Reflection week 1

For this semester I have an interesting subject which is English For Language Teachers and being taught by Madam Ira. For the first week, we have been introduced to language and communication. What do people know when they know a language?  We would think that this is an easy question to answer since, as a speaker of it, we all use our language frequently. The situation is rather like driving a car. Many people drive a car perfectly well without knowing how the car works. In the case of languages the situation is more difficult in that languages are not physical object like cars. They exist only within the minds of speakers. There are many theories about how language works, but the more language is studied the more complex it seems to become. 

When people know a language they must know how speech sounds relate to meanings. When speaking we produce sounds and our hearers hear sound. Speech sounds are the medium we use to represent what it is we are saying, that is, they represent content or meaning and both the speaker and hearer normally know the meanings which are conveyed by the sounds produced by a speaker (always provided that both the speaker and hearer speak the same language). But sounds convey meaning only indirectly. 

Language can be seen as sound organized into units of form and function with meaning, contextualized in reality. Language can also be seen as a system of signals by which we communicate. Overall:

                                          i.    Language is a code

                                        ii.    Linguistic symbols have function and form

                                       iii.    Linguistic units are constructed according to rules

                                       iv.    Language is specifically human

                                        v.    Language use is creative

                                       vi.    Language use is constrained 

Besides that, I get to know more about communication from our lecture. Communication is a wide – ranging term, but the context which we are reffering to is the context of human communication. Human communication has many variables. The first subdivision of communication is between non – vocal and vocal communication, which can be further subdivided into non – speech and speech. Here is more information on language  http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367/la5.shtml