AIOU Solved Assignment 1&2 Code 1655 Autumn & Spring 2024

AIOU Solved Assignments code 1655 Autumn & Spring 2024 Assignment 1& 2  Course: Teaching of English (1655)   Spring 2024. AIOU past papers

ASSIGNMENT No:  1& 2
Teaching of English (1655) Semester
Autumn & Spring 2024

AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 1655 Autumn & Spring 2024

Q.1   Discuss the aims and objectives of English language at elementary level.

In discussions of language and education, language is usually defined as a shared set of verbal codes, such as English, Spanish, Mandarin, French, and Swahili. But language can also be defined as a generic, communicative phenomenon, especially in descriptions of instruction. Teachers and students use spoken and written language to communicate with each other–to present tasks, engage in learning processes, present academic content, assess learning, display knowledge and skill, and build classroom life. In addition, much of what students learn is language. They learn to read and write (academic written language), and they learn the discourse of academic disciplines (sometimes called academic languages and literacies). Both definitions of language are important to understanding the relationship between language and education.

In their early years, children are learning both spoken and written language. They are developing use of complex grammatical structures and vocabulary; communicative competence (rules for the appropriate and effective use of language in a variety of social situations); comprehension of spoken and written language; and ways to express themselves.

Educational programs for young children often emphasize curriculum and instruction to facilitate language learning. With regard to spoken language, instructional programs may emphasize opportunities to comprehend a variety of genres from directions to narratives and opportunities to experiment with modes of expression. With regard to written language, classrooms for young children provide opportunities to learn alphabetic symbols, grapho-phonemic relationships (letter-sound relationships), basic sight vocabulary, and comprehension strategies; and also feature the reading of stories designed for young children. Young children may also have opportunities to learn how to express themselves through written language, including opportunities to form letters, words, sentences, and text structures, and opportunities to learn how to put together a written story.

There is debate about the extent to which classrooms for young children’s language learning should provide didactic, teacher-centered instruction or student-centered instruction. Those who support a didactic approach argue that children whose language performance is below that of their peers need explicit instruction to catch up. These advocates argue that the home and community environments do not provide all children with the experiences needed to be proficient and effective users of language and that direct instruction with grammatical forms, vocabulary, and pronunciation can help certain students catch up with their peers. A similar argument is made for the didactic instruction of written language. Written language, it is argued, is sufficiently different from spoken language as to require explicit instruction. Research noting the importance of phonological awareness to reading development is cited as rationale for a parts (letters and sounds) to whole (fluent oral reading) curriculum.

The alternative argument is that children are inherently wired as language learners and that providing them with a stimulating, rich language environment supplies them with the tools they need for further developing their spoken and written language abilities. Although teachers may provide instruction, the instruction should follow the student’s needs and interests rather than being prescribed in a predetermined manner. The complexity of language processes requires that children be allowed to engage in complete or whole-language activities rather than in isolated skill instruction activities that distort language processes by stripping them of their complexity (and also making them harder to learn). The learning of written language is not viewed as being much different from the learning of spoken language, and thus learning processes similar to those used in learning spoken language are advocated for the learning of written language.

In the Pakistan, another set of debates surrounds language learning by children whose native language is other than English. First, there are debates with regard to goals. Some educators advocate for a sole emphasis on the learning of English, whereas others advocate for continued language growth in English and in the child’s native language. Arguments focus on the role of the public school in providing a common language that can produce national unity. Although few argue against the importance of learning English, questions are raised about whether national unity depends on English only as opposed to English plus additional languages. With regard to the learning of English, one side advocates for an immersion approach that prohibits use of the child’s native, first language. Immersion is believed to provide the child with motivation and language input for becoming a fluent English speaker. The other side argues that stripping children of their native language also strips them of their culture and heritage. Further, these advocates point to studies that show that learning English is not inhibited by continued language growth in a native language or by bilingual educational programs. Learning to read in one’s native language has been shown by research studies to provide a useful foundation for students learning to read in English.

At the secondary and elementary level, students learn the language of a broad range of disciplines. They must learn how to argue in discipline-specific ways and to read and write discipline-specific texts each with their own set of language conventions. Studies have suggested, however, that in some classrooms and schools there is little difference in the texts or written assignments across disciplines. In both science and social studies, for example, students may encounter the same pattern of reading a textbook chapter and answering end-of-chapter questions.

AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 1655 Autumn & Spring 2024

Q.2   Describe language learning process and also explain different aspects related to communication.

When a person approaches a relatively challenging task, s/he adopts certain strategies to solve the problem. This problem-solving process is constrained by the learning context where the problem is being tackled. Language learning in general and vocabulary acquisition in particular are such problem-solving tasks at different levels of complexity. The strategies a learner uses and the effectiveness of these strategies very much depend on the learner him/herself (e.g., attitudes, motivation, prior knowledge), the learning task at hand (e.g., type, complexity, difficulty, and generality), and the learning environment (e.g., the learning culture, the richness of input and output opportunities).

Theorists and researchers have presented the same framework in slightly different ways. Williams’s social constructivist model outlines four aspects of the teaching-learning process, i.e., teachers, learners, tasks, contexts. Cohen focuses on learners and discusses the intersection of learning style preferences, learner strategies, and language tasks. Conception of the three components of metacognitive knowledge, i.e., person, task, and strategy, also applies in the language learning field. It include learning activities, characteristics of the learner, criteria tasks, and nature of the materials as the four aspects of their framework for exploring problems of learning. The person-task-context-strategy model outlined here can be viewed as a synthesis of this body of knowledge, specifically for the purpose of analyzing research work on language learning strategies.

The learner brings to the language learning situation a wide spectrum of individual differences that will influence the learning rate and the ultimate learning result. The most widely reported learner factors include age, sex, language aptitude, intelligence, prior knowledge, motivation, self-concept/image, personality, and cognitive and learning style. These person-dependent factors are relatively stable, and determine to a large extent how a learner approaches a task.

A learning task is the end product in the learner’s mind. It can be as broad as mastering a second language or as specific as remembering one meaning of a word. Broadly speaking, this conception of the learning task includes the materials being learned (such as the genre of a piece of reading) as well as the goal the learner is trying to achieve by using these materials (such as remembering, comprehending, or using language). It should be noted that this conception of “task” is in line with the traditional, broader understanding of task as in, and is different from the more recent and narrower definition of “task” in “task-based” approaches to language teaching and learning.

Different types of task materials, task purposes, and tasks at various difficulty levels demand different learner strategies. For example, learning words in a word list is different from learning the same words in a passage. Remembering a word meaning is different from learning to use the same word in real life situations. Likewise, guessing from context would mean different things for texts of different levels of new word density.

Learning context refers to the learning environment. It is the socio-culture-political environment where learning takes place. The learning context can include the teachers, the peers, the classroom climate or ethos, the family support, the social, cultural tradition of learning, the curriculum, and the availability of input and output opportunities. Learning context is different from language context which refers to the textual or discourse place in which a particular word or structure can be found. Learning contexts constrain the ways learners approach learning tasks. A learning strategy that is valued in one learning context may well be deemed inappropriate in another context.

A learning strategy is a series of actions a learner takes to facilitate the completion of a learning task. A strategy starts when the learner analyzes the task, the situation, and what is available in his/her own repertoire. The learner then goes on to select, deploy, monitor, and evaluate the effectiveness of this action, and decides if s/he needs to revise the plan and action. Cohen distinguishes between language learning strategies and language use strategies, the former being strategies for learning tasks such as remembering, and the latter being strategies for language use, such as communicating in an L2.

Person, task, context, and strategy are interrelated and work together to form the chemistry of learning. An analysis of learning strategies will never be complete without knowing the person-task-context configuration of the particular learning situation. Some strategies are more person-dependent, some are more task-dependent, and others are more context-dependent.

One way to see the overall task of vocabulary learning is through the distinction between knowing a word and using a word. In other words, the purpose of vocabulary learning should include both remembering words and the ability to use them automatically in a wide range of language contexts when the need arises. In fact, evidence suggests that the knowledge aspect (both breadth and depth) requires more conscious and explicit learning mechanisms whereas the skill aspect involves mostly implicit learning and memory. Vocabulary learning strategies, therefore, should include strategies for “using” as well as “knowing” a word.

Another way to view vocabulary learning is to see it as a process of related sub-tasks. When learners first encounter a new word, they might guess its meaning and usage from available clues. Some learners might proceed to look it up in the dictionary. Others might take down notes along the margins, between the lines, or on separate vocabulary notebooks. Some learners will repeat the new word a number of times until they are comfortable with it. Others will go beyond simple rote repetition to commit the word to memory. Some would even try to use the word actively. Each of these task stages demands metacognitive judgment, choice, and deployment of cognitive strategies for vocabulary learning. And each strategy a learner uses will determine to a large extent how and how well a new word is learned.

AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 1655 Autumn & Spring 2024

Q.3   Highlight aims of teaching English in Pakistan.

Pronunciation is more than ‘listen and repeat’. Pronunciation includes features of language (vocabulary and grammar) and skills (speaking and listening).

Like vocabulary and grammar, we pronounce by noticing and understanding rules and patterns which lie beneath the surface of speech.

For example, if an English word has two syllables, the stress is usually on the first syllable for nouns and adjectives, and the second syllable for verbs.

Since pronunciation is part of speaking, it is also physical. To pronounce a new language, we need to re-train the muscles we use to speak.

And pronunciation involves listening to how the language sounds. We can practise by focusing on connected speech while playing fragments from speech recordings.

Our tongue, lips and jaw (vocal articulators) physically shape our pronunciation. When we learn our first language, we develop speech habits which we may not be conscious of developing. This is what makes pronunciation in a new language so difficult – we carry with us the speech habits from our first language.

According to Tracey Derwing and Murray Munro, authors of Pronunciation Fundamentals, most people who learn a new language will keep accent features from their first language.

However, an accent is not necessarily a problem. You can keep your accent and still be understood.

English has become a lingua franca, or language which people use to communicate with one another globally. People with different languages use English to communicate, even if there is no native English speaker present.

In her book The Phonology of English as an International Language, Jennifer Jenkins argues that English’s role as a lingua franca has implications for teaching pronunciation. The goal is not to sound like a native speaker, but rather to communicate effectively in a global context.

A learner’s goal may be to communicate with other people from around the globe; not necessarily with native English speakers. With this in mind, you should focus more on aspects of pronunciation which aid understanding.

Some features of pronunciation make the message clearer to the listener. For example, a clear difference between the /r/ and /l/ sounds.

You can teach or practise intelligibility with communication activities. Using the /r/ and /l/ example, you can put pairs of words such as correct and collect into a game in which success depends on the learner being able to hear and say the difference.

You can teach optional features of pronunciation to make words easier to say, such as saying gonna instead of going toGonna may be easier for a learner to say, and is closer to how many native speakers pronounce going to. However, it is optional because most listeners will understand gonna or going to. 

Many speakers of English say that they never use glottal stops (the sound we make when we close the glottis while speaking), but they do. According to John Wells in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, most people use the glottal stop to replace the /t/ sound in words like button.

Deciding to learn English with a British or American accent is not a helpful target.

Instead, focus on features of pronunciation which could distort your message. For example, speakers of Vietnamese may miss consonants from the ends of words, and speakers of German may confuse the /v/ and /w/ sounds. This might make it difficult for listeners to understand some words.

English spelling is unhelpful for learners. It evolved out of speech, but then speech and spelling went their separate ways. Consequently, there are often many ways of spelling the same sequence of sounds. This results in homophones like ‘piece’ and ‘peace’.

Conversely, the same sequence of letters may be pronounced differently, resulting in homographs like row (line) and row (argument).

Homophones and homographs are challenging for learners of English, but they aren’t the main problem. They are extreme cases of a bigger issue – the irregular relationship between English spelling and sound across the language.

It’s almost enough to drive a learner to despair, and we teachers don’t help much by throwing a lot of –ough words at the class while suggesting that there is no rhyme or reason in English spelling. In fact, there are actually many patterns and regularities.

I give learners games and puzzles which help them to notice and become familiar with these patterns.

For example, challenge learners to add the sounds /k/ or /g/ to the beginning of a list of words:

  • aim
  • lime
  • air
  • ache
  • white
  • lose

With the new sounds, the words change entirely:

  • game
  • climb
  • care
  • cake
  • quite
  • clues

Or, ask the learners to change the spelling of a list of words:

  • plan
  • pan
  • man
  • ran
  • hat
  • at

so they rhyme with Spain or late:

  • plane/plain
  • pain
  • main
  • rain
  • hate
  • ate/eight

AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 1655 Autumn & Spring 2024

Q.4   Define meaning of word in English learning. Also explain use of word, word formation and word grammar in teaching English vocabulary.

word is a speech sound or a combination of sounds, or its representation in writing, that symbolizes and communicates a meaning and may consist of a single morpheme or a combination of morphemes.

The branch of linguistics that studies word structures is called morphology. The branch of linguistics that studies word meanings is called lexical semantics.

  • “[A word is the] smallest unit of grammar that can stand alone as a complete utterance, separated by spaces in written language and potentially by pauses in speech.”
  • “A grammar . . . is divided into two major components, syntax and morphology. This division follows from the special status of the word as a basic linguistic unit, with syntax dealing with the combination of words to make sentences, and morphology with the form of words themselves.”-R. Huddleston and G. Pullum,
  • “We want words to do more than they can. We try to do with them what comes to very much like trying to mend a watch with a pickaxe or to paint a miniature with a mop; we expect them to help us to grip and dissect that which in ultimate essence is as ungrippable as shadow. Nevertheless there they are; we have got to live with them, and the wise course is to treat them as we do our neighbours, and make the best and not the worst of them.”
    Big Words
    “A Czech study . . . looked at how using big words (a classic strategy for impressing others) affects perceived intelligence. Counter-intuitvely, grandiose vocabulary diminished participants’ impressions of authors’ cerebral capacity. Put another way: simpler writing seems smarter.”
    The Power of Words
    “It is obvious that the fundamental means which man possesses of extending his orders of abstractions indefinitely is conditioned, and consists in general in symbolism and, in particular, in speechWords, considered as symbols for humans, provide us with endlessly flexible conditional semantic stimuli, which are just as ‘real’ and effective for man as any other powerful stimulus.
  • Virginia Woolf on Words
    “It is words that are to blame. They are the wildest, freest, most irresponsible, most un-teachable of all things. Of course, you can catch them and sort them and place them in alphabetical order in dictionaries. But words do not live in dictionaries; they live in the mind. If you want proof of this, consider how often in moments of emotion when we most need words we find none. Yet there is the dictionary; there at our disposal are some half-a-million words all in alphabetical order. But can we use them? No, because words do not live in dictionaries, they live in the mind. Look once more at the dictionary. There beyond a doubt lie plays more splendid than Antony and Cleopatra; poems lovelier than the ‘Ode to a Nightingale’; novels beside which Pride and Prejudice or David Copperfield are the crude bunglings of amateurs. It is only a question of finding the right words and putting them in the right order. But we cannot do it because they do not live in dictionaries; they live in the mind. And how do they live in the mind? Variously and strangely, much as human beings live, ranging hither and thither, falling in love, and mating together.”

Word usage is the way a word, phrase, or concept is used in a language or language variety. Lexicographers gather samples of written instances where a word is used and analyze them to determine patterns of regional or social usage as well as meaning. A word, for example the English word “donny” (a round rock about the size of a man’s head), may be only a rare regional usage, or a word may be used worldwide by standard English speakers and have one or several evolving definitions.

In linguistics, word formation is the creation of a new word. Word formation is sometimes contrasted with semantic change, which is a change in a single word’s meaning. The boundary between word formation and semantic change can be difficult to define as a new use of an old word can be seen as a new word derived from an old one and identical to it in form. See ‘conversion’.

There are a number of methods of word formation.

Borrowing

Derivations

Compounding

Blending

A blend is a word formed by joining parts of two words after clipping. An example is smog, which comes from smoke and fog, or brunch, which comes from ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’.

One subcategory of blending is the reduction of a word to one of its parts, e.g., fax (facsimile), flu (influenza) and bot (robot). Such clipped words may not retain their original meaning. For example, “playing a video game against a bot” is not the same as “playing a video game against a robot”.

Calque

A calque is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation. For example, the English phrase to lose face is a calque from the Chinese “丟臉/丢脸”.

A subcategory of calques is the semantic loan, that is, the extension of the meaning of a word to include new, foreign meanings.

Neologism

A neologism is a process of forming a new word by coining such as quark.

Subcategories of neologisms include:

  • The eponym, a proper noun that becomes commonly used for an idea it is associated with, usually by changing its part of speech, like Xerox, Orwellian, and Stentorian
  • The loanword, a word borrowed from another language, as cliché is from French or loot from Hindi
  • An onomatopoeicword, a word which imitates natural sounds, like the bird name cuckoo
  • Formation using phono-semantic matching, that is, matching a foreign word with a phoneticallyand semantically similar, pre-existing native word or root

A grammar of Irish originated in the 7th century with the Auraicept na n-Éces. Arabic grammar emerged with Abu al-Aswad al-Du’ali in the 7th century. The first treatises on Hebrew grammar appeared in the High Middle Ages, in the context of Mishnah (exegesis of the Hebrew Bible). The Karaite tradition originated in Abbasid Baghdad. The Diqduq (10th century) is one of the earliest grammatical commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. Ibn Barun in the 12th century compares the Hebrew language with Arabic in the Islamic grammatical tradition.

Belonging to the trivium of the seven liberal arts, grammar was taught as a core discipline throughout the Middle Ages, following the influence of authors from Late Antiquity, such as Priscian. Treatment of vernaculars began gradually during the High Middle Ages, with isolated works such as the First Grammatical Treatise, but became influential only in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. In 1486, Antonio de Nebrija published Las introduciones Latinas contrapuesto el romance al Latin, and the first Spanish grammar, Gramática de la lengua castellana, in 1492. During the 16th-century Italian Renaissance, the Questione della lingua was the discussion on the status and ideal form of the Italian language, initiated by Dante’s de vulgari eloquentia (Pietro Bembo, Prose della volgar lingua Venice 1525). The first grammar of Slovene was written in 1583 by Adam Bohorič.

Grammars of non-European languages began to be compiled for the purposes of evangelism and Bible translation from the 16th century onward, such as Grammatica o Arte de la Lengua General de los Indios de los Reynos del Perú (1560), a Quechua grammar by Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás.

From the latter part of the 18th century, grammar came to be understood as a subfield of the emerging discipline of modern linguistics. The Deutsche Grammatik of the Jacob Grimm was first published in the 1810s. The Comparative Grammar of Franz Bopp, the starting point of modern comparative linguistics, came out in 1833.

AIOU Solved Assignment 1& 2 Code 1655 Autumn & Spring 2024

Q.5   Describe different techniques for creating interest in vocabulary learning n English at secondary level in Pakistan.

Psychologists, linguists, and language teachers have been interested in vocabulary learning strategies for a long time. Numerous studies have been conducted comparing the retention effects of different vocabulary presentation strategies. In fact, the vocabulary field has been especially productive in the last two decades. We have seen a number of classic volumes on theories. This article aims to provide a digest of recent research on vocabulary acquisition and to pinpoint areas that need further exploration. To this end, the article focuses on one area, i.e., vocabulary learning strategies, the purposeful analysis of the vocabulary learning task, the planning, deployment, monitoring, and evaluation of learning behaviors in order to acquire the vocabulary of a second language. It is argued that despite the impressive amount of recent research on vocabulary acquisition, a person-task-context-strategy perspective that is presented here is needed in order to anchor existing research in a larger framework and to point to areas for future efforts.

When a person approaches a relatively challenging task, s/he adopts certain strategies to solve the problem. This problem-solving process is constrained by the learning context where the problem is being tackled. Language learning in general and vocabulary acquisition in particular are such problem-solving tasks at different levels of complexity. The strategies a learner uses and the effectiveness of these strategies very much depend on the learner him/herself (e.g., attitudes, motivation, prior knowledge), the learning task at hand (e.g., type, complexity, difficulty, and generality), and the learning environment (e.g., the learning culture, the richness of input and output opportunities).

Theorists and researchers have presented the same framework in slightly different ways. Williams’s social constructivist model outlines four aspects of the teaching-learning process, i.e., teachers, learners, tasks, contexts. Cohen focuses on learners and discusses the intersection of learning style preferences, learner strategies, and language tasks. Conception of the three components of metacognitive knowledge, i.e., person, task, and strategy, also applies in the language learning field. Brown include learning activities, characteristics of the learner, criteria tasks, and nature of the materials as the four aspects of their framework for exploring problems of learning. The person-task-context-strategy model outlined here can be viewed as a synthesis of this body of knowledge, specifically for the purpose of analyzing research work on language learning strategies.

Person. The learner brings to the language learning situation a wide spectrum of individual differences that will influence the learning rate and the ultimate learning result. The most widely reported learner factors include age, sex, language aptitude, intelligence, prior knowledge, motivation, self-concept/image, personality, and cognitive and learning style. These person-dependent factors are relatively stable, and determine to a large extent how a learner approaches a task.

Task. A learning task is the end product in the learner’s mind. It can be as broad as mastering a second language or as specific as remembering one meaning of a word. Broadly speaking, this conception of the learning task includes the materials being learned (such as the genre of a piece of reading) as well as the goal the learner is trying to achieve by using these materials (such as remembering, comprehending, or using language). It should be noted that this conception of “task” is in line with the traditional, broader understanding of task as in, and is different from the more recent and narrower definition of “task” in “task-based” approaches to language teaching and learning.

Different types of task materials, task purposes, and tasks at various difficulty levels demand different learner strategies. For example, learning words in a word list is different from learning the same words in a passage. Remembering a word meaning is different from learning to use the same word in real life situations. Likewise, guessing from context would mean different things for texts of different levels of new word density.

Context. Learning context refers to the learning environment. It is the socio-culture-political environment where learning takes place. The learning context can include the teachers, the peers, the classroom climate or ethos, the family support, the social, cultural tradition of learning, the curriculum, and the availability of input and output opportunities. Learning context is different from language context which refers to the textual or discourse place in which a particular word or structure can be found. Learning contexts constrain the ways learners approach learning tasks. A learning strategy that is valued in one learning context may well be deemed inappropriate in another context.

Strategy. A learning strategy is a series of actions a learner takes to facilitate the completion of a learning task. A strategy starts when the learner analyzes the task, the situation, and what is available in his/her own repertoire. The learner then goes on to select, deploy, monitor, and evaluate the effectiveness of this action, and decides if s/he needs to revise the plan and action. Cohen distinguishes between language learning strategies and language use strategies, the former being strategies for learning tasks such as remembering, and the latter being strategies for language use, such as communicating in an L2.

Person, task, context, and strategy are interrelated and work together to form the chemistry of learning. An analysis of learning strategies will never be complete without knowing the person-task-context configuration of the particular learning situation. Some strategies are more person-dependent, some are more task-dependent, and others are more context-dependent.

One way to see the overall task of vocabulary learning is through the distinction between knowing a word and using a word. In other words, the purpose of vocabulary learning should include both remembering words and the ability to use them automatically in a wide range of language contexts when the need arises. In fact, evidence suggests that the knowledge aspect (both breadth and depth) requires more conscious and explicit learning mechanisms whereas the skill aspect involves mostly implicit learning and memory. Vocabulary learning strategies, therefore, should include strategies for “using” as well as “knowing” a word. Another way to view vocabulary learning is to see it as a process of related sub-tasks. When learners first encounter a new word, they might guess its meaning and usage from available clues. Some learners might proceed to look it up in the dictionary. Others might take down notes along the margins, between the lines, or on separate vocabulary notebooks. Some learners will repeat the new word a number of times until they are comfortable with it. Others will go beyond simple rote repetition to commit the word to memory. Some would even try to use the word actively. Each of these task stages demands metacognitive judgment, choice, and deployment of cognitive strategies for vocabulary learning. And each strategy a learner uses will determine to a large extent how and how well a new word is learned.

 

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