DESCRIPTIONS OF LANGUAGE

Assignment - Language Systems in English

Assignment - Language Systems in English

Part One

Function of any language system in English

Taking English as a second or the third language has now become the most important part of education. English is the second largest spoken language in the world after Chinese. It is easy to learn English as it has defined characters and tenses as compared to other complex languages (Ellis, 1994, pp. 24-26).

English language functions as the course of communication for the world, in both professional as well as idiosyncratic ways. There are lots of problems associated to it teaching and training due to non-native attitude. Tefl (teaching of English as a foreign language) is the mode of teaching English to the people who are not familiar to the language. Difficulties in the learning arise due to the degree of the difference of the other person language. An Indian would have difficulty in learning English as compared to the Russian or German. This is because most of the words come from these languages but are pronounced differently.

It is noted that most of the people who teach English in the foreign countries are their own natives and have learned about the Basic English from the same natives, hence the errors in deliverance might occur. These teachers have required teaching qualifications of their own country like in Hong Kong, LPAT (Language Proficiency Assessment for Teachers) is mandatory for teachers of English (Harmer,1991, pp. 54-59).

Difficulties encountered by the students

The usual difficulties of taking EFL, which students face, are of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and varieties of developed English in different areas (Parrott,2009, pp 105-231).

Pronunciation problem is associated with the accent of the person. Consonant and Vowel phoneme, syllable structure, unstressed vowels, stress timing and connected speech are some the errors that a student of EFL may come across (Harmer,1991, pp. 54-59).

In terms of Grammar tenses, aspects, and mood, functions of auxiliaries, modal verbs idiomatic usages and articles implementations are some addressed issues. Vocabulary has the issues for phrasal verbs, word derivation, and size of lexicon, collocations, slang and colloquialisms (Parrott,2009, pp 105-231). Further to these, there is a vast difference between the spoken and written language, example of this is mentioned in case below.

Analyzing the relationship between Time, Tense and Aspect in English

The timings in English language refer to words like “In - (year, month) - (e.g. In 1909, in July)”, “On - (day, date) - On Tuesday, on July. 19, 2011”, “At - (time) - At 7:00am, at 9:30pm” and “During - (decade, long time period) - During the era of 1990s, during the 19th Century”. These words are referred in general usage terms, whereas there is another list for determining timings like “When”, which is accompanied by the past tense of the verb. Example, "When were you born? I was born in 1986".

In the referred text, there is the error of timing with verb input in the first line which should be “I HAD worked in the EFL Unit for 24 ...