Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and exercises for Language and literature for Primary education

Speech

• Transient
• Additive or 'rhapsodic'
• Aggregative
• Redundant or 'copious'
• Loosely structured grammatically
• People-centered
• Context dependent

Writing

• Permanent
• Hierarchically ordered within the clause structure
• Medium for logical reasoning
• Tends to avoid redundancy
• Structured grammatically, compact
• Topic-centered
• Context-reduced

Similarities

• Both depend on their culture
• Both change in different situations

Differences

• Speech is transient, writing is permanent
• Speech is loosely grammatically, writing is lexically and grammatically compact

Relationship between Language and Culture in Language Study

• Native speakers
• Cross-cultural

Key Linguistic Concepts

Footing

A term coined by sociologist Erving Goffman to denote the stance we take up to the others present in the way we...

Modern Descriptive Grammar

Descriptive grammar describes language as it is, not as it should be. It is based on a massive corpus of real English, both spoken and written, and it considers many structures that traditional grammar either ignored completely (e.g., determiners and verb complementation) or discussed only briefly (e.g., aspect and adverbial clauses). The first generation of descriptive grammars may be said to be the work of 'armchair grammarians', while only the current generation is corpus-based. Descriptive grammar, like other kinds of grammar, relies on structural analysis. It looks at syntax on many levels: morpheme, word, phrase, clause, sentence, and text.

Generative Grammar

Chomsky (1965) views language as an innate ability that...

Writing Templates for English Exams

Opinion Essay Structure

Nowadays, many people think that [TOPIC]. In my opinion...

• Firstly: [IDEA 1]. Moreover, [EXPLANATION]. For example, [EXAMPLE].
• Secondly: [IDEA 2]. In addition, [EXPLANATION].
• Counter-argument: However, some people think that [OPPOSING VIEW]. I understand this point of view, but I believe that [YOUR OPINION].
• Conclusion: To conclude, [SUMMARIZE ARGUMENTS]. In my view, [FINAL CONCLUSION].

Formal Email Structure

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to express my opinion about [TOPIC].

• Firstly: [MAIN IDEA]. Moreover, [EXPLANATION].
• Secondly: [SECOND IDEA]. In addition, [EXAMPLE].
• Request: I believe that [WHAT YOU REQUEST]. Therefore, [RESULT OF REQUEST].

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward...

The Narrator's Voice in The Canterbury Tales

The pilgrim narrator in The Canterbury Tales, as in other narrative works (written in verse), speaks of what he has dreamed, read, or seen in a manner which the reader soon learns to recognize as characteristic—the author's own voice. The Chaucer of all these poems is a retiring, bookish man, with little first-hand experience of life, least of all in the great matter of love. He can therefore do no better than report faithfully what he dreams, reads, or observes of the world and its ways.

Often he is puzzled by what he finds, and at times he even apologizes for what he is forced (for some reason) to report. Since the "matter" of his stories is not of his own making, it cannot always be to his taste....

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759)

Rasselas, the son of an emperor, is confined to the idyllic Happy Valley until he is ready to rule. However, he resents this confinement and longs to experience the world beyond. Determined to discover the true meaning of happiness and his"choice of life" Rasselas devises a plan to escape. Throughout his journey, he displays intelligence, wit, and a rational mind, often seeking guidance from the wise Imlac.

Rasselas's Discontent

In a conversation with his former instructor, Rasselas confesses his dissatisfaction with the pleasures of the Happy Valley. He admits to feeling stagnant and lacking aspirations. The old man, taken aback, suggests that experiencing the world'...

Postwar Poetry

The end of the Civil War is marked by a hard postwar period of poverty, censorship, and exile of some intellectuals. Poets experienced the environment through evasion of the intimate (entrenched poetry) or through the testimony of the distressing situation (uprooted and social poetry).

Decade of the 40s

In the Generation of 36, authors like Luis Felipe Vivanco, Leopoldo Panero, Luis Rosales, and Dionisio Ridruejo developed established poetry. Garcilasismo, highlighted by José García Nieto, also emerged.

Ingrained Poetry

Characterized by an intimate evasion, positive vision of God, and classical metric. Authors like Luis Rosales, Luis Felipe Vivanco, Leopoldo Panero, and Dionisio Ridruejo were prominent in this movement.

Uprooted

Linguistic Concepts

2. (1.5p) Define the following concepts as they have been used in this course, giving an example of each:

Meronymy

Meronymy is the semantic relation between a lexical item denoting a part and that denoting the corresponding whole. Meronyms are mentally triggered, since our minds have scripts, e.g., knowledge about event sequences due to knowledge of the world. We have scripts for events that commonly occur in our lives, such as going to a doctor's office, a restaurant, a library, or the supermarket.

Converses

Converses are pairs of opposite terms characterized by the following feature: when one member of the pair is substituted for the other, the new sentence can be made logically equivalent to the original one by interchanging...

Presumptions

Linguistic Presumption (LP)

The hearer is presumed capable of determining the meaning and the referents of the expression uttered.

Communicative Presumption (CP)

Unless there is evidence to the contrary, a speaker is assumed to be speaking with some identifiable communicative intent.

Presumption of Literalness (PL)

Unless there is evidence to the contrary, a speaker is assumed to be speaking literally

Conversational Presumptions (ConPs):

• Relevance: The speaker's remarks are relevant to the conversation.
• Sincerity: The speaker is being sincere.
• Truthfulness: The speaker is attempting to say something true.
• Quantity: The speaker contributes the appropriate amount of information.
• Quality: The speaker has adequate evidence for what they say.

Strategies

Romanticism is a term used to refer to a cultural movement whose origins can be traced back to Wordsworth's publication, Lyrical Ballads, in 1798, and it comes to an end in 1924 with Lord Byron's death. It's considered to be a reaction to the Age of Reason and Enlightenment. Romantic thinkers preferred irrationality and attempted to answer big questions.

S. T. Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner": A Poem of Romanticism

S. T. Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is one of the most well-known poems associated with Romanticism. It is included in Biografia Literaria and tells the story of a mariner and his crew sailing, where the mariner kills an albatross and everyone is punished because of it.

Key Features of Romanticism in the

Eliot's Early Style and French Symbolist Influence

T.S. Eliot attributed a great deal of his early style to the French Symbolists, whom he first encountered in college in a book by Arthur Symons called The Symbolist Movement in Literature. These influential figures included:

• Arthur Rimbaud
• Charles Baudelaire
• Stéphane Mallarmé
• Jules Laforgue

It is easy to understand why a young, aspiring poet would want to imitate these glamorous bohemian figures, but their ultimate effect on his poetry is perhaps less profound than he claimed. While he took from them their ability to infuse poetry with high intellectualism while maintaining a sensuousness of language, Eliot also developed a great deal that was new and original. His early works, like “The Love...