Introduction to Linguistics (part of Advanced Extension English Course)
Scheme of Work
Students: 17 – A2 English Literature (majority), A2 English Language (3) and A2 English Language & Literature (2). All students achieved a grade A at AS, were considered by their teachers to be gifted in English and thus offered the course (with opportunity to take the Advanced Extension Award exam in summer).
Nature of Course: Term 1 – Introduction to what is language / what is literature and literary theory.
Term 2 – Introduction to Linguistics
Term 3 – Preparation for the AEA English exam.
Timings:2 x 1-hour lessons every week.
Term 2: Introduction to Linguistics(based on Module 2 – Structure in Language and Module 3 – Variation in Language)
Week (total 12 weeks) / Topic / Method(s)1 – 2 – 3 / English Language – its history. Basic Language aspects / -presentation by students on what they know in groups
-mapping the development on English to illustrate language change
-introduction / re-visiting concepts of syntax, semantics, lexis, phonology and morphology.
3 – 4 / English and its relatives / language families / issues in linguistic taxonomy / -students explore what languages English is related to, similarities (number of students are taking A levels in modern foreign languages)
-class discussion about what makes a language (as opposed to dialect)
-look at case study of actual languages / dialects (Brabants – Flemish – Dutch)
-Indo-European Language family – explore similarities (vocabulary, syntax, morphology, phonology).
5 – 6 – 7 / Universal Grammar theories / -students explore reasons for similarities between non-related languages (e.g brainstorm in groups, look at examples)
-deep and surface structures. Students analyse sample sentences
-students discuss advantages / disadvantages of Universal Grammar
7 – 8 / Written Language / -history of writing
-students discuss differences between spoken and written language
-phoneme / grapheme relationships
-students look at alphabetic writing, syllabic writing and ideograms (examples from English, Italian, Hebrew, Aztec, Japanese Kana and Kanji)
9 – 10 / Reading / Writing neurolinguistic implications / -introduction to neurolinguistics
-explore what brain does when reading or writing
-differences between reading syllabic and alphabetic scripts on one hand, and ideograms on other hands
11 – 12 / Comparative Linguistics / -concepts in language (e.g. time in Amerindian languages compared to English, or past tenses in Italian and English) Semantic issues across languages
-case study – students choose languages to compare and research
Resources:
- Ethnologue website (catalogue of all world’s languages)
- Native speakers of Dutch/Brabants
- Native speaker of Japanese (colleague)
- Native speaker of Farsi (student)
- Kanji and Devanagari character cards
- See booklist & wesbites on the introduction to the pilot