Week 7's Class

Another good class. Everyone seems to be more comfortable with using their headsets (myself included) and this seems to really help in making the online classroom more interactive. It is always good to begin the class with the small group time and it really helps me to gain confidence in my work and discuss any difficulties I may be having with the material.

Class #5

I found the discussions of the various writing systems extremely interesting. I especially enjoyed Leping's explanation of the Chinese writing system because it gave me some insight on what seems to be such a mysterious language, and I say this even after having studied Chinese for a year.

The explanation of the quiz at the end of class was very useful. I have been struggling somewhat with distinguishing phonemes from allophones by using minimal pairs but the in class discussion really shed some light on this topic. I have since gone back and looked over the quiz and felt a bit closer in understanding where I went wrong, although I will need to review this material again before I feel entirely confident with it.

Finegan Chapter 2: Lexicon and Morphology

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of what it actually means to "know a word." It addresses the similarities between the "mental lexicon," which is the brain's storage place for language, and a typical desktop dictionary. I found this comparison interesting and useful because it gives me a concrete analogy to refer to when thinking of how the brain stores and retrieves the various pieces of information necessary for language use.

After this brief introduction, the chapter begins discussing the various lexical categories (parts of speech) and how to distinguish these categories from one another. It starts out basic, with an overview of nouns, adjectives, verbs, pronouns, and so on, and then illustrates how various lexical categories can modify others. I found this portion especially useful because it gives an example of how languages function in an intrinsically logical and predictable fashion, and I believe it will be applicable in many different situations where linguistic analysis is necessary.

After the discussion of lexical categories, the text presents a definition of "morphemes" including what a morpheme is, the differences between free and bound morphemes (free morphemes can stand alone, bound must be attached to another word), how bound morphemes can change the lexical categories of various words, and the organization of morphemes within words. Regarding the last category, I found it interesting that the Japanese and Tagalog languages can have "infixes" which are affixes that occurs between two morphemes to change the meaning of a word. This is unique because most other languages, English included, uses only prefixes and suffixes which makes the notion of inserting an affix into the middle of a word seem extremely foreign

Read and Retell.

Chapter one of Freeman begins by outlining some of the general ideas and theories behind first language acquisition. One specific theory referenced is the ever popular "behaviorist" theory based on B.F. Skinner's research, which states that children learn language like they do everything else-by observation and imitation. This theory is then contrasted with the research of Noam Chomsky, which states that human beings have an innate ability to replicate language and complex grammatical systems and that language is not learned in the way that Skinner suggested. Chomsky's theory differs from Skinner's in that while one does learn language, to some degree, like one learns everything else, the essential difference is that the human brain is hard wired to understand and replicate linguistic structures making language learning a more natural endeavor than most other learned human behaviors.

The chapter continues to describe these two theories in more depth, including a discussion of language's relationship to the brain, Chomsky's theory of generative grammar and its relevance to first language acquisition, and how this information can be used to assess first language learners.

My Experience With Online Learning

I have had a couple of online classes before, but none seem as technologically advanced as this one. The previous courses I took were both literature courses and I enjoyed them very much so I am looking forward to this course as well. My initial concern with online learning was that I thought that it may somehow lesson the potential for learning because it lacks the face-to-face element of traditional, class room style learning, but I found that this is far from the truth. Conversely, I have found that online learning is at least as engaging and sometimes even more so then traditional classroom learning. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that students and instructors have the ability to interact with one another in an ongoing basis via posts, discussions, and now blogs, which enables the conversation to extend beyond the physical classroom.

Although I have had experience with online learning, I have never had experience with "blogging," and have not even read a blog before this class (as far as I know anyway). Again, my initial reaction was not without skepticism, and I was not entirely convinced of the value of keeping a blog for a course, but I admit that I kind of enjoy it, so much in fact that it has caused me to write a run on sentence. How embarrassing.