The purpose of reading semantics is to understand the meaning of different sentences such as contradictory, anomalous, ambiguous, or vague. Actually the meaning of the words in the sentences have multifaceted notion thus most of the time it is really difficult to have semantics features from just the word or sentence. Exact meaning is only possible along with the proper context otherwise even the meaningful sentence can’t give proper meaning.
I remember when I was studying linguistic, suddenly my teacher gave us a sentence and asked us the meaning of the sentence, and different students came up with different meanings. For example, the teacher asked the meaning of the sentence, “Fish is ready to eat”.
Then all of us were asked to interpret the meaning. Some of us said it means, there is a fish, who is ready to eat its food but other said might be in the kitchen mother cooks the fish and she said her children that now the dish of fish is ready to eat.
Thus, unless we do not know the exact context, whether the sentence is said in the kitchen by a mom or a boy who is looking at the fish in the pond narrate the sentence, we cannot say the exact meaning of the sentence.
Except that also there are varieties of other factors which differ the characteristic of the semantics feature, such as anomalous sentence in which the sentence structure is made in such a way which does not give any sense for example “my table is dead”.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
week Nine!
As usual the class was interesting and useful. I found the chapters were really easy in this week because I have already read all the topics back home.Actually the class is very joyous because everybody participate in the group discussion and try to make everything clear about the topics. I find tree diagram is bit boring because all the time we are practicing about noun phrase and verb phrase but still our professor tries her best to make it more interesting. Overall the class is good.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
week seven!
Week seven!
In this week we began to talk in small groups. We discuss about activities 2-12 and 2-14 from Finegan. I am glad that I got a chance to ask questions and answer in the small groups. Then we got back into our large group and discussed what the other groups had questions on the activities. Our professor talked about the quiz and gave some helpful hints for the quiz.
As usual the class was interesting and helpful.
In this week we began to talk in small groups. We discuss about activities 2-12 and 2-14 from Finegan. I am glad that I got a chance to ask questions and answer in the small groups. Then we got back into our large group and discussed what the other groups had questions on the activities. Our professor talked about the quiz and gave some helpful hints for the quiz.
As usual the class was interesting and helpful.
English Syntax
English Syntax
In most of the school grammar is taught as a set of rules. Teachers are in belief that if students learn the set rules of grammar, they could apply the knowledge of grammar in their writing and spoken English. However as mentioned in the research proved that it is not true. Many students, who know the rule well, could not perform well in writing and speaking language.
The first thing is students find it difficult to learn and retain concepts from traditional grammar. They know the rule but very hard to apply the rule in the context of reading and writing. As per the review, upon the research by Krashen also proved that there is no relationship between grammar study and writing.
Despite the research consensus, teachers still continue to teach traditional prescriptive method of grammar. Teachers either think although grammar may not help the average student, it still may help some students, or they are ignorant about the research.
I remember, back home almost all the teachers in every school use the prescriptive method of teaching grammar. Thus almost students know the rule of English grammar but fail to use them in the context of writing and spoken grammar it is all because of the teaching method of grammar.
I had a teacher of Nepali language who brought 95% in English grammar but just 40% percent in English composition class. He was one of the brilliant students of the school, but he is not good in English composition. At first when I listen his story, I was wondering that why he did not score in English composition class. Now I have realized that it might be the cause of learning English grammar with the prescriptive method.
I think all teachers should have awareness of teaching grammar so that students could get ore benefits by learning the grammar.
In most of the school grammar is taught as a set of rules. Teachers are in belief that if students learn the set rules of grammar, they could apply the knowledge of grammar in their writing and spoken English. However as mentioned in the research proved that it is not true. Many students, who know the rule well, could not perform well in writing and speaking language.
The first thing is students find it difficult to learn and retain concepts from traditional grammar. They know the rule but very hard to apply the rule in the context of reading and writing. As per the review, upon the research by Krashen also proved that there is no relationship between grammar study and writing.
Despite the research consensus, teachers still continue to teach traditional prescriptive method of grammar. Teachers either think although grammar may not help the average student, it still may help some students, or they are ignorant about the research.
I remember, back home almost all the teachers in every school use the prescriptive method of teaching grammar. Thus almost students know the rule of English grammar but fail to use them in the context of writing and spoken grammar it is all because of the teaching method of grammar.
I had a teacher of Nepali language who brought 95% in English grammar but just 40% percent in English composition class. He was one of the brilliant students of the school, but he is not good in English composition. At first when I listen his story, I was wondering that why he did not score in English composition class. Now I have realized that it might be the cause of learning English grammar with the prescriptive method.
I think all teachers should have awareness of teaching grammar so that students could get ore benefits by learning the grammar.
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