-
Course Introduction
-
Unit 1: Defining English
This unit introduces the idea of alternative monolithic and plurilithic conceptions of English.
- 1.0 Introduction
- 1.1 Monolithic vs Plurilithic Concepts
- 1.1.1 Monolithic Concepts of Language
- 1.1.2 Plurilithic Concepts of Language
- 1.2 ‘Standard English’
- 1.2.1 ‘Standard English’: History
- 1.2.2 ‘Standard English’: Beliefs
- 1.2.3 Advantages and Disadvantages of ‘Standard English’ for ELT
- 1.3 Rules of English
- 1.3.1 The ambiguity of the word rule
- 1.3.2 Rules of English: The Monolithic View
- 1.3.3 Rules of English: The Plurilithic View
- 1.4 Four Dimensions of Monolithism
- 1.5 Check Your Understanding
- 1.6 Reflect and Discuss
-
Unit 2: Using English
This unit explores the plurilithic usage of English in diverse global settings.
- Unit 2: Using English
- 2.1 Introducing Lingua Franca Usage
- 2.2.1 Native speaker Variation
- 2.2.2 Native speakers: Accommodation
- 2.3 Englishes in the British Isles
- 2.4 World Englishes
- 2.4.1 Englishes in Your Part of The World
- 2.4.2 Owning a language (Part 1)
- 2.5 ELF
- 2.5.1 Intelligibility
- 2.5.2 ELF in Your Part of The World
- 2.6 Translanguaging with English
- 2.7 Check Your Understanding
- 2.8 Reflect and Discuss
-
Unit 3: Learning English
This unit discusses how English is learned as a first or additional language.
- Unit 3: Learning English
- 3.1 First Language Acquisition
- 3.2 Back to Rules
- 3.2.1 Rules as Patterns in the Mind (Part 1)
- 3.2.2 Rules as Social Markers
- 3.2.3 Rules as Mental Representations
- 3.2.4 Rules in Schools
- 3.2.5 Rules as Patterns in the Mind (2)
- 3.3 Models and Targets
- 3.4 Learning Contexts
- 3.5 Owning a Language (Part 2)
- 3.6 Learners and Users
- 3.7 Check Your Understanding
- 3.8 Reflect and Discuss
-
Unit 4: Teaching English
This unit examines the teaching implications of plurilithic conceptions of English.
-
Unit 5: Changing English
This unit suggests ways to share your learning on the course with others.
- Unit 5: Changing English
- 5.1 The Challenge
- 5.2 Changing Learners’ Beliefs About English
- 5.3 Changing Teaching Colleagues’ Beliefs About English
- 5.4 Changing Policy-Makers’ Beliefs About English
- 5.5 Changing the Public’s Beliefs About English
- 5.6 Check Your Understanding
- 5.7 Reflect and Discuss
- Course Finish
3.2.1 Rules as Patterns in the Mind (Part 1)
Concept
Children acquire language by unconsciously analysing patterns
Barbara’s mother didn’t teach her daughter the past tense suffix (“Barbara, will you please add an –ed suffix to put that verb into the past tense!”).
Instead, Barbara worked it out on her own, on the basis of experience, using analogy to construct new knowledge. In the examples we’ve looked at, she came up with the novel verb forms ringed and drinked having heard other phonological forms ending with the same set of endings, which she associated with certain verbal meanings and time references.
In Depth
Of course she wasn’t aware of the complex set of cognitive routines that her mind was engaged in. Children do analogical and other kinds of complex analysis as a natural, unconscious process, and it is one of the major ways in which they learn general patterns from multiple experiences on their way to adulthood.
Activity
To appreciate what Barbara was doing, look at the diagram in Fig. 3.4. This is an example of an ‘IQ test’ question, given to adults to see how well they can do deliberately what all (normal) children do involuntarily. See if you can:
-
- a) provide the missing pattern (in the space on the bottom-right)
- b) state a rule which describes the pattern (in other words, the regularity of the first two rows)
- c) identify the parallel with what Barbara was doing in overgeneralising the verbs ring and drink
-
Figure 3.4: An example of an IQ test item to be answered through analogical reasoning [Source: adapted from Jirah]
Feedback
-
- a) Here is the solution:
-
Figure 3.5: The IQ test item answered through analogical reasoning [Source: adapted from Jirah]
- b) Here’s our best attempt at an explicit and accessible expression of the rule:
- o IN ANY SHAPE WHICH IS DIVIDED INTO FOUR EQUAL PARTS, FILL IN THE PARTS CLOCKWISE, SUCCESSIVELY STARTING FROM ‘9 O’CLOCK’ (OR ‘DUE WEST’)
- c) You worked out how to complete the third row on the basis of analogy with the pattern you detected on the first and second rows. This is a similar process to what Barbara did to produce drinked , as the following figure illustrates (although of course she had more than two sets of previous experiences to base her solution on):
-
Figure 3.6: The use of analogy to produce novel past tense forms