Vague words in Law in Order: Special Victims Unit

Author(s):  
Jonnathas Vieira ◽  
Paula Lança

TV series have been a source of input for English language learners, especially the ones interested in real language use. There are studies that show how close to real life some TV shows are (ORFANO, 2010). For this study a corpus of a TV series - Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU) - was compiled. This corpus is composed of 6 episodes (44.400 words). The analysis considered that every Law and Order episode carries investigation and court scenes. The main point of this investigation is to analyze the use of vague words such as any, anything, anyone, anybody, anyway, and anywhere in the TV show. An analysis of the episodes showed that these words occurred 139 times with a frequency distribution that varied in the investigation and court scenes. The results may reveal that more formal contexts, represented in the TV series by the court scenes, do not favor the use of vague language. In such argumentative contexts speakers tend to be more precise.

Author(s):  
Tatiana I. Sildus ◽  
Natalie Vanderbeck ◽  
Michelle Broxterman

The chapter focuses on the specifics of working with elementary school English language learners in ESOL pull-out programs. The authors, a TESOL professor and two ESOL pull-out teachers in elementary schools, examine the role of the ESOL program instructor in this type of academic setting. To give the readers a better idea of what the job of an ESOL pull-out teacher entails, the chapter presents portions of teacher interviews offering insights from two elementary pull-out programs. It provides first-hand accounts of real life experiences of instructors in established programs. They not only reflect on what it is like to teach ELLs in this type of program, but also offer practical suggestions, as well as comment on additional programs and services, such as summer school and after school academy, available to ELLs in their district. The goal of the chapter is to better familiarize elementary educators currently working in districts with pull-out programs or those considering this option as a career choice, and to better prepare them for the realities of everyday work.


2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 249-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Torres-Velasquez ◽  
Gilberto Lobo

Culturally responsive teaching is a dynamic form of teaching that builds on and supports students' home culture. The strategies that we recommend in this article for English Language Learners (ELL) are based on research or classroom experience. We provide real-life examples of how the second author, Gilberto Lobo, implements these ideas in the context of data analysis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
Viviana Alexandrowicz

The idea of offering all children and youth an education that is experiential, student centered, engaging, and relevant to life is not a new concept (Dewey, 1938; Kolb, 1981). Preparing students with the competencies, skills, and character for full participation in the 21st century has become the vision of schools, educators, and organizations around the world (NEA, 2020; Geisinger, 2016; Trilling, B. & Fadel, C. 2009). Changemaker teachers, staff, and administrators believe in facilitating children and youth development as citizens for the 21st century. These educators also guide them as agents of change who empathize with others and solve real life problems for the greater good. These children and youth are what Ashoka calls “Changemakers”. (Ashoka, 2020). This article explores the potential for facilitating the development of English Learners (Els) as Changemakers by using effective Second Language Acquisition (SLA) approaches in combination with experiential approaches. The intent is to contribute a theoretical framework and curriculum ideas for effective practice to help English language learners develop language, access content, and develop 21st century skills as Changemaker attributes.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Waheeb S. Albiladi

The growing popularity of authentic materials provides English language teachers with more resources to practice the real language in language classrooms (Guo, 2012). However, integrating these types of reading materials can be difficult and time-consuming even though there are many benefits to using them to teach language learners how to read. Real-life based texts, which are not specifically designed for educational purposes have been recognized by many educators to be effective and interesting materials. The purpose of this study was to explore language learners’ perceptions about the benefits and challenges of using authentic materials in English reading classes. The study involved 16 adult English language learners enrolled in an intensive English program. Observations of reading classes and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data. Results indicated that the use of authentic materials leads to many social and academic benefits, such as increasing students’ motivation and their cultural awareness. Findings also suggest that the use of authentic materials are encouraged as they bring the sense of authenticity and reality to the language classrooms.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yahya Ali Alghamdi ◽  
Ahmed Mohammed Alghamdi ◽  
Turki Gabr Alsolami

The history of English Language Teaching (ELT) and learning in English as a Second and Foreign Language (ESL and EFL) contexts has gone through different practices. The role of memorization and repetition of English language structures has always been a dominant teaching attitude. This attitude has revealed unsuccessful results in promoting speaking proficiency among English language learners when communicating in real-world situations beyond the classroom context. Therefore, it is essential to address such practices and shed light on some of the issues that hinder English Language Learners (ELLs) from effectively using English in real-world communicative situations. This review paper focuses on ELT practices that have been unsuccessful in promoting English language learners’ speaking proficiency. Additionally, it provides implications for classroom teaching instructions that integrate authentic tasks and materials. Implementing meaningful tasks that represent real-world situations could be a promising solution for enhancing ELLs’ language competencies to enable them to transfer the language they learn to real-life situations beyond school settings. Some practical suggestions and recommendations are provided to enhance ELT in EFL contexts.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 120
Author(s):  
Serap Atasever Belli

This study was designed to investigate whether contemporary corpus-informed grammar textbooks written for English language learners and teachers presented the progressive use of stative verbs and if yes, which stative verbs were presented to occur with the progressive aspect and for which functions they took this aspect. A corpus of six electronic copies of corpus-informed textbooks was compiled and analyzed via AntConc. 3.2.4 text analysis program to identify types and functions of stative verbs and calculate their occurrences. Overall, textbooks differed in their treatment of the progressive use of stative verbs and inclusion of the variety and numbers of types and functions. One remarkable finding was that the stative verbs taking the progressive aspect in all textbooks were found to be associated with emotions (i.e. love) whereas those not allowing progressive use were related to cognition (i.e. know). Another remarkable finding was that the textbooks which presented the highest numbers of stative verb types provided the most diverse functions whereas the textbooks which included the least numbers of stative verbs provided one or no function. Findings are hoped to raise awareness among textbook writers in making use of both the communicative messages motivated by the progressive use of stative verbs and the frequency and saliency information based on the corpus of present-day English to help learners grasp the changes in the language use.


Author(s):  
Sérgio Manuel Coelho Fernando ◽  
Alfrancio Ferreira Dias

Mastering prepositions has often been difficult for English language learners as a consequence of their polysemous nature and the sheer number of them in the English language. Most of the evaluations of the scientific output of the English language learners have established that prepositional addition, omission, and substitution account for most of the syntactic errors. For this reason, it is important for tutors to come up with effective instructional methods, since prepositions present such an immense challenge for the English language learners. Teaching prepositions are difficult due to various reasons. The present article has as objective the approach on the application of Prepositions and how structure and meaning may be perceived according to cognitive linguistics, based on other articles / books that served as bibliographical research for the construction of some ideas.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ligang Han

English is clarified as a Germanic language, and it began in what is now the British-Isles. After years of development, English language has many varieties in different parts of the world. Different varieties differ in accent, vocabulary, grammar, discourse, sociolinguistics, and have its respective characteristics in pronunciation, tone, intonation, spelling and so on. Therefore, it is important for English language learners to observe the differences in language use. The present paper is an attempt to explore the regional characteristics of the two most commonly used varieties of the English Language–British English and American English. It is concluded that there will be intercommunications which will make the regional differences mild and easily understood. However, some differences may disappear, the others will remain so.


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