1、思考題Unit 1What is applied linguistics?The term applied linguistics refers to a broad range of activities which involve solving some language-related problem or addressing some language-related concern. The problems applied linguistics concerns itself which are likely to be:How can we teach languages

2、better?How can we diagnose speech pathologies better?How can we improve the training of translators and interpreters?How can we write a valid language examination?How can we evaluate a school bilingual program?How can we determine the literacy levels of a whole population?How can we helpfully discus

3、s the language of a text?What advice can we offer a Ministry of Education on a proposal to introduce a new medium of instruction?How can we compare the acquisition of a European and an Asian language?What advice should we give a defense lawyer on the authenticity of a police transcript of an intervi

4、ew with a suspect?What is the difference between linguistics and applied linguistics?Linguistics deals with theoryApplied linguistics is simply not in the business of developing new theories. Its concern is with new data.Both sides of the linguistics/applied linguistics relationship ought to be acco

5、untable to and in regular dialog with each other with regard to theories as well as practices.What are the domains of applied linguistics?Major branches of applied linguistics include bilingualism and multilingualism, computer-mediated communication (CMC), conversation analysis, language assessment,

6、 discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, language planning and policies, pragmatics, forensic linguistics, and translation.What are the research methods in applied linguistics?Progress in understanding cognitive developmental change mechanisms requires methods that yield d

7、etailed data about particular changes. The microgenetic method is an approach that can yield such data. It involves (a) observations of individual children throughout the period of the change, (b) a high density of observations relative to the rate of change within that period, and (c) intensive tri

8、al-by-trial analyses intended to infer the processes that gave rise to the change. This approach can illuminate both qualitative and quantitative aspects of change, indicate the conditions under which changes occur, and yield otherwise unobtainable information about short-lived transition strategies

9、. The cost in time and effort of such studies is often high, but the value of the information about change can more than justify the cost.What is the trend of the development of applied linguistics?Kaplan suggests that in the future applied linguistics is likely to be marked by a more powerful versi

10、on of descriptive linguistics as the central linguistic resource for research, and he refers particularly to the development of corpus linguistics in this respect. He mentions, too, the increasing importance of technology in many branches of the field. Applied linguists will increasingly need to par

11、ticipate in interdisciplinary research projects, he believes.Unit 2Is the relationship between linguistics and applied linguistics, hierarchy or partnership?Yes, because Applied linguistics can not only test the applicability and replicability of linguistics and its application, but also question an

12、d challenge them where they are found wanting. (p.4)Both sides of the linguistics/applied linguistics relationship ought to be accountable to and in regular dialogue with each other with regard to theories as well as practices.Accountability will center on set of responsibilities failing on the shou

13、lders of linguistics and applied linguistics in turn.Should applied linguistics be theoretical? Why?Yes, I think so. Because Being theoretical is a desirable thing. But theoretical stance is more useful as a motto than theoretical allegiance. Encountering problems and adopting a convincing stance to

14、wards them is what defines applied linguistics as a discipline.What is the disciplinary nature of applied linguistics?Applied linguistics has many of the markings of an academic discipline: professional journals, professional associations, international recognition for the field, funding resources f

15、or research projects, a large number of individuals who see themselves as applied linguists, trained professionals who are hired in academic institutions as applied linguists, students who want to become applied linguists, and a recognized means for training these students to become applied linguist

16、s.Applied linguistics recognizes that linguistics must be included as a core knowledge base in the work of applied linguistics, although the purpose of most applied linguists work is not simply to “apply” linguistics to achieve a solution.Applied linguistics is grounded in real-world, language-drive

17、n problems and issues (primarily by linkages to practical issues involving language use, language evaluation, language contact and multilingualism, language policies, and language learning and teaching). There is also, however, the recognition that these practically driven problems have extraordinar

18、y range, and this range tends to dilute any sense of common purpose or common professional identification among practitioners.Applied linguistics typically incorporates other disciplinary knowledge beyond linguistics in its efforts to address language-based problems. Applied linguists commonly draw

19、upon and are often well trained in psychology, education, anthropology, political science, sociology, measurement, computer programming, literature, and/or economics.Applied linguistics is, of necessity, an interdisciplinary field, since few practical language issues can be addressed through the kno

20、wledge resources of any single discipline, including linguistics.Applied linguistics commonly includes a core set of issues and practices that is readily identified as work carried out by many applied linguists (e.g., language teaching, language teacher preparation, and language curriculum developme

21、nt).Applied linguistics generally incorporates or includes several further identifiable sub-fields of study: second language acquisition, forensic linguistics, language testing, corpus linguistics, lexicography and dictionary making, language translation, and second language writing research. Some m

22、embers of these fields do not see themselves as applied linguistics, though their work clearly addresses practical language issues.Applied linguistics often defines itself broadly in order to include additional fields of language-related studies (e.g., language pathology, natural language processing

23、, first language literacy research, and first language composition studies). The large majority of members of these fields do not see themselves as applied linguistics, but the broad definition gives license for applied linguists to work with and borrow from these disciplines for their own goals.Wha

24、t is the successful way of applying linguistics?Identifying and defining problems.Contextualizing those problems with linguistic study and developing a theoretical stance.Harnessing appropriate resources for the exploration of possible solutions.Evaluating the proposed solutionsHow to be a good appl

25、ied linguist?The good applied linguist not only starts from day-to-day practical problems and looks for solutions in description, models and theories of language, but also develops his or her own models and theoretical stance.Unit 3Is it necessary to draw a division between a general, abstract view

26、of human language and the study of the different, specific languages spoken by human beings? Why?A division between a general, abstract view of human language and the study of the different, specific languages spoken by human beings should not over stressed.Of what does the historical perspective on

27、 applied linguistics remind us?The historical perspective on applied linguistics reminds us that scholars of languages and language over the centuries have combined the study of individual languages with comparison across languages and with debates about language as a whole.What are the key points c

28、oncerning the nature of human language?The professional community as a whole would agree on a number of key points concerning the nature of human language in general:All normal human acquire a first language with little or no formal tuition.Humans can learn one anothers language.All human languages

29、have forms and meanings. Forms are reflected in syntax, vocabulary and phonology.All languages function are realized in substance, whether sound alone or sound and writing.All human languages function adequately in their social settingsAll languages function within social contexts.All languages refl

30、ect and are integrally bound up with some sort of psychological, social and cultural reality for their speakers.What should cross-linguistic comparison be seen as?Cross-linguistic comparison should not be seen as merely error or difficulty-driven, but problem-driven in the true sense.Problem include

31、s: curiosity, enquiry, comparison, evolution and questioning, trouble-shooting errors, obstacles and difficulties and sorting out failure.What is the most significant influence that discourse analysis has on linguistic comparison?Discourse analysis has had a profound effect on how languages are comp

32、ared.The most significant influence: providing a new set of parameters within which to carry out the comparisons, which are independent of the traditional levels of analysis such as sentence grammar and semantics.Unit 4In what ways can language be viewed as abstract system?Abstract system, existing

33、independently of its contexts of use, as associated with “mental constructs”.Innate capacity of acquiring human language. That all normal human beings acquire human language of some sort, whille other animal species do not.Universal features of languages.Native speakers can say of their own language

34、s by intuition and retrospectionoCompetence and performance, which are two characteristics of language proposed by Chomsky.In what ways can language be viewed as social phenomenon?The forms and meanings of languages have evolved in social contexts.Language itself contributes to construct social and

35、cultural realities.Language is acquired in social contexts.Performance constitutes the most important evidence for how language works and what it is.Performance is best observed in real language phenomena such as written text.Linguistic evidence is external.“Meaning” is only an abstraction from the

36、actual communicative achievementsWhat is the role of sentence in grammar?The use of sentences as a theoretical and descriptive unit lie a number of basic assumptions. Sentences recur across many different models and in descriptions of many different languages:1) Sentences have meaning. They are ofte

37、n traditionally defined as completed thoughts or units of meaning.Sentences express fundamental meanings found in all languages. In other words, sentence is the universal of human language.Sentences are formed in individual language according to rules.Sentences are formed from other, lower-level gra

38、mmatical units.Sentences exist in both spoken and written language.What is item and paradigm approach?According to McCarthy, it is the way individual words( e.g. nouns, verbs), inflect or combine to create the paradigms of tenses, number, person, etc. The item and paradigm approach has a good deal o

39、f usefulness in modeling languages in relation to one another.But the weakness of the item and paradigm approach is that it does not always bring together into formal paradigms items that learners may have to make genuine choices from when constructing real texts.What is the place of lexis in differ

40、ent views of language?Lexis has been the poor relation of features and it has had something of a struggle to establish itself as an independent, yet systematic level of linguistic encoding. Vocabulary was usually seen to be a lower prioritythan the learning of structure.Unit 5When did the term SLA f

41、irst appear as a sub-discipline of applied linguistics ?The notion of acquiring a second language through the mediation of an efficiently ordered methodology is not new. For centuries, language pedagogues have claimed to offer the most effective methods for acquiring foreign tongues. Parallel with t

42、he methodological debates, high-level theoretical concerns have emerged, such as the differences between first and second language acquisition, etc.What are the questions and issues addressing SLA?Is second language acquisition like or different from first language acquisition?2)Is conscious learnin

43、g the same as acquisition?Are there universal features of second language acquisition regard less of which L2 is being learned?What role do the first or other languages play in the ease or difficulty encountered when learning a second language?What non-linguistic factors affect SLA?What is the diffe

44、rence between SLA in a naturalistic setting compared with a formal setting?7) Can learners language be described systematically at various stages of development or is learner language erratic and unsystematic?What is interlanguage?Interlanguage, often abbreviated to IL, was introduced by Larry Selin

45、ker (1972) to refer to L2 learners independent language system. The theory claimed that learners construct a series of interlanguages (i.e. mental grammars that are drawn upon in producing and comprehending sentences in the L2) and that they revise these grammars in systematic and predictable ways a

46、s they pass along an interlanguage continuum.What is connectionism and connectionist approach?Connectionism is the general metaphorical construct in associative models. It is the idea that important information about language can be extracted from probabilistic patterns of grammatical and morphologi

47、cal regularities. The mind makes connections among multiple nodes of processed information; the more connections, the stronger the trace in acquisition.While connectionist approaches do not only help to explain emergent approximations to target behavior.5. What is zone of proximal development and it

48、s implication?The zone of proximal development defines functions that have not matured yet, but are in a process of maturing, that will mature tomorrow, that are currently in an embryonic state; these functions could be called the buds of development, the flowers of development, rather than the frui

49、ts of development, that is, what is only just maturing.Unit 6What is the significance of understanding the differences between speech and writing?It is useful to better organize the skill-based language teacheing and offer a window into the immerse variety of discoure-types that exit in our complex

50、societies.What is the difference between text and discourse?Texts are products of language use (e.g. novel, article, etc). It attempts to account for how sentences are linked together using linguistic resources.Discourse is the process of meaning-creation and interaction, whether in writing or in sp

51、eech. It concerns with the distribution of linguistic elements in extended texts, and links between the text and its context.What is discourses analysis?Discources analysis exmines patterns of language across texts and considers the relationship between langaueg and the social and cultural contexts

52、in which it is used. Discourse analysis also considers the ways that the use of languaeg presents different views of the world and different understandings. It examines how the use of language is influenced by relationships between participants as well as the effects the use of languaeg has upon soc

53、ial identities and relations. It also considers how views of the world, and identities, are constructed through the use of discourse.What is conversation analysis?The study of talk in interaction. CA generally attempts to describe the orderliness, structure and sequential patterns of interaction, wh

54、ether this is institutional (in the school, doctors surgery, courts or elsewhere) or casual conversation.Conversation Analysis prefers to work with individual conversations analyzed in depth rather than multiple conversations analyzed more quantitatively.How can the speech genre be realized?Speech g

55、ener is a high-order feature of speech events (Hymes, 1972).Genre is something separate from the speech event itself.A genre may coincides with a speech event, butgenres can also occur within speed events, and the same genre can show variation in different speech events.Some genre-type studies focus

56、 more on variability and mixing of activities. Duranti(1983) argues that the same genre can be realized in different ways according to the nature of the speech, even, depending on who the speakers are, what the purposes are, etc.Unit 7What is the role of theory in SLA research?There are at least 40

57、theories of SLA.Two forms of theories:Set-of-laws formCausal-process formNativist theoryEnvironmentalist theoryInteractionist theoryTheory building is concerned with Explanation as well as Description.Two approaches to theory building:Theory-then-researchResearch-then-theoryStudy of SLA involves bot

58、h approaches.Both have strengths and weaknesses.Different researchers may use different approaches.What is Acculturation Model? Any implications?The process of becoming adapted to a new culture.Acculturation/SLA is determined by the degree of social and psychological distance between the learner and

59、 the target language.Such distance influences SLA by determining the amount of contact with the target language and the degree to which the learner is open to that input which is available.What are the similarities and differences between Acculturation Model and Accommodation Model? SchumannsPidgini

60、zation Hypothesis and Acculturation Model of Second Language Acquisition (1976) is a composite of eight major variables that, according to research, help to enforce, or altogether extinguish, the process of second language learning.Contrastingly, the Giless Accommodation Theory of Second Language Ac