Applied English for Linguistics
Summer 2010- J. E. Seibert -- Tokyo International University of America
Partner review of introductory lectures

Read these statements to your partners and ask your partners to answer "true" or "false".
Discuss the answers together and make sure everyone understands.
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One student reads and listens for the answer from his or her partners.

1. _F__ Humans learn and use language by memorizing all possible sentences -- and then using these sentences over and over again in many situations.

2. _T__ Linguists say that human language is creative. This means we have the ability to make and understand words and sentences we have never heard before.

3. _F__ The study of sentence structure is called phonology.

4. _T__ Morphology is the study of word structure and word formation.

5. _T__ "Linguistic competence" is the subconscious knowledge we use to tell whether a certain sentence in our native language is acceptable ("correct") or not.

Now another student reads and listens for the answer.

6. _F__ Our knowledge of the "grammar" of our native language includes conscious knowledge of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics.

7. _T__ Phonetics is the study of speech sounds.

8. _F__ For linguists, not all grammars have parity: there are "good" and "bad" languages or dialects.

9. _T__ Prescriptive grammar describes how we should speak or write and is often what traditional grammar teachers or elementary school teachers teach us.

10._T__ Descriptive grammar describes how people actually speak or write in everyday situations.

Now the third student reads and listens for the answer.

11._F__ The word "grammar" means the same thing to linguists as it does to most high school students.

12._F__ Linguists think that Tokyo dialect is the "best" Japanese dialect.

13._T__ All languages change over time. You do not speak the same way your great-grandparents spoke.

14._F__ Professor Fujiwara is a native speaker of English because her English is excellent.

15._T__ Human beings have become specialized for language over hundreds of thousands of years. The way our speech organs work, the way we percieve sounds, and our ability to use language creatively show that we are specialized for language.