Introduction

The aim of these tasks is to help you think about what kind of linguistic knowledge speakers of a language draw on in order to express themselves. Attempts to identify and describe this ‘knowledge’ are often motivated by the need to devise syllabuses for language teaching. Course designers are faced with the problem: What is it that language learners need to know?

Tasks

1 Levels of analysis

Here is some language ‘at work’. Can you analyse its constituents at increasing levels of detail, i.e. from the largest units to the smallest? (Tip: the smallest units are the individual letters that make up the written form – or the sounds that these letters represent.)

2 Naming the parts

Here is a slightly more complex sign. Can you do the same kind of analysis as you did in the first task? For example, what is the entire text? How many sentences does it consist of? What are the verbs? What other grammar elements, e.g. nouns, can you identify? How many words are there? How many morphemes? How many phonemes do the first two words consist of? (Check Task 1 of the Key for a definition of these terms.)

3 Language systems

As we have seen, any instance of language in use involves the interplay of several different systems, operating at distinct levels of discreteness, but mutually interdependent. We can visualize this as a kind of inverted pyramid, with the largest units at the top. On the next page are the more general terms into which these units are traditionally grouped for the purposes of study:

• a Here is a glossary of the terms in the above diagram. Can you match each term with its definition?

• b The upside-down pyramid represents spoken language. Which terms would you have to change to make it appropriate for written language?

• c How many of the terms inside the pyramid can you find examples of in this sign?

4 Error analysis

Learners have problems at every level of the language pyramid. Which of these systems is this student of English having trouble with?

In the modern society, I think that five the most useful electrical equipment are mobile phone, laptop computer, memory card, remote control and microwave oven.