HNDE Syllabus Year 2 – Semester I - EN 2105: Language Structure, Usage and Linguistics III

 EN 2105: Language Structure, Usage and Linguistics III

Expanding the sentence: coordination- compound sentences

·         Coordination: Two independent clauses are combined to form compound sentence using coordinating conjunctions - and, but, or, either .or, neither, nor, 

·         Types of activities:

-   Join sentences using coordinating conjunctions

-   Breaking a long sentence into simple sentences

Expanding the sentence: subordination-the complex sentence

·         1n subordination there is an independent clause and one or more dependent or subordinate clauses. Subordinate conjunctions – when, while, till, before, after, because, as, if, unless, that, so that, etc.

·         Three main classes of dependent clauses analyzed by structural types:

-   Finite clauses: verb element is a finite verb phrase, e.g. I like John because John likes me.

-   Non-finite clauses:

to-infinitive: The best thing would be to tell everybody.

All I did was hit him on the head (infinitive without to)

-ing form: Leaving the room, he tripped over the mat.

-ed participle: Covered with confusion, we left the room.

Verbless clause: e.g. Although always helpful, he …….

Reported speech

·         To report what somebody has said we can use either quotation marks (direct speech) or a  that- clause (indirect speech)

e.g. He said ‘I need more money’.  He said that he needed more money.

·         Certain changes are made in connecting from direct to indirect

-   Change present tense to past tense.

-   Change 1^st and 2^nd person pronouns into 3^rd person

-   Change pointer words (his, now, here etc.) into that, then, there, the next day, etc.

·         Provide examples and activities.

·         Indirect questions: a wh-clause is used instead of that- clause

e.g. Do  you live here? She asked him whether (if) he lived there.

Cleft sentences

·         With ‘it’: we use cleft sentences to give emphasis to a particular part of the sentence. It does this by splitting the sentence into two halves and ‘highlighting’ the topic by making it the complement of it + be.

e.g. The Americans landed on the moon, not the Russians.

               It was the Americans who landed on the moon, not the Russians.

·         Cleft sentences with ‘what or ‘the thing (that)

What I really enjoy is eating chocolates.   The thing that I ……….

Questions

·         Types of questions; yes-no questions, tag questions, Declarative questions, Alternative questions, wh- questions

·         Making questions polite

Bilingualism

·         Characteristics of bilingualism

·         Code mixing, code switching

Individual learner differences

·         Learner variables:  personality, motivation, learning style, aptitude and age

·         The relationship between learner differences and second language acquisition.

HNDE Syllabus Year 2 – Semester I - EN 2106: Vocabulary Development III

EN 2106: Vocabulary Development III

Collocation tasks: different combinations connected to verbs

·         Adverb + verb – choose carefully, verb + verb - be free to choose , verb + preposition-choose between the things, verb+ adjective- keep something safe, adjective+ preposition- safe from attack

·         Types of tasks:

-   Matching tasks: e.g. adverbs in column A with an adjective in B

-   Sentence completion: e.g. put one of the adverbs into each gap in the sentences.

Synonyms and their associations

·         In order to avoid repetition, writers use words which have a similar meaning.

e.g.   I could learn by heart - I started to memorize

He asked - He enquired

·         Types of tasks:

-   Read the text and find the synonyms

-   Complete the sentences using a word that has a similar meaning to the word underlined.

Describing people: appearance and character

·         Words used to describe:

-   Height and build - a slim woman, a chubby baby,

-   General appearance - stylish, elegant woman, well-dressed, unattractive,

-   Intellectual ability- intelligent, gifted, clever, foolish

-   Clever in a negative way - cunning, crafty, sly

-   Attitude towards life / people - optimistic, sensitive, sociable, rude

-   Face, hair, complexion - straight hair, round-faced, fair complexion

·         Types of activities:

-   Match the words with their opposite words.

-   Write sentences to describe yourself, your neighbours, colleagues etc.

-   Make a collection of descriptions of people from newspapers (advertisements by people seeking partners)

Antonyms: using prefixes and suffixes

·         Focus: how to bring out negative qualities

·         Procedure:

-   Introduce negative prefixes -  un-,in-, im-, dis-, and suffixes-,  -less,

-   Get students to write the opposites of the given adjectives. e.g. safe, kind, complete, etc.

-   Identify adjectives with negative prefixes in a text.

Dictionary work: exploring a dictionary page

·         Focus: Raising awareness of how a dictionary page can be exploited for language improvement

·         Types of activities: Look at page 311 in Macmillan English dictionary for advanced learners.

-   Which syllable has the primary stress: corollary, corona, coronary, coroner

-   What is the word for a small crown?

-   What is the pronunciation of these words, corps (singular), corps (plural)?

-   What is the ceremony at which someone becomes king/queen?

-   Can the adjective ‘corporate’ follow a noun?

Working with texts to develop vocabulary: Identify / guess meaning from context

·         Focus: Using the natural redundancy of surrounding words, obtaining clues from grammatical structures, pronunciation and punctuation, activating background knowledge from a topic of a text.

e.g. My father is a workaholic; he works so long and so hard that we  rarely saw him.

HNDE Syllabus Year 2 – Semester I - EN 2107: Practical Phonology III

EN 2107: Practical Phonology III

Connected speech: linking words-consonant + vowel

·         Focus: help students cope with natural spoken language. Help with the comprehension problems caused by the blurring of the word boundaries in sentences where a consonant and a vowel meet, word borders tend to have blended sounds.

e.g. get out (ge -tout) the final consonant is treated as if it belonged to the 2^nd word 

e.g. She went out (t+ aw)

·         Types of activities:

-   Practice saying these pairs. Try to think the sounds which come together.

Red apple, wet umbrella, speaks English etc.

-   Listen to the links between ‘r’ and a vowel sound. Practice saying them.

Mother and father, after all, where am I? etc.

-   Find the link between consonant and vowel sounds in these sentences.

                     The books are on the table in the corner.

                     It’s a waste of money to buy lots of clothes.

Linking words: consonant + consonant

• Focus:

-   Dealing with comprehension problems related to pronunciation.

Consonant + consonant: word borders tend to have a deleted or an unreleased final consonant. e.g. She is a good girl. [d+g]

-   Identical consonants delete one of the consonants and blend the border together as one long consonant.  e.g. I have a black coat. [k +k], Bob Brown is here. [b+b]

• Types of activities:

-   Listen and practice:  red dog, sit down, take back, desk top, good boy, phone bill, etc.

-   Find links between words ending and beginning in a consonant sound in the sentences

                        e.g.      Is it good luck to see a black cat?           

The time is ten past two

Intonation: pattern of pitch changes in speech.

·         Different pitch patterns can produce different meanings.

Consisting of different tones. Tones depend on the pitch of the voice. e.g. They arrived at EIGHT and left at TWO..  The focal point of the message 2 and 8 are called tonic syllables.

·         Practice activities: 

She’s a doctor. – a statement or a fact. Here the intonation doesn’t go up. We use a falling tone sounding friendly and polite.

She’s doctor? - an echo question. It has a rising tone.

·         Find the information focus in each sentence. Practice saying them as statements and questions. e.g. He left.  He left?  

Intonation in question tags

·         When you check information that you’re not certain about, the intonation in the question tag doesn’t go up.

·         Types of activities: Complete the sentences with a question tag. Then practice saying them with correct intonation.

He’s French, isn’t he? This is the train to Kandy? etc.

Allophonic variations

·         Different realizations of phonemes in speech, i.e. the phoneme is pronounced slightly differently in the company of different sounds or environments. e.g. ‘p’ in ‘pot’ is aspirated but the ‘p’ in ‘spot’ is not. In English these sounds are mainly ‘t’, ‘d’, and ‘h’ when followed by a velar or labial consonant ‘k’, ‘g’, ‘m’, or ‘b’.

·         Clear ‘l’ (when followed by a vowel)   e.g. believe, allow, and dark ‘l’ (when followed by a consonant) e.g. help, milk, are allophones of the phoneme ‘l’ - allophonic variations of ed:  ‘t’ after a fortis consonant except ‘t’,   lukt, ‘d’ after a lenis consonant other than ‘d’.

e.g. ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘g’, ‘v’, ‘z’, ‘id’ after ‘t’ or ‘d’

·         Provide practice activities

Strong and weak forms

·         Weak forms are the unstressed forms of function words

·         Types of activities

Give examples of weak forms and strong forms

e.g. I swallowed a fly - schwa, You say a book, a child but an apple (strong forms)            An alligator bit him (weak form)

HNDE Syllabus Year 2 – Semester I - EN 2108: English Literature III

EN 2108: English Literature III

Teaching poetry

·         Recommended text

English and American Poetry

-   John Donne: 1572-1630, Song; Sweetest Love I do not go

-   William Wordsworth: 1770-1850, Upon Westminster Bridge

-   Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose

-   John Keats: 1795-1821, La Belle Dame Sans Mercy, A thing of Beauty

-   W. B. Yeats: 1865-1919, Wild Swans at The Coole

-   Walter De La Mare: 1873-1956, Estranged

-   Rupert Brooke: 1887-1915, The Soldier

Sri Lankan and Post-colonial Poetry,

-   Jean Arasanayegam In the Month of July, Ruined Gopuram

-   Anne Raqnasinghe, Secretariat: Cecil Rajendra, Song of Hope

-   Wole Soyinka, Telephone Conversation

·         Consider the following aspects

-   Genre: e.g. sonnet, lyric etc

-   Background: age, cultural / social setting

-   Form: e.g. 3 quatrains and a couplet

-   Structure: e.g. 1^st 3 quatrains express 3 different ideas, each growing out of the preceding Idea; argument is tied up in the couplet.

-   Theme: futility of war, love, beauty of nature, etc.

-   Techniques: e.g. use of imagery, repetition, simile, etc.

·         Types of activities:

Select tasks which match the cognitive level of the students, which is more developed than the language level. Activities which assist in understanding difficult language will bridge the gap between language level and text level. Activities should aim at developing the following aspects with regard to each poem.

-   Understanding the meaning: pre-text task, Introduction to key words, Prediction activities, reorganizing / matching / comparing / scanning activities.

-   Understanding the context:

-   Learning to empathize: power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person’s feelings’ character / events / scenes

-   Learning to appreciate the poem: figurative language, theme, genre,  words, sounds

-   Learning to be creative express feeling s/ mood / tone, describe characters / events / settings.

Teaching short stories

·         Recommended text

-   Maurreen Seneviratne, Mirage,

-   Jhumpa Lahiri: Mrs. Sen’s

-   O’Henry, The Purple Dress  

·         Draw attention of the students to the following aspects

-   Setting: How does the writer establish social / cultural background?

-   Plot: how does the writer develop the plot / organize incidents / develop the problem or conflict as the story progresses / the climax of the story / what happens after the climax.

-   Characters: How are the characters developed? What does the story tell us about their appearance / qualities? How do they contribute to the development of the plot and to present the theme?

-   Structure: Point of view, narrative, use of dialogue etc

-   Language: the kind of language the writer has used

-   Techniques: symbolism, stream of consciousness, flashbacks etc. 

Teaching the novel

·         Recommended text

-   George Orwell: Animal Farm or,

-   Charles Dickens: The Tale of Two Cities

·         Consider the following aspects

-   Narration: 1^st person, 3^rd person

-   Structure: descriptive, narrative, dialogue, length of the novel

-   Plot and parallel plots, sub-plots

-   Themes: Unlike a short story a noel will deal with many themes

-   Characters: central, major, minor

·         Create awareness of the following

Knowledge of the author, period in which the novel was written / the period of time the novel is focusing

·         Type of activities:

-   to understand the plot: arranging a list of jumbled events in order, summarizing a chapter

-   to understand the themes: select from a number of themes etc.

-   to understand  literary devices and their effects: analyze selections of texts to identify literary devices

-   to express learner’s views: presentations on issues related to the novel, writing appreciations, dramatization

-   to identify character traits: identify relationship between the characters and the development of the relationships

Teaching drama

·         Recommended text

-  William Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice or, Romeo and Juliet

·         Draw attention to the following aspects

-   Background to the drama

-   Genre: Comedy, tragedy

-   Theatre conventions: props, structure, props, lighting, costume, sounds, asides, soliloquy, chorus

-   Themes

-   Development of the plot: exposition, initial incident, rising action / growth / complication, the climax / crisis / turning point, falling action / resolution / denouement, conclusion or catastrophe

-   Development of the characters

-   Significance of language: blank verse, poetry, colloquial