Hello, everyone. Welcome to Studies in English B (SinEb).

It is almost exactly 2 months since the last class in the first semester. I hope you enjoyed your 2 months’ holiday.

This semester will be more or less the same as last semester, except that

• we will spend more time practicing writing about linguistics topics, both for classwork and for homework.
• I will give more precise instruction in how to write.
• presentations will begin later in the semester.

Homework:

1. Are all possible combinations of Japanese sounds used in the Japanese language?
2. Write 5 possible combinations which are not actually used.

Today’s class

1. Imagine you are teaching someone Japanese.
   1. Choose one Japanese sound and describe/explain how to make this sound.
   2. Look at handout #1 which has a table showing the main consonant sounds in English together with their scientific names and a description.
   3. Look at handout #2 which has a diagram of the human head showing the different positions for making the main English vowel sounds.
2. Using handout #1, what English sounds are difficult for you to make?
3. What kinds of sounds are difficult for ventriloquists to make? Why?
4. What English sounds are also used in Japanese?
   1. What English sounds are NOT used in Japanese?
5. What Japanese sounds are NOT used in English?
6. What parts of the mouth are important when making vowel sounds?
7. Invent a name for a new brand of Japanese car or drink or cartoon character.

Welcome to Sheffner’s 2013 Studies in English I class blog. Thank you for visiting. I look forward to teaching you and learning with you this year.

This blog will be updated weekly. Each week there will be a summary of the lesson and the homework details.

Textbook: There is no textbook for this course. However, students will need a looseleaf notebook. From time to time I will give you handouts. Additional information (links, videos, etc.) will be available on this blog.

Click the images to see a bigger version.

Weeping cherry in Himuro Jinja, Nara city.

Homework

1. Send me an email with a short self introduction. Use the correct format.

   

2. Leave a comment here on this blog by clicking the words “Leave a comment” . The comment is: “Tell us something you know about linguistics and/or how you feel about linguistics, or something about linguistics you are interested in.”
   1. For your privacy, when leaving a comment, use your family name only or use a nickname.
   2. If you use a nickname, please tell me your nickname when you send me your email.
   1. To leave a comment, you must first type in your email address. Please use your school email address.
3. Homework deadline: Tuesday (April 15th) midnight (23:59).

In this course, students will

• have group discussions,
• do lots of writing in English
• learn about academic writing formats
• make 2 formal presentations to the whole class,
• and write a final paper in English.

Some of the topics we might find out about:

• the sounds of English (phonemes and phonetics) and their corresponding written forms (graphemes)
• some rules of English spelling
• do men and women talk differently?
• how do children learn language?
• what is the difference between human and animal languages? Between human and computer languages?
• the origins of words, including common prefixes and suffixes, and word roots (morphemes, Greek and Latin influences)
• the history of the English language (Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Middle and modern English)
• English pronunciation and how it has changed over the centuries,  and different dialects and accents
• learn about syllables, how to count them in English (poetry, haiku)
• compare aspects of English with other languages, especially other European languages and Japanese

Homework:

Write a summary of today’s class and what you learned, plus your impressions.

Today’s class:

1. Free writing 1: “Slang is bad.” What do you think? What is slang? Is there good slang?
2. Free writing 2: “Only other folks have accents.” What do you think? Do you have an accent? Are accents good or bad? Is there such a thing as an accent-free way of speaking (e.g. Standard Japanese 標準語）?
3. Free writing 3: written language vs spoken language. Are they different? How? What kind of differences are there?
4. We discussed some differences between written and spoken English.
   1. Spoken language tends to be less formal; written English tends to be more formal
   2. Spoken language can have many main clauses, whereas written language tends to have just one main clause 主節 and several sub-clauses 従属節
   3. Spoken language tends to use short, simple sentences, whereas written language tends to use longer, more complex sentences (sentences which have 1 or more subordinate clauses).
5. We watched the first 4 minutes of a video of a presentation in English about linguistics (watch with English subtitles 字幕機能をオンしたら自動英語字幕スーパーが見えます）: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LorhwnfLn8Q[/youtube]
6. We discussed the structure of the beginning of this presentation:
   1. What comes first?
   2. What does the presenter say first?
   3. Why does he ask 3 questions?

Welcome to Sheffner’s Studies in English B (Linguistics).

I hope you had an enjoyable and refreshing summer vacation.

The semester for this class begins Friday, September 28th, 2012.

I look forward to seeing you.

Related articles

• Introduction English Linguistics
• Language play, language learning
• What is corpus linguistics and how can I use it?
• The Importance of Linguistics in Writing
• Create Content that Effectively Crosses Cultural and Linguistic Borders