Language, Cognition, and Society

Which of the following is mentioned as a linguistic weapon possessed by the third variety of speakers?

Directions: Read the following passage to answer the given question.

A study recently recognized three varieties of non-native spoken English. Speakers of the first variety exhibit characteristics of a very long and difficult process of internal interpretation from their mother-tongue into English. Thought and expression do not go closely together. A listener would notice this from the way the speaker pauses before expressing himself, apparently deciding which words to use and how to arrange them. Therefore, thinking is exclusively through the medium of the mother-tongue and English is a poor shadow of the original thoughts of the speaker. Utterances heard invariably have to be translated silently into the mother­ tongue to be maximally meaningful, and this makes statements slow, halting and jerky.

The second variety speakers exhibit features described above but to a much lesser degree. Internal translations from the mother-tongue to English still take place during the speaker's expression of opinions and complex concepts but the process now takes a shorter span of time. With ordinary words or simple ideas, internal interpretations need not intervene between the points at which the thought is conceived and the time it is given verbal expression. Discussions are quicker and smoother though these might not always be entirely free from minor halting gaps.
With the third variety, speaker’s thought is almost entirely in English and translation is not needed. The speaker has a wealth of linguistic weapons to choose from and the ability to express the minute distinctions between similar concepts comes quickly and easily. Thus for instance, whereas speakers of the lower varieties have only the word `rain', the speaker of variety recognizes distinctions between `shower', `downpour', `drizzle', 'mist', `deluge', etc., and uses each in the appropriate context. Also, his mastery of the sounds and features of the English Language equips him to express the utterances accurately and automatically without having to pause and think of the correct version of a sound since he masters the various distinctions in the pronunciation of each vowel and each consonant.
We need to recognise, however, that most non-native learners of English `graduate' from one variety to another, from the lowest stratum of variety to the highest stratum of that variety, and then to variety II and so on until they achieve variety III. Length or periods of education, exposure to Standard English and a personal conscious effort play major roles in deciding what variety a particular speaker uses.

Finally, we must recognise that most speakers of the higher varieties are still capable of reverting to the lower ones if they choose to. Thus, we can find even an English language professor switching to the lowest stratum of variety if he feels so inclined when talking to a house-servant or a porter.

The word 'stratum' as used in the passage means

Directions: Read the following passage to answer the given question.

A study recently recognized three varieties of non-native spoken English. Speakers of the first variety exhibit characteristics of a very long and difficult process of internal interpretation from their mother-tongue into English. Thought and expression do not go closely together. A listener would notice this from the way the speaker pauses before expressing himself, apparently deciding which words to use and how to arrange them. Therefore, thinking is exclusively through the medium of the mother-tongue and English is a poor shadow of the original thoughts of the speaker. Utterances heard invariably have to be translated silently into the mother­ tongue to be maximally meaningful, and this makes statements slow, halting and jerky.

The second variety speakers exhibit features described above but to a much lesser degree. Internal translations from the mother-tongue to English still take place during the speaker's expression of opinions and complex concepts but the process now takes a shorter span of time. With ordinary words or simple ideas, internal interpretations need not intervene between the points at which the thought is conceived and the time it is given verbal expression. Discussions are quicker and smoother though these might not always be entirely free from minor halting gaps.
With the third variety, speaker’s thought is almost entirely in English and translation is not needed. The speaker has a wealth of linguistic weapons to choose from and the ability to express the minute distinctions between similar concepts comes quickly and easily. Thus for instance, whereas speakers of the lower varieties have only the word `rain', the speaker of variety recognizes distinctions between `shower', `downpour', `drizzle', 'mist', `deluge', etc., and uses each in the appropriate context. Also, his mastery of the sounds and features of the English Language equips him to express the utterances accurately and automatically without having to pause and think of the correct version of a sound since he masters the various distinctions in the pronunciation of each vowel and each consonant.
We need to recognise, however, that most non-native learners of English `graduate' from one variety to another, from the lowest stratum of variety to the highest stratum of that variety, and then to variety II and so on until they achieve variety III. Length or periods of education, exposure to Standard English and a personal conscious effort play major roles in deciding what variety a particular speaker uses.

Finally, we must recognise that most speakers of the higher varieties are still capable of reverting to the lower ones if they choose to. Thus, we can find even an English language professor switching to the lowest stratum of variety if he feels so inclined when talking to a house-servant or a porter.

Which of the following statements is true about speakers of the first variety?

Directions: Read the following passage to answer the given question.

A study recently recognized three varieties of non-native spoken English. Speakers of the first variety exhibit characteristics of a very long and difficult process of internal interpretation from their mother-tongue into English. Thought and expression do not go closely together. A listener would notice this from the way the speaker pauses before expressing himself, apparently deciding which words to use and how to arrange them. Therefore, thinking is exclusively through the medium of the mother-tongue and English is a poor shadow of the original thoughts of the speaker. Utterances heard invariably have to be translated silently into the mother­ tongue to be maximally meaningful, and this makes statements slow, halting and jerky.

The second variety speakers exhibit features described above but to a much lesser degree. Internal translations from the mother-tongue to English still take place during the speaker's expression of opinions and complex concepts but the process now takes a shorter span of time. With ordinary words or simple ideas, internal interpretations need not intervene between the points at which the thought is conceived and the time it is given verbal expression. Discussions are quicker and smoother though these might not always be entirely free from minor halting gaps.
With the third variety, speaker’s thought is almost entirely in English and translation is not needed. The speaker has a wealth of linguistic weapons to choose from and the ability to express the minute distinctions between similar concepts comes quickly and easily. Thus for instance, whereas speakers of the lower varieties have only the word `rain', the speaker of variety recognizes distinctions between `shower', `downpour', `drizzle', 'mist', `deluge', etc., and uses each in the appropriate context. Also, his mastery of the sounds and features of the English Language equips him to express the utterances accurately and automatically without having to pause and think of the correct version of a sound since he masters the various distinctions in the pronunciation of each vowel and each consonant.
We need to recognise, however, that most non-native learners of English `graduate' from one variety to another, from the lowest stratum of variety to the highest stratum of that variety, and then to variety II and so on until they achieve variety III. Length or periods of education, exposure to Standard English and a personal conscious effort play major roles in deciding what variety a particular speaker uses.

Finally, we must recognise that most speakers of the higher varieties are still capable of reverting to the lower ones if they choose to. Thus, we can find even an English language professor switching to the lowest stratum of variety if he feels so inclined when talking to a house-servant or a porter.

While talking to a porter, an English language professor

Directions: Read the following passage to answer the given question.

A study recently recognized three varieties of non-native spoken English. Speakers of the first variety exhibit characteristics of a very long and difficult process of internal interpretation from their mother-tongue into English. Thought and expression do not go closely together. A listener would notice this from the way the speaker pauses before expressing himself, apparently deciding which words to use and how to arrange them. Therefore, thinking is exclusively through the medium of the mother-tongue and English is a poor shadow of the original thoughts of the speaker. Utterances heard invariably have to be translated silently into the mother­ tongue to be maximally meaningful, and this makes statements slow, halting and jerky.

The second variety speakers exhibit features described above but to a much lesser degree. Internal translations from the mother-tongue to English still take place during the speaker's expression of opinions and complex concepts but the process now takes a shorter span of time. With ordinary words or simple ideas, internal interpretations need not intervene between the points at which the thought is conceived and the time it is given verbal expression. Discussions are quicker and smoother though these might not always be entirely free from minor halting gaps.
With the third variety, speaker’s thought is almost entirely in English and translation is not needed. The speaker has a wealth of linguistic weapons to choose from and the ability to express the minute distinctions between similar concepts comes quickly and easily. Thus for instance, whereas speakers of the lower varieties have only the word `rain', the speaker of variety recognizes distinctions between `shower', `downpour', `drizzle', 'mist', `deluge', etc., and uses each in the appropriate context. Also, his mastery of the sounds and features of the English Language equips him to express the utterances accurately and automatically without having to pause and think of the correct version of a sound since he masters the various distinctions in the pronunciation of each vowel and each consonant.
We need to recognise, however, that most non-native learners of English `graduate' from one variety to another, from the lowest stratum of variety to the highest stratum of that variety, and then to variety II and so on until they achieve variety III. Length or periods of education, exposure to Standard English and a personal conscious effort play major roles in deciding what variety a particular speaker uses.

Finally, we must recognise that most speakers of the higher varieties are still capable of reverting to the lower ones if they choose to. Thus, we can find even an English language professor switching to the lowest stratum of variety if he feels so inclined when talking to a house-servant or a porter.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

One of the great challenges for second language teachers has been the implementation of procedures that help learners process comprehensible input while at the same time giving them opportunities for language awareness. In other words, effective second language teaching requires input processing (acquisition) combined with focus on form. It matters little whether we call it language awareness, or consciousness-raising, or linguistic problem-solving. Language is no longer seen as a fixed inventory of structures prescribed by an itemized syllabus that is present in an atomistic and linear fashion. Rather, it is seen as a dynamic process in which learners themselves are involved.

What message does the passage convey?

The author has described it as an approach derived from the linguistic theory of Chomsky. It is

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

For teachers of a second language, the role of grammar instruction in the classroom has been a perennial subject of debate and has undergone many changes over the years. For example, the once well-respected traditional methods that relied on extensive drilling and memorization of grammar evoked a backlash in the 1970s, which resulted in new methods that excluded grammar instruction in favour of ‘natural’ communication in the classroom. Nevertheless, the topic of grammar remained a live issue, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s, research in the classroom reported positive results for grammar instruction. Even so, the communicative methods had an enduring effect, and the traditional methods of teaching grammar did not return; instead, techniques were developed whereby students would be able to ‘notice’ grammar, often spontaneously in the course of a communicative lesson, and especially if the grammatical problem impeded comprehension. In this way, learners would notice and learn the pattern of grammatical rules for themselves. This new way of looking at grammar instruction has come to be known as language awareness, among other designations. This article will discuss the background and rationale of language awareness, and will introduce a few of the techniques that teachers can use to help students discover grammatical relationships and improve their learning of English. 
Traditional grammar instruction, as it was commonly called, was criticised for its long-winded teacher explanations, its drills and drudgery, and its boring and banal exercises. In the 1970s, new teaching methods appeared that replaced grammar exercises with meaningful communicative environments. In general, the goal was to mirror the way a person learned his or her first language, an approach that was derived from the linguistic theory of Chomsky (1965), who pointed out that humans are endowed with a language acquisition device that enables them to acquire whatever language they are exposed to. Accordingly, our ‘organ of language’ extracts the rules of the target language from the data of performance, and this innate schema comprises ‘linguistic universities’ which are part of our generic inheritance.
Chomsky’s theories revolutionized the field of linguistics, and had a dramatic impact on language teaching as well. The basic assumption underpinning the communicative approach is that language is made in the mind and is internal, a process that generates what Chomsky (1986) refers to as I-language. This suggests that language cannot be acquired by putting learners through a series of linguistic hoops, which is the approach found in the traditional grammar book, and what Chomsky calls E-language, language external to the learner. Based on these theories, ‘nativists’ argued against explicit grammatical instruction in favour of the naturalistic discovery of the target language’s rule system. In the early 1980s, Krashen (1981) proclaimed that exposure to comprehensible input in a stress-free environment was the primary condition for successful second language acquisition. However, at the same time this was being propagated, a number of researchers were investigating on the effect of formal instruction on second language acquisition. Long (1983), for instance, in an extensive review of the empirical research, found that certain types of instruction did make a significant difference and hence one could no longer accept the nativist argument that the effects of grammar teaching appear to be peripheral and fragile.

According to the author, the I-language is

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

For teachers of a second language, the role of grammar instruction in the classroom has been a perennial subject of debate and has undergone many changes over the years. For example, the once well-respected traditional methods that relied on extensive drilling and memorization of grammar evoked a backlash in the 1970s, which resulted in new methods that excluded grammar instruction in favour of ‘natural’ communication in the classroom. Nevertheless, the topic of grammar remained a live issue, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s, research in the classroom reported positive results for grammar instruction. Even so, the communicative methods had an enduring effect, and the traditional methods of teaching grammar did not return; instead, techniques were developed whereby students would be able to ‘notice’ grammar, often spontaneously in the course of a communicative lesson, and especially if the grammatical problem impeded comprehension. In this way, learners would notice and learn the pattern of grammatical rules for themselves. This new way of looking at grammar instruction has come to be known as language awareness, among other designations. This article will discuss the background and rationale of language awareness, and will introduce a few of the techniques that teachers can use to help students discover grammatical relationships and improve their learning of English. 
Traditional grammar instruction, as it was commonly called, was criticised for its long-winded teacher explanations, its drills and drudgery, and its boring and banal exercises. In the 1970s, new teaching methods appeared that replaced grammar exercises with meaningful communicative environments. In general, the goal was to mirror the way a person learned his or her first language, an approach that was derived from the linguistic theory of Chomsky (1965), who pointed out that humans are endowed with a language acquisition device that enables them to acquire whatever language they are exposed to. Accordingly, our ‘organ of language’ extracts the rules of the target language from the data of performance, and this innate schema comprises ‘linguistic universities’ which are part of our generic inheritance.
Chomsky’s theories revolutionized the field of linguistics, and had a dramatic impact on language teaching as well. The basic assumption underpinning the communicative approach is that language is made in the mind and is internal, a process that generates what Chomsky (1986) refers to as I-language. This suggests that language cannot be acquired by putting learners through a series of linguistic hoops, which is the approach found in the traditional grammar book, and what Chomsky calls E-language, language external to the learner. Based on these theories, ‘nativists’ argued against explicit grammatical instruction in favour of the naturalistic discovery of the target language’s rule system. In the early 1980s, Krashen (1981) proclaimed that exposure to comprehensible input in a stress-free environment was the primary condition for successful second language acquisition. However, at the same time this was being propagated, a number of researchers were investigating on the effect of formal instruction on second language acquisition. Long (1983), for instance, in an extensive review of the empirical research, found that certain types of instruction did make a significant difference and hence one could no longer accept the nativist argument that the effects of grammar teaching appear to be peripheral and fragile.

According to the author, the language awareness is

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

For teachers of a second language, the role of grammar instruction in the classroom has been a perennial subject of debate and has undergone many changes over the years. For example, the once well-respected traditional methods that relied on extensive drilling and memorization of grammar evoked a backlash in the 1970s, which resulted in new methods that excluded grammar instruction in favour of ‘natural’ communication in the classroom. Nevertheless, the topic of grammar remained a live issue, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s, research in the classroom reported positive results for grammar instruction. Even so, the communicative methods had an enduring effect, and the traditional methods of teaching grammar did not return; instead, techniques were developed whereby students would be able to ‘notice’ grammar, often spontaneously in the course of a communicative lesson, and especially if the grammatical problem impeded comprehension. In this way, learners would notice and learn the pattern of grammatical rules for themselves. This new way of looking at grammar instruction has come to be known as language awareness, among other designations. This article will discuss the background and rationale of language awareness, and will introduce a few of the techniques that teachers can use to help students discover grammatical relationships and improve their learning of English. 
Traditional grammar instruction, as it was commonly called, was criticised for its long-winded teacher explanations, its drills and drudgery, and its boring and banal exercises. In the 1970s, new teaching methods appeared that replaced grammar exercises with meaningful communicative environments. In general, the goal was to mirror the way a person learned his or her first language, an approach that was derived from the linguistic theory of Chomsky (1965), who pointed out that humans are endowed with a language acquisition device that enables them to acquire whatever language they are exposed to. Accordingly, our ‘organ of language’ extracts the rules of the target language from the data of performance, and this innate schema comprises ‘linguistic universities’ which are part of our generic inheritance.
Chomsky’s theories revolutionized the field of linguistics, and had a dramatic impact on language teaching as well. The basic assumption underpinning the communicative approach is that language is made in the mind and is internal, a process that generates what Chomsky (1986) refers to as I-language. This suggests that language cannot be acquired by putting learners through a series of linguistic hoops, which is the approach found in the traditional grammar book, and what Chomsky calls E-language, language external to the learner. Based on these theories, ‘nativists’ argued against explicit grammatical instruction in favour of the naturalistic discovery of the target language’s rule system. In the early 1980s, Krashen (1981) proclaimed that exposure to comprehensible input in a stress-free environment was the primary condition for successful second language acquisition. However, at the same time this was being propagated, a number of researchers were investigating on the effect of formal instruction on second language acquisition. Long (1983), for instance, in an extensive review of the empirical research, found that certain types of instruction did make a significant difference and hence one could no longer accept the nativist argument that the effects of grammar teaching appear to be peripheral and fragile.

The approach of the writer of this passage appears to be to

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

For teachers of a second language, the role of grammar instruction in the classroom has been a perennial subject of debate and has undergone many changes over the years. For example, the once well-respected traditional methods that relied on extensive drilling and memorization of grammar evoked a backlash in the 1970s, which resulted in new methods that excluded grammar instruction in favour of ‘natural’ communication in the classroom. Nevertheless, the topic of grammar remained a live issue, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s, research in the classroom reported positive results for grammar instruction. Even so, the communicative methods had an enduring effect, and the traditional methods of teaching grammar did not return; instead, techniques were developed whereby students would be able to ‘notice’ grammar, often spontaneously in the course of a communicative lesson, and especially if the grammatical problem impeded comprehension. In this way, learners would notice and learn the pattern of grammatical rules for themselves. This new way of looking at grammar instruction has come to be known as language awareness, among other designations. This article will discuss the background and rationale of language awareness, and will introduce a few of the techniques that teachers can use to help students discover grammatical relationships and improve their learning of English. 
Traditional grammar instruction, as it was commonly called, was criticised for its long-winded teacher explanations, its drills and drudgery, and its boring and banal exercises. In the 1970s, new teaching methods appeared that replaced grammar exercises with meaningful communicative environments. In general, the goal was to mirror the way a person learned his or her first language, an approach that was derived from the linguistic theory of Chomsky (1965), who pointed out that humans are endowed with a language acquisition device that enables them to acquire whatever language they are exposed to. Accordingly, our ‘organ of language’ extracts the rules of the target language from the data of performance, and this innate schema comprises ‘linguistic universities’ which are part of our generic inheritance.
Chomsky’s theories revolutionized the field of linguistics, and had a dramatic impact on language teaching as well. The basic assumption underpinning the communicative approach is that language is made in the mind and is internal, a process that generates what Chomsky (1986) refers to as I-language. This suggests that language cannot be acquired by putting learners through a series of linguistic hoops, which is the approach found in the traditional grammar book, and what Chomsky calls E-language, language external to the learner. Based on these theories, ‘nativists’ argued against explicit grammatical instruction in favour of the naturalistic discovery of the target language’s rule system. In the early 1980s, Krashen (1981) proclaimed that exposure to comprehensible input in a stress-free environment was the primary condition for successful second language acquisition. However, at the same time this was being propagated, a number of researchers were investigating on the effect of formal instruction on second language acquisition. Long (1983), for instance, in an extensive review of the empirical research, found that certain types of instruction did make a significant difference and hence one could no longer accept the nativist argument that the effects of grammar teaching appear to be peripheral and fragile.

What the author wittingly or unwittingly concludes is that

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

For teachers of a second language, the role of grammar instruction in the classroom has been a perennial subject of debate and has undergone many changes over the years. For example, the once well-respected traditional methods that relied on extensive drilling and memorization of grammar evoked a backlash in the 1970s, which resulted in new methods that excluded grammar instruction in favour of ‘natural’ communication in the classroom. Nevertheless, the topic of grammar remained a live issue, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s, research in the classroom reported positive results for grammar instruction. Even so, the communicative methods had an enduring effect, and the traditional methods of teaching grammar did not return; instead, techniques were developed whereby students would be able to ‘notice’ grammar, often spontaneously in the course of a communicative lesson, and especially if the grammatical problem impeded comprehension. In this way, learners would notice and learn the pattern of grammatical rules for themselves. This new way of looking at grammar instruction has come to be known as language awareness, among other designations. This article will discuss the background and rationale of language awareness, and will introduce a few of the techniques that teachers can use to help students discover grammatical relationships and improve their learning of English. 
Traditional grammar instruction, as it was commonly called, was criticised for its long-winded teacher explanations, its drills and drudgery, and its boring and banal exercises. In the 1970s, new teaching methods appeared that replaced grammar exercises with meaningful communicative environments. In general, the goal was to mirror the way a person learned his or her first language, an approach that was derived from the linguistic theory of Chomsky (1965), who pointed out that humans are endowed with a language acquisition device that enables them to acquire whatever language they are exposed to. Accordingly, our ‘organ of language’ extracts the rules of the target language from the data of performance, and this innate schema comprises ‘linguistic universities’ which are part of our generic inheritance.
Chomsky’s theories revolutionized the field of linguistics, and had a dramatic impact on language teaching as well. The basic assumption underpinning the communicative approach is that language is made in the mind and is internal, a process that generates what Chomsky (1986) refers to as I-language. This suggests that language cannot be acquired by putting learners through a series of linguistic hoops, which is the approach found in the traditional grammar book, and what Chomsky calls E-language, language external to the learner. Based on these theories, ‘nativists’ argued against explicit grammatical instruction in favour of the naturalistic discovery of the target language’s rule system. In the early 1980s, Krashen (1981) proclaimed that exposure to comprehensible input in a stress-free environment was the primary condition for successful second language acquisition. However, at the same time this was being propagated, a number of researchers were investigating on the effect of formal instruction on second language acquisition. Long (1983), for instance, in an extensive review of the empirical research, found that certain types of instruction did make a significant difference and hence one could no longer accept the nativist argument that the effects of grammar teaching appear to be peripheral and fragile.