Deck 1: Language and Human Communication an Overview

Question 1

Present students with video clips of other cultures communicating with the sound turned off. Discuss how body language, proxemics, and gesture vary between cultures.

Answer 1

not answered

Question 2

Present the class with a number of non-words. Ask students in groups to work out how to say the words and judge if they can occur in English. Permissible non-words might include: spode, bloot, endine, batorning, figsaly, droggle. Not permissible non-words might include: sroke, ngeeve, vladick, zhump, etsa, soosd. Ask students to give reasons for their judgments.

Answer 2

not answered

Question 3

Which term refers to "sounds that create meaningful differences"?

A) phonemes
B) referents
C) phonetics
D) vowels

Answer 3

A

Question 4

Ask students to find the free (root) and bound (affix) morphemes in the following words: Hippopotamus (1 free), redesign (1 bound, 1 free), blessed (1 free, 1 bound), dentistry (1 free, 2 bound), calculation (1 free, 1 bound), photographer (2 free, 1 bound). Common errors will be counting syllables instead of morphemes and breaking what appears to be a compound word into two.

Question 5

Ask students individually to write down as many words as they can think of in one minute in the category "food." When they have completed this task, have students share their list with their neighbor, noting words in common and strategies they used to recall the words (categories, etc.). In small groups, have students look at the lists and sort the foods into superordinate categories (e.g. junk food, breakfast, fruits and vegetables). Ask students how they could re-categorize their lists (e.g., colors, fat content, where you buy it).

Question 6

In what ways would a disorder in one aspect of language (i.e., semantics) impact the other aspects?

Question 7

Present this sentence and ask students to vary stress to change the meaning at least four ways: "The girl in green was very naughty."

Question 8

What is meant by communicative competence?

Question 9

Provide the class with a printed text of a famous speech or document, and have them "translate" it into "motherese." Discuss how they decided which elements to maintain and which were omitted.

Question 10

Present students with these phrases (or others you create) and ask them to make several novel sentences from each set.
Discuss the variety of sentences created and then ask students to compare with their classmates. How many sentences a child of two and a half years with a 300 word vocabulary be able to create?(Note: There are commercially available sets of magnets with words and phrases that can be used for this activity.)

Question 11

The sentence, "The cat answers the phone.", is a violation of what aspect of language?

A) propositional meaning
B) figurative language
C) syntax
D) pragmatics

Question 12

List three extralinguistic elements and give examples of each.

Question 13

What evidence is available to support the importance of infant - adult interaction and its impact on language development and eventual academic performance? How might this interaction differ by culture and socio-economic status?

Question 14

Explain the morphological rule for plural used in the English language.

Question 15

Which of the following is the best example of an extralinguistic element of communication?

A) phonemic code
B) syntactic rules
C) speech code
D) pitch and intonation

Question 16

Divide students into groups of three. Assign each student one of the following roles without letting the other members know what the roles are: One person is assigned the role of explaining what they did on the weekend, another is assigned the role of interrupting the other by saying, "What? I don't understand." or "I'm sorry." The third group member is the observer and should be prepared to report back to the others (and the whole group if you prefer) on the success of the communication within the group. Allow students to role play for 2 minutes and then ask the groups to discuss the process. Reassign the roles within the group. One person has to describe the classroom without using any nouns. The second person is to participate as a listener and ask questions and respond naturally. The observer should be prepared to report on the interaction. Let the role play run for about two minutes and then ask the groups to discuss the process. Lead a class discussion about the exercise focusing on their feelings, frustrations, and the techniques they used to repair and indicate breakdown.

Question 17

Which statement is true of language?

A) it is unique to each person in the language community
B) it is largely genetically predetermined
C) it is the oral expression of underlying rules
D) it is rule based allowing for infinite number of utterances

Question 18

In what ways does human communication compare and contrast with animal communication?

Question 19

Describe the five basic components of language and give an example of each.

Question 20

How might an understanding of Vygotsky's zone of proximal development apply to how a mother scaffolds her young child's learning?
Learning Activities

Question 21

Nonlinguistic behaviors are not universal and vary by culture.

Question 22

Describe Piaget's four stages of cognitive development and the influences of each stage on language
development.

Question 23

Unlike the other aspects of language, pragmatics are rule bound.

Question 24

Lexicon, or vocabulary, is a synonym for the semantic component of language.

Question 25

A basic syntactic rule in English is the object + subject + verb sequence.

Question 26

Explain to a lay person the difference between speech and language.

Question 27

A free morpheme can also be called an affix.

Question 28

The symbols used in the English language are mutually agreed upon but arbitrary.

Question 29

Fluent reading requires decoding of letters and words, use of narrative knowledge, and semantic-syntactic
information.

Question 30

The melodic components of speech are often referred to as subsegmental devices.

Question 31

American Sign Language is not a true language.

Question 32

Why are metalinguistic skills important for successful language development?

Question 33

Children must learn the phonotactic rules for combining phonemes.

Question 34

Describe the roles of the CNS and PNS in speech production.

Question 35

Children who have difficulty with the auditory-oral system usually find the visual-graphic system easier to use.

Question 36

How does consonant production contrast with vowel production?

Question 37

Proxemics means body language.