Research Paper: Teaching Language at the Discourse Level

Teaching language is a complex phenomenon that consists of several integral parts. This process is performed on several different levels. Students who learn English as a second language can have a perfect knowledge of grammar, phonetics and syntax but still not possess enough knowledge in order to speak the language freely. This happens because language is realized through a discourse, which shows the dynamics of language. Progress in the language learning is impossible without the knowledge of this part of language. Famous linguist James Gee defined discourse as “as a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing, and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group… or to signal (that one is playing) a socially meaningful ‘role’” (Gee, 1990, p. 143). This means that each time we use language we use it in a discourse, we utter sentences connected with other sentences, we count on the linguistic context during the act of speech or writing and the purpose of the language use. Continue reading

Research Paper on the Importance of Human Development in the Classroom

There are five developmental periods: infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, early adolescence and late adolescence. They all have their own specific traits, conditions, similarities and differences. That is why childhood and adolescence can be rightfully called the two main periods of man’s development as a social being with his own emotional world. The research work of the ethnographers in the first part of the twentieth century allowed making a conclusion that the concrete social consequences in a life of a child determine the duration of the teen period, presence and absence of conflicts and the character of conversion from childhood to adulthood. Continue reading

Research Paper on Teaching Speaking and Pronunciation in a Second Language

Learning of a second foreign language is of great importance in the modern world, where a person is considered to be highly educated only when he/she has knowledge in at least one foreign language. Globalization has opened the borders of the majority of countries giving all of us excess to learning foreign cultures, to work and travel abroad. However, without knowing a foreign language it is much more complicated and expensive. Employers do not want to hire new workers if the latter do not know the language of a country they wish to work in. Though traveling agencies offer interpreters and tour guides, who can speak about historic places of interest in a language understandable to tourists, it is more interesting and educative to be able to listen about historical background of a country you are traveling to in a native language. It is possible to speak about the importance of learning foreign languages for a long time, as the advantages that knowledge of foreign languages brings are remarkable, however, before using these advantages it is necessary to learn a foreign language, which sometimes may not be easy, as it may not be very easy to teach a foreign language as well. Generally speaking, learning of any language largely depends on the way it is being taught, making this process a rather subjective one. Continue reading

Identifying Language Minority Students’ Barriers in Mainstream Classroom Essay

Traditionally, students representing this or that national minority had some problems in mainstream classroom, mainly because they felt isolated, or, to put it more precisely, different from the rest of the students. The problems such students faces are common for different societies, regardless the country where they study though the more developed the society is the less barriers minority students face. Speaking about the barriers, which make the process of education of students from different national or any other kind of minority quite difficult, they are different and briefly speaking they may be divided into several groups. Continue reading