S6 Linguistics Applied Linguistics

Applied Linguistics

Week. 1
Introduction to Applied Linguistics
* Outline:
* Introduction
* What is Applied Linguistics?
* Linguistics Discipline: ‘Language Acquisition’.
* First Language Acquisition (L1: A specific learning of your mother
tongue and it doesn’t have to be one language some people learn
multiple languages as their L1).
* Part 1:
* Stages of Language Acquisition
* Theories of Language Acquisition
* How Do We Acquire L1?
* Phonological Development
* Morphological Development
* Syntactical Development
* Part 2:
* Second Language Acquisition (L1 or more)
* Learning L2
* Learning a Foreign Language
* ELT (English Language Teaching)

* When we learn a language it can shift from a foreign language to a

second language.
* Second Language: is not just used to communicate with others but it is
also used to study (Maths, Science, etc) and write in that language.

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Week. 2
Linguistic Branches
Areas of Applied Linguistics

* How Scientific is Linguistics?

* To answer this question we must look into ‘how language works?’.

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S6 Linguistics Applied Linguistics

* We must investigate specific languages to understand the

phenomenal of languages in general.
* We must understand how languages are acquired by human beings
and how they are developed in the mind in order to study Language
itself.

* Language is the property of the mind before it’s the property of the
community and society.
* Language is something mental.

* Word order must exist in every universal human language and the way
its used, however the languages differ when applied.
* SVO = English
* VSO = Arabic

Sub-Branches of Linguistics
* 1. Phonetics and Phonology
* 2. Morphology
* 3. Syntax
* 4. Semantics

Other Areas of
Linguistics
* 1. Comparative * De Saussure, the founding father of ‘Modern
Linguistics’ and also known for his research and
contribution to ‘Comparative Linguistics’.
* 2. Historical * Why do silent letters still exist in English such
as ‘K’ when it occurs word initially?
* Such as ‘Know’, ‘Knight’, ‘Knit’ and ‘Knowledge’.
* However, ‘K’ is pronounced in ‘Acknowledge’.
* The reason for this is because English still uses
Germanic (not German) languages like in the
above example.
* 3. Geographical * Every area speaks in a certain way or variety.

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Other Areas of
Linguistics
* 4. Theoretical -
* 5. Applied * This branch came to existence on the basis that
language plays an important role within a
community.
* Language is at the heart of a community, such
as education, etc.
* In the past, most theories of education was
done by Psychologists like ‘Behaviourism’ but
then it faded as they faced many problems
which they couldn't solve.
* Linguistic findings have solved problems that
other fields couldn’t.
* Applied Linguistics:
* Is an interdisciplinary field of study that
identifies, investigates and offers solutions to
problems related to language and its effect on
the community.

Areas of Applied
Linguistics
* 1. Language * The study of how language is acquired or
Acquisition learnt.
* 2. Language and * Education is a science itself.
Education * To learn ‘Maths’ we need language, that’s why
language is at the heart of this particular
branch.
* Applied Linguistics helps find solutions for
educational problems.
* It also answers an important question:
* How a language works in multi-linguistic
educational environment?

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Areas of Applied
Linguistics
* 3. Language and * Computational language: Links language to
Technology technology.
* Electronic Engineering.
* Machine Translation ‘Google Translation’.
* Speech Recognition ‘Speech-to-Text’.
* Speech Synthesis ‘Text-to-Speech’.
* 4. Speech * People that suffer from a speech aspect due to
Therapy an accident (stroke - ‫)جلطة‬.
* This field deals with language disorder with
speech disorder or speech comprehension for
adult’s development or children’s acquisition.
* The science that links Neurology and Linguistic
= Neurolinguistics.
* This field has saved people from getting the
correct treatment they need and not to get sent
to mental hospitals because of a speech
disorder.

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