Language Acquisition and Language

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Linguistics Application and Reflection: Challenges of English Syntax

Passive voice: 1) "We are governed by men we have never heard of." 2) "We are given a set of tools to work with." 3) "The audience is driven by the images on the screen."

Comparatives: 1) "The more it appears on signs, the more it is accepted as normal." 2) "No one believes things are so good that they could not be better."

Logical Connectors: 1) "Therefore, there is only one way forward." 2) "Neither effective argument nor impassioned speeches will dissuade the viewer from the idea embedded in him by the image."

Modal Auxiliary Verbs: 1) "They will keep coming, one after another." 2) "One would do well to consider the ramifications of such a line of thought."

Verbal Phrases: 1) "Giving in is just the beginning of this process." 2) "The viewer does not have time to think over what is being shown."

Relative Clauses: 1) "The end result is that which has already been projected." 2) "The message is received by the audience, who sits like a passive receptor."

As Spurlin (1998) notes, all of these type of syntactical difficulties pose as obstacles for the learner, but the difficulty that I think causes the greatest hindrance to understanding is the relative clause because this is transforming the sentence into a complex arrangement of ideas.

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The learner has to be able to break apart the sentence to identify the two distinct clauses and see how they work together and what the relationship is. Of course, diagramming sentences like this can help to illustrate the relationship and put it in a visual way that makes more sense. As Spurlin (1998) points out, using all the tools available to us to give learners assistance in overcoming these difficulties is always a good idea. If learners can appreciate that not all sentences are simple sentences, they will be able to progress to a greater understanding of the language as they are able to engage more effectively with complex syntax.

Reflection

The new information in the class that was particularly exciting for me to learn was the focus on syntax because I have always been intrigued about how words fit together like a puzzle -- and how sometimes we can try to cram the puzzle pieces together even though they don't fit. So I especially found this to be an exciting topic that….....

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