Understanding English for Teaching

This article discusses the understanding of English for teaching, coherence, phonetics and phonology, morphology, words, phrases and clauses, and understanding one's linguistic self.

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Running head: UNDERSTANDING ENGLISH
Understanding English for Teaching
Name
Institutional Affiliation

UNDERSTANDING ENGLISH FOR TEACHING 2
((click)) Hi everyone (.) ahh first of all thank you for providing me an opportunity () tuh
introduce myself. My name is Parul and I’m born and brought up in India () and from India I’m
from the North side () I belong to Haryana State (.) and I have completed my Masters in
Business Economics () from Kurukshetra University (.) Kurukshetra (.) and my bachelors in
Education from the same university () and I li:ke am also having a passion () um t’ be a
teacher. So that’s why as for the reason (.) I’m decided to do Masters in education (.) and like if
I talk about my career background (.) I’m also working as a coordinator for the last four years
(0.1) (.) with a private school () and as coming to my nature I am quite open but a:s i:n
emotional sometimes when it comes to my family (1:1) and I regard my husband (.) as my true
source of inspiration as he is the honest person I has I had considerate in my life. Including me
(.) my family consist of five members (.) :wich [ ] my father in-law is retired from Indian rail
base () and if I talk about my mother in-law () she is a house maker annd if I talk about my
husband (.) he i:s has his own business (.) he is- in sports and I have one loving son (.) Ryan.
(1:48) annd I like to feel fresh airs so which inspires me (.) every new day (.) gives me new
hopes so that’s why I like to walk for a long: so I like to move for over miles. Well that was just
a brief summary of my journey (.) so far. However, if you would li:ke to know I would li:ke to
be there for you. Thank you!
QUESTION B: COHERENCE
the script is somewhat nature and we can proudly say that it fulfils most of the
conventions of either a written or spoken dialogue.
To start with, the text is oral. Nevertheless, the text is not unprompted like many spoken
scripts that are for natural purposes. I have prepared written texts before which shows the
discourse of a particular structure. However, this one does not have are the conventions of a

UNDERSTANDING ENGLISH FOR TEACHING 3
written script. In the latter section of this assignment we will see that the text was arranged in a
manner that gives it a lexical redundancy. This includes having both the elements of orality as
per Ong (2013, pp. 38-41). The author of this text knew very well that it would be spoken text
and she also knew its aim. Therefore, this denied the text most elements that would classify it as
a written script.
The text got its shape from the fact that I was doing it as part of my university assignment
and as a way of introducing myself to my friends. Some of the elements that were affected by the
purpose of the text are tone (Or what Nicholas and Starks (2014, p.61) refers to as the “key” of a
text, as I wanted to deliver some categories of familiarity to the script. As we shall see later, my
intonation and sentence structure does not possess most patterns to make it a formal speech. On
the other hand, it levels of informalities are not enough to classify it as an improvised text. That
is why we are saying that the text is there in between the spoken and written.
When analyzing the text section of the script, I will also look at what I did not use since it
will help in understanding its nature and purpose….
I did not use any adjective of personality in the text. This was left out with a purpose. A
person’s personality can be described using what one thinks of him/herself and using what others
notices in him/her. The two makes it very hard for that person to describe him/her personality
(Holló, Shu-Wei, & Naghizadeh, 2016).
The first thing to note when analyzing the image that accompanies the image is that the
image is a selfie as it is a picture of myself and taken by myself. In this image, I am looking
straight at the camera without smiling. It is normal that a person will look straight into the
camera and either smile or show some kind of seriousness. The type of images that we post of

UNDERSTANDING ENGLISH FOR TEACHING 4
Facebook and other social media channels places a big role in creating the figure that we want
the public to see in us (Barthes 1977).
QUESTION C: PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY
In this section I will analysis the phonetic transcription, syllables, stress, intonation and
phonemic in the text.
According to the analysis that will be done later in this transcript. I usually pronounce as
[‘laIk] is /laIk/. The phoneme /k/ can be used to differentiate /laIk/ from /laIt/. Hence, the two
words are two minimal pairs. nevertheless, I do not do this all the time. For example, in my text I
said [ˈaɪ ˈlaɪʔ ˈlɜːnɪŋ] instead of [ˈaɪ ˈlaɪk ˈlɜːnɪŋ]. Kent, and Miolo (2017), a phonetic analysis
will reflect this but a phonemic analysis will not.
Application for teaching
To show how to teach a phonetic element to an English student, I am going to use the
different between sounds [p] and [b]. In my text I uses the word /bɪt/ often and this should not be
mistaken with /pɪt/. Wichmann (2014) says that a verbal text will definitely hinder the possibility
of misunderstanding. However, I will try to show the meaning-distinctive probable of the
phonemes of a language. My teaching proposal will illustrate a variation of one of the potential
approaches as described by Harmer (2007. Pp. 253-254) to teach sounds.
To begin with, introducing a contrast that has minimal pairs will clearly show differences
in the text. The teacher can orally teach this to the students and by that he/s will create a
language model for the learners. (Harmer, 2007, p. 117). The leaners will then have the
opportunity to hear these few pairs in context and choose that pair that they believe they are
hearing. As suggested by Lecumberri and Maidment (2014), the setting of the text can also help
the learners in making the right choice.

UNDERSTANDING ENGLISH FOR TEACHING 5
QUESTION D: MORPHOLOGY
To demonstrate the morphology of this text well, I am not going to use the original
orthographic transcript.
… I like, am also having a passion um to be a teacher. So that’s why as for the reason,
I’m decided to be Masters in education, and like if I talk about my career background, I’m also
working as a coordinator for the last four years, with a private school, and as coming to my
nature I am quite open but as in emotional sometimes… is retired from Indian rail base, and if I
talk about my mother in-law, she is a house maker and if I talk about my husband, he has his
own business, he is- in sports and I have one loving son, Ryan. I like to feel fresh airs so which
inspires me every new day gives me new hopes so that’s why I like to walk for a long. so I like
to move for over miles….
Inflectional Morphemes
Meaning Ex
ample
-
miles/-s
length /
present
participle of a
noun
books
homes
-
ing
Adverb/
present the
participle of a
verb
Loving
Going
Walking

UNDERSTANDING ENGLISH FOR TEACHING 6
–ing is considered to be an inflectional as the group of the word has actually changed
after the addition of this morpheme. (Pullum (1997) has explained the vagueness of this
morpheme and conforms that it is a derivative (Einholz et al., 2015).
Application for teaching
To show how morphological elements are taught in an English class, I will use the
inflectional morpheme –s, that is used in English to show plural nouns. I will target primary
students whose first language does not use a similar inflectional element to refer to plural nouns.
Therefore, I will use real objects that are readily available and that leaners are familiar
with. The objects will be the ones that one can touch and see. “Realia” is a methodology that can
motivate the multi-sensory needs of learners of primary level. This will enhance their contact
with the language since it will be used to target the culture of these students to meet the actual
communication needs (Smith, 1997). The two objects will be toys. If the toys are not available
the, the teacher can use what Smith (1997) talks about in his work “Virtual realia.”
QUESTION E: WORDS
In this last section, I have decided to analysis the words for the reason, that I have
identified in the previous portion.
According to Stahl et al, (2018) choosing the right word will help in making an excellent
verbal speech. The three words makes up a phrase as they seem to join the two parts of the
sentence where they are used. Besides, although they are making the text cleaner, they can be
omitted and the sentence will still make sense. For example, in the sentence, “So that’s why as
for the reason I’m decided to do Masters in Education…. When we omit the phrase the sentence
will still make sense as it will be like this “So that’s why I’m decided to do Masters in
Education…” So syntactically the words make a phrase that can be omitted or replaced with

UNDERSTANDING ENGLISH FOR TEACHING 7
another words. Semantically, they are also meaningful in the text and can be replaced by words
that expresses a similar meaning (Strubell et al, 2018). For example, “So that’s why (I have
decided to do Masters in Education) as for the reason I’m decided to do Masters in Education”.
Application for teaching
I will show you how to teach phrases as part of speech. I will pay more attention on the
sematic feature of phrases and this words shows actions.
To begin with, the teacher will choose instructions that he/s thinks that they will occur
frequently during the class time. for example, put off, sit down, stand up, put off etc. the teacher
will then teach the students the actual meaning of this commands.
QUESTION F: PHRASES AND CLAUSES
My text does not have any interrogative clause. The main reason why we do not have
such sections is because the script was not a dialogue with someone else. Dialogues are the one
that normally generate interrogative clauses. My text was a monologue, a description of myself.
According to Ushioda (2017) it is difficult to have an interrogative clause in a monologue.
QUESTION G:
Understanding one’s linguistic self
The whole exercise was very interesting as I was trying to make myself aware of
elements in my idiolect. Although, one does not understand the extent at which the examined
corpus is an honest representation of the natural idiolect of someone since it must not be
produced for a completely natural purpose nor in a complete impulsive manner (Klaudy, 2017).
There are some questions that one can ask him/herself just like the way Nicholas and Starks
(2014, p. 36) did. For example, are some of my features accommodated in the text as I knew the

UNDERSTANDING ENGLISH FOR TEACHING 8
kind of a task I was undertaking? Or, do my idiolect in a more spontaneous context has the same
elements like the analyses corpus?
The answer to these questions is not easy but one can avoid the predicament by arguing
that even when deploying different features of a communication repertoire using the
terminologies used by Nicholas and Starks (2014) in their framework, the easiest way of
including idiolect will have to come from within ourselves. Therefore, we will be representing a
self-idiolect (Siegel, 2018).
It seems that quite often I tend to use short pauses (.) in my text. Another feature of my
idiolect that also occurs at the end of some words or sentences is () and () pitches. This might
be an influence of the phonemic system of my mother tongue, since in Arabic we have a lot of
raising and falling pitches.

UNDERSTANDING ENGLISH FOR TEACHING 9
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