A short course in comparing languages: start here
This is the first page of a short (well, shortish)
course concerned with learning about our students' languages and
using that information to help both them as learners and us as
teachers.
It is designed as a supplement to
the in-service guide on language typology.
Copyright
You may not use this material for commercial purposes. The material may be used with fee-paying learners of English but may not be used on fee-paying courses for teachers. Small excerpts from materials, conventionally attributed, may be used on such courses but wholesale lifting of materials is explicitly forbidden. There is, of course, no objection at all to providing fee-paying course participants with a link to this course or to materials anywhere on this site. Indeed, that is welcomed.
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Two questions to answer |
In some settings, the teacher shares a first language with the
learners, in others the teacher is a fluent user of the learners'
language(s).
In many settings, however, some at least of the learners' first
language(s) may be wholly unknown to the teacher.
In all settings, knowledge, if only in theory, of how the learners' language(s) work is valuable because it helps us to answer these questions:
- How does knowing about the ways our students’ languages are different from English help us to help them learn?
- How does knowing how our students’ languages are similar to English help us to help them learn?
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Doing this mini-course |
The activities are divided into short texts with
some information and tasks to complete and the occasional exercise
to test you as we go along. At the end, there
is an opportunity to test
yourself to see how much you can remember.
There are 4 stages following this page but you don't have to do them
at the same time. You can stop, make a note of where you are
and come back when you've had a break. Up to you.
There is a menu at the foot of each page that you can use to
navigate around the 4 stages, this page and the example lesson
materials. If this is your first visit, however, the advice is
to follow the stages in order.
You can do this course alone or with colleagues with whom you can discuss your reactions to the tasks and exercises. Whichever way you prefer, please have a pen and paper handy so that you can write not just think about your responses.
From time to time, you will get a task to do. When that happens, please respond to the task before moving on.
Here's the first task.
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This is a sign written by someone whose 1st language is not
English (obviously?). Question: Why was the mistake made? Write down some reasons before you go on to the first stage of the activity proper. |
When you ready to go on to Stage 1, please click here.
| Index | Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Stage 3 | Stage 4 | The lesson |
References for this course include:
Campbell, GL, 1995, Compendium of the World's Languages,
London: Routledge
Comrie, B, 1983, Language Universals and Linguistic Typology,
Oxford: Blackwell
Croft, W, 1990, Typology and Universals, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
Cruttenden, A, 1997, Intonation (2nd edition), Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
Crystal, D, 1987, Encyclopaedia of Language, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
Ellis, R, 1994, The Study of Second Language Acquisition,
Oxford: Oxford University Press
https://www.ethnologue.com/ is a good source of information about
language types and characteristics
https://linguisticmaps.tumblr.com/ has a range of interesting and
informative maps
https://wals.info/ is the site of the World Atlas of Language
Structures and contains technical data on hundreds of languages