Model-Theoretic Frameworks in Linguistics – The varieties of mathematical basis for formalizing linguistic theories are more diverse than is commonly realized.
For example, the later work of Zellig Harris might well suggest a formalization in terms of CATEGORY THEORY, since Harris takes the utterances of a language to constitute a collection (possibly not even enumerable) that is not itself of particular interest, and concentrates on discussing a set of associative, composable mappings defined on it.
And thoroughgoing versions of generative semantics like Pieter Seuren’s seem to call for a formalization in terms of TRANSDUCERS, mapping meanings to phonetic forms and conversely.
However, work in formal syntax over the past fifty years has been entirely dominated by just one kind of mathematics: the string-manipulating combinatorial systems categorized as generative-enumerative syntax (henceforth GES) in Pullum and Scholz (2001).
A GES grammar is a recursive definition of a specific set, ipso facto computably enumerable.2 The definition is given in one of two ways: top-down or bottom-up. The classic top-down style of GES grammar is a program for a nondeterministic process of construction by successive expansion symbol strings.
It amounts in effect to a program with the property that if it were left running for ever, choosing randomly but always differently among the possibilities allowed for expanding symbols, every possible string in the desired set would ultimately get constructed. Such a device is described as GENERATING the entire set of all structures the machine is capable of constructing.
After reading “Model-Theoretic Frameworks in Linguistics” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.
6 Strategies for Teaching English – Over 10 percent of students in the United States—more than 4.8 million kids—are English language learners (ELLs), and the number is on the rise. Though these students do not learn differently than their native-English-speaking peers, they do have particular educational needs.
To learn about these needs and the best practices for addressing them I interviewed a range of educators and observers. Including Larry Ferlazzo, an educator and author of The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide; longtime teachers of English as a second language (ESL) Emily Francis and Tan Huynh; and the journalist Helen Thorpe, who spent a year observing a teacher who works with ELLs.
The group emphasized that the strategies listed here, which include both big-picture mindsets and nitty-gritty teaching tactics, can be incorporated into all classrooms, benefiting both native English speakers and ELLs.
Emily Francis, an ESL teacher in Concord, North Carolina, makes clear that she wants her students to “embrace their culture and their language as a foundation of who they are”. She considers that their acquisition of a new culture and language is not as subtractive, but as additive. To help support students who may never have attended school before or may be coping with migration-based trauma, Francis emphasizes that little things make a big difference. “The first thing that I need to think about is, how is my student feeling in my classroom?” she says. “Are they sitting next to a buddy they can ask a question in their home language? Do they feel comfortable tapping me on the shoulder if they have to go to the bathroom?”
Learn more about this topic by reading on Edutopia.
After reading “6 Strategies for Teaching English “, you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs. And visit my channel by YouTube.
I am tired of ESL books that bring too much information in one page. This book is a great one because it helps students with conversations. It brings enough information that does not make the student tired. This is a key aspects to any teacher.
The art of conversation, once considered the sign of a civilized individual, seems less common today. Yet I treasure the moments of sharing experiences, collecting news, and exchanging ideas. I make a point of knowing my neighbors, allowing casual greetings to become long conversations, and making time to explore in depth the feelings and perceptions of friends and relatives. These natural conversations provide information, encouragement, laughs, and pleasure. Many people say that they are too busy to have long talks. Other people prefer to watch television, play computer games, or listen to the radio rather than talk to relatives and friends. Sometimes people feel too shy to speak to the people next to them. Many Americans have forgotten how to hold good, deep conversations, or even a friendly chat on the phone. I suspect this lack of real communication lessens their daily joy.
After reading “Compelling Conversations ESL”, you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs. And visit my channel by YouTube.
This section presents short insights about linguistics, applied linguistics and the most common linguistic theories around the world
After reading “ESL Theories”, you can check the Ernesto Method, and visit my channel on YouTube.
Linguistics
Before addressing all the Important Theories for ESL Teachers, it is necessary to define what Linguistics is. Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It involves analyzing language form, language meaning, and language in context. It also deals with the social, cultural, historical and political factors that influence language. The sub-branches of historical and evolutionary linguistics focuses on how languages change and grow. Read more.
Applied linguistics
Linguists are largely concerned with finding and describing the generalities and varieties within particular languages and among all languages. Applied linguistics takes these results and “applies” them to other areas, such as language education, lexicography, translation, language planning, which involves governmental policy implementation related to language use, and natural language processing. Read more.
Second-language acquisition
Second-language acquisition (SLA), second-language learning, or L2 (language 2) acquisition, is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language acquisition is also the scientific discipline devoted to studying that process. The field of second-language acquisition is a subdiscipline of applied linguistics, but also receives research attention from a variety of other disciplines, such as psychology and education. Read more.
Cognitive grammar
Cognitive grammar hypothesizes that grammar, semantics, and lexicon exist on a continuum instead of as separate processes altogether. In this system, grammar is not a formal system operating independently of meaning. Rather, grammar is itself meaningful and inextricable from semantics. Read more.
Dependency grammar
Dependency grammar (DG) is a class of modern grammatical theories that are all based on the dependency relation. Dependency is the notion that linguistic units, e.g. words, are connected to each other by directed links. The verb is taken to be the structural center of clause structure. All other syntactic units (words) are either directly or indirectly connected to the verb in terms of the directed links, which are called dependencies. Read more.
Functional theories of grammar
Functional theories of grammar sees the functionality of language and its elements to be the key to understanding linguistic processes and structures. It proposes that its structures are best analyzed and understood with reference to the functions they carry out. It tends to pay attention to the way language is actually used in communicative context. Read more.
Generative grammar
Generative grammar regards linguistics as a hypothesized innate grammatical structure. It considers grammar as a system of rules that generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language. Read more.
Phrase structure grammar
Phrase structure grammar is a type of generative grammar in which constituent structures are represented by phrase structure rules or rewrite rules it provides a formal notation for the analysis of the internal structure of sentences. . Read more.
Model-theoretic grammars
Model-theoretic grammars, aka constraint-based grammar, contrast with generative grammars in the way they define sets of sentences: they state constraints on syntactic structure rather than providing operations for generating syntactic objects. Read more.
Stochastic grammar
Statistical natural language processing uses stochastic, probabilistic and statistical methods. The technology for statistical NLP comes mainly from machine learning and data mining, both of which are fields of artificial intelligence that involve learning from data. Read more.
What is a Method of Teaching English as a Second Language, Approach, Design, and Procedure?
I wrote this article to try to explain every famous ESL method. Before writing this article I read and based myself on Richards and Rodgers (1986) book “Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching”. In it, they check many methods and present the idea that almost all language teaching methods follow the same logic. As a result a thorough analysis into their nature is necessary for every ESL teacher. Read more.
The Classical Method
The first ESL method appeared well before English had the influence it has today. During the Late Middle Ages, people used to learn Latin and ancient Greek in schools. The study of these languages was done in a very amateur way. Every teacher had its own way and its own idea of how teaching happened. Consequently there was no agreement or exchange of experiences between teachers. The teaching of ESL started in the 17th century, due to trade in the English Channel. Read more.
Grammar-Translation Method
The Grammar-Translation method is one of the most famous ESL methods that exist. It evolved from the Classical Method that was used in the teaching of Latin and Greek and because of that, this method focuses on literature and grammar of the L1. It rely heavily on the translation of passages from relevant books. Read more.
The Direct Method
The Direct method of teaching has a very interesting history, and you should read the whole article. This method is sometimes called the natural method. This method is very strict and it prohibits the student to use the L1 in the classroom. It focuses a lot on everyday spoken language, as well as in associating meaning directly in English. Read more.
Audio-Lingual Method
The audio-lingual method, or Army Method, or New Key, is based on behaviorist theory, and because of that it postulates that humans could be trained through a system of reinforcement. Listening and speaking drills and pattern practice only in English. Read more.
Cognitive Grammar Approach
Cognitive grammar is an approach developed by Ronald Langacker, which hypothesizes that grammar, semantics, and lexicon exist on a continuum instead of as separate processes altogether. This approach to language was one of the first projects of cognitive linguistics. Read more.
The Audio Visual Method
The audiovisual method was first developed in France in the 1950s. This method is intended for teaching everyday language at the early stage of second/foreign language learning. It was based on a behaviourist approach, which held that language is acquired by habit formation. Read more.
The Bilingual Method
C.J. Dodson (1967) developed The Bilingual Method in 1967 as a counterpart of the audiovisual method. In both methods the preferred basic texts are dialogues accompanied by a picture strip. The bilingual method, however, advocates two revolutionary principles based on the results of scientifically controlled experiments in primary and secondary schools. Read more.
The Communicative Language Teaching
Of Every ESL Methods, the Communicative language teaching (CLT), or communicative approach, is a concept that language learning occurs when the teacher gets learners to see the language pragmatically to mediate meanings for a purpose, to do things which resemble in some measure what they do with their own language. Read more.
The Lexical Syllabus
This method focuses itself on chunks. Chunks are groups of words that can be found together in language. Chunks include lexical phrases, set phrases, and fixed phrases such as ‘by the way’, ‘at the end of the day’. In this method students are taught to be able to notice patterns of language (grammar) as well as have meaningful set uses of words at their disposal. Read more.
The Natural Approach
Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell developed the Natural Approach in the late 1970s. It claims that language learning is a reproduction of the way humans acquire their first language. The focus on grammar is decreased and corrections of student’s mistakes is increased. The speaking part is delayed until the student feels comfortable. Hence, meaning clarified through actions and visuals. Read more.
The Structural Approach
Structural Approach is a technique that the learner masters the pattern of sentence. Therefore, it is based on the assumptions that language can be best learnt through a scientific selection. And, grading of the structures or patterns of sentences and vocabulary. By teaching learners to know the forms of the language as a medium and the meaning they incorporate; that they will learn how to do things with this knowledge on their own. Read more.
The Silent Way
Caleb Gattegno developed the Silent Way method. In this method the teacher stays quiet most of the time while encouraging the students to talk. The method is based on the ideas from a book from 1963. As it is from the 1960s and 1970s is a break from the hard core past to a more understanding future. The method tries to bring to light some new aspects that weren’t thought as fundamental to language learning before Read more.
Suggestopedia
Georgi Lozanov developed Suggestopedia, and the main idea of it is to speed up learning. It works by de-suggestion of psychological barriers and positive suggestion. Relaxed atmosphere, with music; encourages subliminal learning of English . Read more.
Community Language Learning
Of Every ESL Methods, this is an approach in which students work together to develop what aspects of a language they would like to learn. Counselling-approach is based on the idea that the teacher acts as a counselor. The student is the “client” or “collaborator”. Understanding of English through active student interaction. Read more.
Total Physical Response
James Asher developed the Total Physical Response language teaching method. It is based on the coordination of language and physical movement. Read more.
Content-based Instruction
Content-based Instruction focuses on the lesson itself, not the language. The exercises are the focus and not the English language. The focus is on the task, making the language a medium in which the task is performed. Content based on relevance to students’ lives: topics, tasks, problem-solving. Read more.
Learning Strategy Training
Learning Strategy Training is based on problems that students encounter in the process of learning target language. Teach learning strategies, cooperation; activities vary according to different intelligences. Read more.
Cooperative Learning
Cooperative Language Learning (CLL), also known as Collaborative Learning (CL) is part of the Instructional Approach. This English Teaching Method is an approach to teaching that makes maximum use of cooperative activities involving pairs and small groups of learners in the classroom. Read more.
Multiple Intelligences Emerging Uses of Technology in Language Teaching
Computer-assisted Language Learning or CALL consists of all the programs and websites dedicate to language learning. Electronic Text Corpora is a good example of it. These programs store collections of written and sometimes spoken language, that come in a transcript form or texts. CALL also includes language apps as well as online classes. YouTube videos with ESL teachers are nowadays one of the biggest parts of CALL. Read more.
Ernesto’s Method
This is my method of ESL teaching, and that is why it brings a lot of my own experiences in the classroom to life. In it, I try to solve some of the issues that I frequently noticed in some methods that I was assign to use it. It is a classroom method, which focuses on first grade students. I try to present the content on simple constructions. The constructions use the most common verbs, nouns and adjectives found in the assigned reading books for the school-year. The idea is that students learn L2 by creating memories within each word and as the frequency occurrence of that word increases stronger the memories become. It uses corpora and creativity to incorporate the most frequent words into constructions (sentences). Read more.
What does it take to become an English Second Language teacher?
If you enjoyed this page, check out my Youtube channel for more info on ESL Methods.
This page brings you All ESL Worksheets that you will be needing in your day-to-day grammar explanations in the classroom, especially the tenses.
Worksheets give students freedom. For instance, some students like to doodle, others make notes and plans, use colours, highlight or write in pencil and rub it out. You can embrace this by adding an element of drawing, note-taking, colouring etc and so combining different skills.
Students tend to be possessive over their coursebooks as they are a big investment and contain all their work. In contrast, a worksheet is just a piece of paper that they can work on with others, exchange, stick on the wall or even hand in for marking. It’s also much easier for students to move around the class or outside of it with a single piece of paper.
The more worksheets you develop, use and reflect on, the more you will understand your students, their abilities, preferences and what really works in your class. With good feedback, your worksheets will get better every single time and create a channel of conversation between you and the students. Encourage them to make suggestions for future worksheets and even try to make their own.
I hope you enjoy the section All ESL Worksheets, and let me know if you need more worksheets.
If you enjoyed this page, check out my Youtube channel for more info on Worksheets and Activities.
ESL Methods – Teaching English. The field of linguistics and teaching in the 20th century is marked by the development of different foreign language teaching methods and approaches. I can observe that some methods have almost zero users while others have plenty.
Modern foreign language teaching has adopted completely new methods. The work of language professionals during the period between 1950 and 1980 contributed significantly. Different scientific views appeared in the field of L2 teaching and learning.
I notice that some methods are not used or became obscure. They may offer useful insights into the general teaching methodology. Modern teaching is also based on the elements derived from these methods.
I present to you here the teaching methods and their classification. It would be useful to remember what method is in terms of its definition and application in classrooms. There are many definitions of method but in a nutshell a method is a plan for presenting a certain language material to be learned. Linguists agree that it should be based upon a selected approach.
Learn more about this topic by reading on Owlcation. After you read “ESL Methods – Teaching English” article, you can also check more complete and better written articles on my website in the section ESL Methods.
In this paper, we introduce an approach to automatically map a standard distributional semantic space onto a set-theoretic model. We predict that there is a functional relationship between distributional information and vectoral concept representations in which dimensions are predicates and weights are generalized quantifiers.
In order to test our prediction, we learn a model of such relationship over a publicly available dataset of feature norms annotated with natural language quantifiers. Our initial experimental results show that, at least for domain-specific data, we can indeed map between formalisms, and generate high-quality vector representations which encapsulate set overlap information. We further investigate the generation of natural language quantifiers from such vectors.
In recent years, the complementarity of distributional and formal semantics has become increasingly evident. While distributional semantics (Turney and Pantel, 2010; Clark, 2012; Erk, 2012) has proved very successful in modelling lexical effects such as graded similarity and polysemy, it clearly has difficulties accounting for logical phenomena which are well covered by model-theoretic semantics (Grefenstette, 2013).
A number of proposals have emerged from these considerations, suggesting that an overarching semantics integrating both distributional and formal aspects would be desirable (Coecke et al., 2011; Bernardi et al., 2013; Grefenstette, 2013; Baroni et al., 2014a; Garrette et al., 2013; Beltagy et al., 2013; Lewis and Steedman, 2013). We will use the term ‘Formal Distributional Semantics’ (FDS) to refer to such proposals. This paper follows this line of work, focusing on one central question: the formalization of the systematic dependencies between lexical and set-theoretic levels
After reading “Model-Theoretic Semantic Spaces” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.
Most Popular ESL Teaching Methods – English hasn’t always been the popular choice. Once upon a time those who were considered “cultured” learned Latin and/or Greek. Soon after French was the popular choice where second languages were concerned.
English as a second language gained importance not so long ago, in the mid nineteenth century. Before the late nineteenth century, second-language instruction followed what was called a Classical Method of teaching.
Latin and Greek lessons were based on repetition drills and students were asked to read translations of ancient texts. Since the 1940s, communicative skills gradually became more and more important to those who wanted or needed to study other languages and that’s when many of the different Theories of second-language acquisition began to appear.
Which Method or Approach is the Best?
It is hard to say which method or approach is the best. Different students and needs may require you use more than just one, even at a time. The trend has been toward combining different methods and approaches, and this is probably the healthiest approach for it accommodates many styles of learning. Also, it allows teachers to decide which elements are most effective and which of them really work in the classroom. If you combine methods, you take the best that each has to offer, after all, teaching languages is not easy. In the end, its all about providing our students with the tools they need to function in the target language.
How helpful would it be to find teaching methods that are so clever, they just stick with you all the time?
Imagine having handy teaching hints constantly on recall, similar to the manner in which the melody to “Sweet Caroline” is never more than two seconds away from your mind’s reach.
The difference being, these methods are actually helpful. Caught in a communication conundrum? Grab a visual! Frustrated that your students don’t seem to be getting it? Recall those ever-important stages of language acquisition!
Prepare to have all these, and more, permanently imprinted on your brain. Just for the time being, clear your mind of the lyrics to “Yellow Submarine” and make some space for five ESL teaching methods that’ll rock your world!
Learn more about this topic by reading on BusyTeacher.
After reading “Most Popular ESL Teaching Methods” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.
These books include 60 lessons that provide intermediate and advanced students with the opportunity to practice some of the most common types of questions and discussions that English speakers engage in.
In the early lessons, students answer a variety of questions, including wh-questions, but later the structure of the lessons forces them to generate their own questions.
A wide range of functions are covered in these books, including the following: stating excuses, identifying priorities, providing reasons, agreeing and disagreeing, explaining differences, describing qualifications, talking about stereotypes, explaining proverbs, arguing for certain positions, and many more. These books provide a firm foundation for students who want to participate in spirited discussions. A teacher’s guide is available for this series.
When choosing the best ESL textbooks for the classroom- a few things were taken into consideration.
Think about these factors when seeking out textbooks in the future!
Do these people know what they’re talking about?
Each one of these books was written by a professional (or multiple professionals) that’s been in the English teaching business for a very long time! They know their stuff and have lots to offer. They know the needs of both new teachers, who are just getting started, and well-seasoned teachers, who are looking for a way to spice up their existing curriculum.
How is this book specialized for children or for adults?
The list is broken down into two different categories: Textbooks that were either specially made for kids or have characteristics that would work well with children, and textbooks that were designed to accommodate older and adult students. The authors of these books understand that teaching kids and adults have their unique challenges and therefore have created textbooks specializing on one group or the other.
Is this book flexible?
In today’s classroom, flexibility is a must. Gone are the days of teaching out of a textbook for the entire class period. Gone are the days where it’s believed that every student is at the same learning level. We know that teaching and learning are more rounded experiences that must be filled with activity and variety in order to maximize learning. With that in mind, each of these textbooks is extra-flexible, and meant to be used and consulted when needed in different situations. It’s not necessary to do every single chapter in order for them to be used effectively!
After reading “Talk, Talk, Talk 2” you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs, and visit my YouTube channel.
