Language Investigation
You need to:
a. compare English with Vietnamese from two perspectives: phonology, syntax, morphology, semantics or another perspective (which must be approved by your lecturer). Discuss only a limited number of points within each of these perspectives. (1500 words) (20 marks)
b. indicate how your knowledge of these differences and similarities in the languages would influence your teaching of English to students who use Vietnamese. (500 words) (5 marks)
c. keep a research journal in which you collect reflections (based on your own opinion and experiences) and investigations (based on academic sources) on five topics covered in five of the lectures in order to help you complete sections a and b above. Identify each journal entry with the lecture number and the main topic under discussion. These journal entries (150-200 words each) need to be included in an appendix to this assignment. Each of the five entries needs to focus on a different lecture and needs to refer to at least one recent academic source not older than 3 years, e.g. recent journal articles. Only topics introduced in the course materials and the lectures can be included in the journal, although it is expected that your reflections/investigations will explore ideas beyond those discussed in the unit e.g. after completing lecture 3 (on consonants) you may wish to reflect on the difficulties that Vietnamese learners of English have pronouncing English consonants and some strategies that may help them overcome these difficulties. At first you may not know which reflections will be directly relevant to your final essay for this assignment, but over the weeks, you may want to focus on topics that you plan to include in the essay. In this way you can use the journal entries as an early draft of ideas that you can later develop in the assignment. Your topics could include (but are not restricted to) the following:
• How you would teach a particular language point to a specific group of students using a game or activity.
• How some features of the English language do/don’t exist in other languages and therefore might be easy/difficult for speakers of these languages to learn.
• How some features of the English language vary greatly across different varieties of English around the world.
• Your own experiences in learning or teaching particular language points.
• Some interesting, unusual, humorous or other additional points regarding the topic. The sources of all published materials need to be referenced appropriately. (15 marks)
d. Do include paraphrases of ideas from at least five up-to-date, referenced academic sources. Use APA referencing guidelines. (10 marks