Title: Morphology/Lexicon in Language Education and Professional Writing.Thread: After reviewing chapters 5 & 6 chapters of "Introduction to Language" it should be evident that phonology and phonetics

DB 4 - Morphology/Lexicon

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Question 2. Of the information that you gleaned through the reading and presentation, what do you consider to be vital and useful for you in your current working situation?

I remember learning about phonetics, phonology, and articulation when I was working towards my ESOL endorsement. The manner and place of articulation was often mentioned and described with how ELLs learn the English language. The hardest part is learning the phonetic symbols and how different or even similar they can be to other languages. When it came to the voiceless and voiced fricatives and affricates, is where I struggled as an educator to learn and teach. I find it somewhat similar to what speech pathologists do in their line of work. 

In addition, I also work for Educational Testing Service. When I am scoring ELP assessments for adults and kids, I have to listen closely to their intonation when scoring test takers on their rise and pitch for a written passage. Rise and pitch can affect meaning when trying to relay a message. Test takers seem to struggle with vowels and whether they are stressed or unstressed, or in other words being higher in pitch and louder and vice versa.

When it comes to phonology, there are many phonological rules to learn and remember, which is hard for English Language Learners. Phonological rules, "apply to phonemic strings and alter them in various ways to derive their phonetic pronunciation, or in the case of signed languages, their hand configuration" (Fromkin, et al., 2014, p.265). Last school year, I had an ELL student that was also deaf. I soon came to realize that when discussing phonemes and sign language with her interpreter that there are a lot of phonetic sounds that are not similar with their phonetic forms or shapes. We usually had a hard time discussing parts of speech because of this. It was a challenge for me as an ESOL teacher to come up with varying strategies that were beneficial to the student due to the lack of background knowledge that I was coming with to teach a student that was also deaf and learning a new language. I was very grateful for her interpreter during these times because it would have been difficult teaching the English language for concepts that I did not have visuals or gestures for. I discovered that young learners can recognize phonemes at an early age. I am also grateful for the challenges that come my way as an educator because it helps me grow and feeds my need for more knowledge. Proverbs 1:7 says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction" (New International Version). As educators, we are always in need of more knowledge, to make ourselves wiser and to educate students that may be possible leaders of tomorrow. 

References 

Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hymans, N. (2014). An introduction to language (10th ed.). Boston, MA. Cengage. 

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