
the language. For instance, when he agrees that the use
of language is a matter of habits and practice, in teaching
it to his students he must implant the habit of using it for
communication until it becomes deeply established.

 Pit Corder has said (1968: 74) that a teacher can not teach
a language by any of current techniques without
linguistics knowledge.”
 ……..linguistics has a great role in language teaching.
Further, the points out that it is mistaken when someone
claims that he has been teaching English for years but he
knows nothing about linguistics. What actually he does not
know is the meaning of the word linguistics itself.
 Although there are still many differences between
linguistics and language teaching in their attitudes
towards language, their goals, and their methods, they
are both independent of and interacting with each other

 Linguistics provides important implications for the
preparation of syllabuses, teaching programmes, materials
and methodology. The language teacher cannot proceed
without the linguistic sciences,


The relationship between linguistics and language teaching is
like the of knowledge about engine and the skill in driving a
car.

It will be better for the driver to be supported with some
knowledge about the car or the engine so that he can drive
it well and know how to overcome some engine trouble in
case he has to face it. In the same way it will be better if a
language teacher has some knowledge about, for instance,
the characteristics of language in general and the specific
language he is teaching in particular. In this relation, he
should know how language works and express meaning, and
what structures are used in the particular language he is
teaching.

Many language learning theories are proposed
based on certain linguistic theories.
The beginning of the relationship between linguistic theory
and language teaching can be traced back to the late of
19th century one was to say that linguistics is not so
important as it has been thought, i.e. its importance had
been overrated. Some linguists like Johnson (1967) and
Lamendella (1969) expressed their disagreement to regard
linguistics as the basis of a strategy of learning.

For all the differences between linguistics and
language teaching, they are in many ways
interacting with each other
Many language learning theories are proposed on the basis of
certain linguistic theories. As a matter of fact, knowledge in
linguistics lies at the root of understanding what language
learners can learn how they actually learn and what they
learn ultimately

Traditional Grammar

A traditional grammar is a pre-20th century language
description based on earlier grammars of Greek or Latin.
The traditional approach to language teaching involves
the presentation of numerous definitions, rules and
explanations, and it adopts a teacher-centered grammar-
translation method, i.e., the main teaching and learning
activities are grammar and translation study.


Structuralism Linguistics
Structuralism linguistics describes linguistic features in terms of
systems or structures. Dissatisfied with traditional grammars,
structuralism grammar set out to describe the current spoken
language which people use in communication. For the first time,
structuralism grammar provides description of phonological
systems that aids the systematic teaching of pronunciation.
However, like traditional grammars, the focus of structuralism
grammar is still on the grammatical structures of a language.
Structuralism linguists are influenced by the behavioristic.

Proposed by Chomsky, Transformational-Generative grammar
(TG grammar) sees language as a system of innate rules. In
Chomsky’s view, a native speaker possesses a kind of
linguistic competence. The child is born with knowledge of
some linguistic universals.
Transformational rules may assist the teacher in the teaching
of complex sentence construction.
Transformational-Generative Linguistic

Functional Linguistics
 Halliday’s systemic-functional linguistics sees language as
an instrument used to perform various functions in social
interaction. Halliday writes a number of works in which he
examines the development of language functions in the
child and the functions language has in society. For
Halliday, learning language is learning to mean. In order
to be able to mean, one has to master a set of language
functions that have direct relation to sentence forms.


The Theory of Communicative Competence
 The concept of competence originally comes from
Chomsky. It refers to the grammatical knowledge of the
ideal language user and has nothing to do with the actual
use of language in concrete situations. The theory of
communicative competence stresses the context in which
an utterance occurs. In its application, the teacher may
teach how in different situations the same sentence can
perform the function of statement, command, or request.


References
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics
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 http://www.google.com.cy/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ca
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 https://fatchulfkip.wordpress.com/2008/03/19/linguistics-and-language-
teaching/
 http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/shared/docs/why-major-
linguistics.pdf
 http://spil.journals.ac.za/pub/article/viewFile/80/105

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