Second Language Acquisition

Acquisition and Learning and the Monitor Model for Performance

Language acquisition is very similar to the process children use in acquiring first and second languages. It requires meaningful interaction in the target language--natural communication--in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding. Error correction and explicit teaching of rules are not relevant to language acquisition (Brown and Hanlon, 1970; Brown, Cazden, and Bellugi, 1973), but caretakers and native speakers can modify their utterances addressed to acquirers to help them understand, and these modifications are thought to help the acquisition process (Snow and Ferguson, 1977). It has been hypothesized that there is a fairly stable order of acquisition of structures in language acquisition, that is, one can see clear

similarities across acquirers as to which structures tend to be acquired early and which tend to be acquired late (Brown, 1973; Dulay and Burt, 1975). Acquirers need not have a conscious awareness of the "rules" they possess, and may self-correct only on the basis of a "feel" for grammaticality.
Conscious language learning, on the other hand, is thought to be helped a great deal by error correction and the presentation of explicit rules (Krashen and Seliger, 1975). Error correction it is maintained, helps the learner come to the correct mental representation of the linguistic generalization. Whether such feedback has this effect to a significant degree remains an open question (Fanselow, 1977; Long, 1977). No invariant order of learning is claimed, although syllabi implicitly claim that learners proceed from simple to complex, a sequence that may not be identical to the acquisition sequence.

The fundamental claim of Monitor Theory is that conscious learning is available to the performer only as a Monitor. In general, utterances are initiated by the acquired system--our fluency in production is based on what we have "picked up" through active communication. Our "formal" knowledge of the second language, our conscious learning, may be used to alter the output of the acquired system, sometimes before and sometimes after the utterance is produced. We make these changes to improve accuracy, and the use of the Monitor often has this effect. Figure 1 illustrates the interaction of acquisition and learning in adult second language production.

Fig.1. Model for adult second language performance
The acquisition-learning distinction, as I have outlined it, is not new: Lawler and Selinker (1971) propose that for rule internalization one can "postulate two distinct types of cognitive structures: (1) those mechanisms that guide 'automatic' language performance... that is, performance... where speed and spontaneity are crucial and the learner has no time to consciously apply linguistic mechanisms... and (2) those mechanisms that guide puzzle- or problem-solving

performance..." (p.35). Corder (1967), citing an unpublished paper by Lambert, also discusses the acquisition-learning distinction and the possibility that acquisition is available to the adult second language performer.

The Monitor Theory differs somewhat from these points of view, in that it makes some very specific hypotheses about the inter-relation between acquisition and learning in the adult. In the papers that follow, I argue that this hypothesis sheds light on nearly every issue currently under discussion in second language theory and practice.

Conditions of Monitor Use
There are several important constraints on the use of the Monitor. The first condition is that in order to successfully monitor, the performer must have time. In normal conversation, both is speaking and in listening, performers do not generally have time to think about and apply conscious grammatical rules, and, as we shall see later, we see little or no effect on the Monitor in these situations. This condition, however, is necessary but not sufficient. Heidi Dulay and Marina Burt have pointed out to me that a performer may have time but may still not monitor, as he or she may be completely involved with the message. There is, thus, a second condition: the performer must be "focused on form", or correctness. As we shall see later, the second condition predicts some recent data nicely.

An important third condition for successful Monitor use is that the performer needs to know the rule, he or she needs to have a correct mental representation of the rule to apply it correctly. This may be a very formidable requirement. Syntacticians freely admit that they have only analyzed "fragments" of natural languages, applied linguists concede that they have mastered only part of the theoretical literature in grammar, language teachers usually do not have time to fully study the descriptive work of all applied linguists, and even the best language students do not usually master all the rules presented to them.

It is therefore very difficult to apply conscious learning to performance successfully. Situations in which all three conditions are satisfied are rare (the most obvious being a grammar test!).

Note that the model presented here allows us to self-correct using acquired knowledge of language, or our "feel" for grammaticality. That is what native speakers generally do in the case of speech errors. The point is not that we can only monitor using conscious rules. This is not the case. The point is that conscious learning is only available as a Monitor.

In the last few years, the acquisition-learning distinction has been shown to be useful in explaining a variety of phenomena in the field of second language acquisition. While many of these phenomena may have alternative explanations, the claim is that the Monitor Theory provides for all of them in a general, non ad hoc way that satisfies the intuitions as well as the data. The papers in this volume review this research, and include discussion of how the second language classroom may be utilized for both acquisition and learning.
Individual Variation

Chapter 1, based on a paper written in 1976 and published in Ritchie (1978), describes how the learning-acquisition distinction captures one sort of individual variation in second language performance. Based on case histories, this section proposes that there are basically three types of performer:
Monitor "overusers" are performers who feel they must "know the rule" for everything and do not entirely trust their feel for grammaticality in the second language. One case, "S", described by Stafford and Covitt (1978), remarked: "I feel bad... when I put words together and I don't know nothing about the grammar." In Stevicks terms (Stevick, 1976, p. 78), overusers may suffer from "lathophobic aphasia", an "unwillingness to speak for fear of making a mistake".

At the other extreme is the underuser, who appears to be entirely dependent on what he can "pick up" of the second language. Underusers seem to be immune to error correction, and do not perform well on "grammar" test. They may acquire a great deal of the target language, however, and often use quite complex constructions.

The optimal user is the performer who uses learning as a real supplement to acquisition, monitoring when it is appropriate and

when it does not get in the way of communication (e.g. prepared speech and writing). Very good optimal users may, in fact, achieve the illusion of native speaker competence in written performance. They "keep grammar in its place", using it to fill gaps in acquired competence when such monitoring does not get in the way of communication.

source: http://www.sdkrashen.com/SL_Acquisition_and_Learning/index.html

What kind of writing should students do?

What kind of writing should students do?

Like many other aspects of English language teaching, the type of writing we get students to do will depend on their age, interest and level. We can get beginners to write simple poems, but we probably won’t give them an extended report on town palnning to do. When we set tasks for elementary students, we will make sure that the student have – or can get – enough language to complete the task. Such students can write a simple story but they are not equipped to create a complex narrative. It’s all a question of what language the students have at their command and what can be achieved with this language. As we shall see with the four examples in this chapter, the models we give students to imitate will be chosen according to their abilities.

In general, however, we will try to get students writing in a number of common everyday styles. These will include writing postcards, letters of various kinds, filling in forms such as job applications, writing narrative composititions, reports, newspaper and magazine articles etc. we may also want to have students write such text type as dialogues, playscripts, advertisment, or poems – if we think these will motivate them.
Another factor which can determine our choice of writing task is the students’ interest. If everyone in the class works in a bank, we might choose to get them writing bank reports. If they are all travel agents, you can imagine getting them to write alluring advertisments for special deals. But of course, this should not preclude using other types of creative writing with such groups.

When we have a much more mixed group – students, secretaries, doctors, teachers and police officers, for example – their interest won’t be so easy to pin down. At this point we will choose writing tasks which we think are generally useful but which, more importantly, they are likely to enjoy doing. Students may never have a need to write a scene from a soap opera, for example, but they might enjoy having a go, so it is worth doing.

There is no limit to the kinds of text we can ask students to write. Our decisions, though, will be based on how much language the students know, what their interest are and what we think will not only be useful for them but also motivate them as well.

Why teach writing.....?

Why teach writing?
The reasons for teaching writing to students of English as a foreign language include reinforcement, language development, learning style and, most importantly, writing as a skill in its own right. We will look at each of these in turn.

Reinforcement: some students acquire languages in a purely oral/aural way, but most of us greatly from seeing the language written down. The visual demonstration of language construktion is invaluable for both our understanding of how it all fits together and as an aid to committing the new language to memory. Students often find it useful to write sentences using new language shortly after they have studied it.

Language Development: we can’t be sure, but it seems that the actual process or writing (rather like the process of speaking) helps us to learn as we go along. The mental activity we have to go through in order to construct proper written texts is all part of the ongoing learning experience.

Learning Style: some students are fantastically quick at picking up language just by looking and listening. For the rest of us, it may take a little longer. For many learners, the time to think thing through, to produce language in a slower way, is invaluable. Writing is appropriate for such learners. Ir can also be a quite reflective activity instead of the rush and bother of intrapersonal face-to-face communication.

Writing As a Skill: by far the most important reason for teaching writing, of course, is that it is a basic language skill, just as important as speaking, listening and reading. Students need to know how to write letters, how to put written reports together, how to reply to advertisment – and increasingly, how to write using electronic media. They need to know some of writing’s special conventions (punctuation, paragraph construction, etc.) just as they need to know how to pronounce spoken English appropriately. Part of our job is to give them that skill.

Article (grammar)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Definite article" redirects here. For the Eddie Izzard comedy DVD, see Definite Article.

For other uses of "Article", see Article (disambiguation).

This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. WikiProject Languages or the Languages Portal may be able to help recruit one. (June 2009)

The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page.

The examples and perspective in this article or section might have an extensive bias or disproportional coverage towards one or more specific regions. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

Articles in European languages indefinite and definite articles only definite articles indefinite and postfixed definite articles only postfixed definite articles no articles

An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun, and may also specify the volume or numerical scope of that reference. The articles in the English language are the and a (the latter with variant form an). An article is sometimes called a noun marker, although this is generally considered to be an archaic term.[1]

Articles are traditionally considered to form a separate part of speech. Linguists place them in the class of determiners.

Articles can have various functions:[2]

* A definite article (English the) is used before singular and plural nouns that refer to a particular member of a group.

The cat is on the red mat.

* An indefinite article (English a, an) is used before singular nouns that refer to any member of a group.

A cat is a mammal.

* A partitive article indicates an indefinite quantity of a mass noun; there is no partitive article in English, though the quantifiers some or any often have that function.

French: Voudrez-vous du café ? ("Would you like some coffee?" or "Do you want coffee?")

* A zero article is the absence of an article (e.g. English indefinite plural), used in some languages in contrast with the presence of one.

Cats love fish.

Linguists interested in X-bar theory causally link zero articles to nouns lacking a determiner.[3]

Contents

* 1 Logic of definite articles

* 2 The

o 2.1 Etymology

o 2.2 Reduction and omission

o 2.3 Geographic uses

o 2.4 Pronunciation

* 3 See also

* 4 References

* 5 External links

Logic of definite articles

In English, a definite article is mostly used to refer to an object or person that has been previously introduced. For example:

At last they came to a piece of rising ground, from which they plainly distinguished, sleeping on a distant mountain, a mammoth bear.... Then they requested the eldest to try and slip the belt over the bear's head.

— Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, appendix D

In this example, a bear becomes the bear because a "mammoth bear" had been previously introduced into the narrative, and no other bear was involved in the story. Only previously introduced subjects, and unique subjects, where the speaker can assume that the audience is aware of the identity of the referent (The government has increased tax) typically take definite articles in English.

By contrast, the indefinite article is used in situations where a new subject is being introduced, and the speaker assumes that the hearer is not yet familiar with the subject:

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

— A traditional nursery rhyme

Reflecting its historical derivation from the number word one, the English indefinite article can only be used with singular count nouns. For mass nouns, or for plurals, adjectives or adjective phrases like some or a few substitute for it, or it is omitted. In English, pronouns, nouns already having another non-number determiner, and proper nouns usually do not use articles. Otherwise in English, unlike many other languages, singular count nouns take an article; either a, an, or the.[4] Also in English word order, articles precede any adjectives that modify the applicable noun.[5]

In French, the masculine definite article le (meaning the) is contracted with a following word if that word begins with a vowel sound. When the French words de and le are to be used sequentially (meaning of the), the word du is used instead, in addition to the above mentioned use of du as a partitive article.

In various languages other than English, the form of the article may vary according to the grammatical gender, number or case of the noun it combines with. (In some languages the article may be the only indicator of the case, eg., ::Der Hut des Napoleon, Napoleon's hat.) Many languages do not use articles at all, and may use other ways of indicating old vs. new information, such as topic-comment constructions.

The

"the" redirects here. For other uses, see the (disambiguation).

This section needs additional citations for verification.

Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2008)

The word the is the only definite article in the English language, and the most frequently used word in English.[6]

The article "the" is used with singular and plural, countable and uncountable nouns when both the speaker and listener know the thing or idea already. The article the is often used as the very first part of a noun phrase in English. For example:

The end of time begins next Tuesday, at a quarter past four, just after tea and biscuits.

Here, "the end of time" is a noun phrase. The use of the signals that the reference is to a specific and unique instance of the concept (such as person, object, or idea) expressed in the noun phrase. Here, the implication is that there may be but are not multiple 'ends of time'; which 'end of time' it is that is being referred to is not ambiguous, because time can (supposedly) only end once.

There are many times, but the meaning here is the time now, of which (at the moment the sentence was produced) there is only one.

In normative spoken English, it takes two forms, the vowel being a schwa before a word starting with a consonant, and otherwise an [iː] sound.[7]

Etymology

Linguists believe that the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages (i.e., the Proto-Indo-European language) did not have a definite article. Most of the languages in this family do not have definite or indefinite articles; there is no article in Latin, Sanskrit, Persian, nor in some modern Indo-European languages, especially in Slavic languages — Russian, Polish and Czech, etc., nor in the Baltic languages — Latvian, Lithuanian and Latgalian. (The only Slavic languages that have articles are Bulgarian and Macedonian). Classical Greek has a definite article, but Homeric Greek did not. In the etymologies of these and many other languages, the definite article arose from a demonstrative pronoun or adjective changing its usage; compare the fate of the Latin demonstrative "ille" (meaning "that") in the Romance languages, becoming French le, la, l’, and les, Spanish el, la, lo, los, and las, Italian il, la, lo, l’, i, gli, and le, and Portuguese o, os, a, and as.

In some languages, such as Icelandic, Norwegian and Romanian, the definite article is not always a separate word but is sometimes attached to the end of the noun it governs:

Icelandic: hestur, horse; hesturinn, the horse

Norwegian: stol, chair; stolen, the chair

Romanian: drum, road; drumul, the road

The and that are common developments from the same Old English system. Old English had a definite article se, in the masculine gender, seo (feminine), and þæt (neuter). In Middle English these had all merged into þe, the ancestor of the Modern English word the.

In Middle English the (þe) was frequently abbreviated as a þ with a small e above it, similar to the abbreviation for that, which was a þ with a small t above it. During the latter Middle English and Early Modern English periods, the letter Thorn (þ) in its common script, or cursive, form came to resemble a y shape. As such the use of a y with an e above it as an abbreviation became common. This can still be seen in reprints of the 1611 edition of the King James Version of the Bible in places such as Romans 15:29, or in the Mayflower Compact. Note that the article was never pronounced with a y sound, even when so written.

Reduction and omission

In news headlines and informal writing, such as notes or diaries, the definite article and some other particles are often omitted, for example, "Must pick up prescription at pharmacy today."

In some Northern England dialects of English, the is pronounced [t̪ə] (with a dental t) or as a glottal stop, usually written in eye dialect as ; in some dialects it reduces to nothing. This is known as definite article reduction; see that article for further details.

In dialects that do not have /ð/ (voiced dental fricative), the is pronounced with a voiced dental plosive, as in /d̪ə/ or /d̪iː/).
 

Geographic uses

In English most cities and countries never take the definite article, but there are many that do. It is commonly used with many country names that derive from names of island groups (the Philippines), mountain ranges (the Lebanon), deserts (the Sudan), seas, rivers and geographic regions (the Middle East).[8] Such use is declining, but for some countries it remains common. Since the independence of Ukraine, most style guides have advised dropping the article[9], in part because the Ukrainian Government was concerned about a similar issue involving prepositions. Another example is Argentina, which is now more usual than 'the Argentine', which is old fashioned.

The definite article is always used for countries whose names are descriptions of the form of the state rather than being purely geographical; for example, the United States, the Soviet Union, the Czech Republic.

The U.S. Department of State [2] and CIA World Factbook [3] show the definite article with only two countries: The Bahamas and The Gambia.

Similarly, in other languages some geographic names take the article while others do not: die Schweiz, Switzerland; les Pays-Bas, the Netherlands.
 

Pronunciation

According to Merriam-Webster' online dictionary, "the" is pronounced with a schwa (as in "uh") before words beginning with consonants (e.g. b, c, d, f), and usually with a different vowel sound /i/ (as "y" in "easy") before words beginning with vowels and in cases of proper nouns or emphasis[10].

* A and an
* Al-
* Definite description
* Definiteness

1. ^ Articles, Determiners and Quantifiers
2. ^ The Use and Non-Use of Articles
3. ^ [1] Peter Master (1997), The English article system: Acquisition, function, and pedagogy, System, Volume 25, Issue 2, Pages 215–232
4. ^ Sidney Greenbaum, The Oxford English Grammar (Oxford University Press, 1996) ISBN 0-19-861250-8
5. ^ Dorothy Disterheft, "Advanced Grammar" (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004) ISBN 0-13-048820-8
6. ^ World English. "The 500 Most Commonly Used Words in the English Language". http://www.world-english.org/english500.htm. Retrieved 2007-01-14.
7. ^ "the - definition". Merriam Webster Online Dictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the.
8. ^ How English works, p25, Michael Swan
9. ^ Ukraine or "the Ukraine"? by Andrew Gregorovich InfoUkes.com
10. ^ the — Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary


* Vietnamese learners mastering english articles
* "The Definite Article: Acknowledging 'The' in Index Entries," Glenda Browne, The Indexer, vol. 22, no. 3 April 2001, pp. 119–22.
* Low MH 2005: "The Phenomenon of the Word THE in English — discourse functions and distribution patterns" — a dissertation that surveys the use of the word 'the' in English text.
* When Do You Use Articles: A, An, The

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)"
Categories: Parts of speech | English language

English Pronounciation Test

While most of you non-native speakers of English speak English quite well, there is always room for improvement (of course, the same could be said for every person for any subject, but that is another matter). To that end, I'd like to offer you a poem. Once you've learned to correctly pronounce every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. 

If you find it tough going, do not despair, you are not alone: Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language ... until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labor to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.

English is tough stuff

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

(Apparently excerpted from The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité.)

Speaking Placement Test

Notes to the teacher on using the speaking placement test:

The following sets of questions and discussion points provide a guide to assessing a student’s speaking level and to choosing the most appropriate In Company course book for their studies. They are designed to be asked by the teacher during a conversation with the student and reflect the structures and vocabulary students will meet in each of the In Company books. As you work through the questions, the questions become increasingly more difficult for the student and require a higher level of English to give a fluent and accurate response.

It isn’t necessary to ask a student ALL the questions. Begin with some basic questions from the Elementary section such as How are you today? What do you do? If the student gives a confident response, move straight on to questions in the Pre-intermediate section. Eventually you will find questions or topics that a student finds too difficult to respond to. At this point, move back down to a level where the student is comfortable talking again. The point at which the student starts to struggle indicates the level of course book which will provide a challenge to the learner. If on the other hand you feel the student wants a period for revision before attempting a higher level, you might choose the level of book which matches the questions and topics where the student seems most relaxed.

Finally, remember that these questions only provide a guide. Feel free to add some of your own supplementary questions, let the student divert into a topic that interests him/her or encourage the student to ask you questions too. The test should resemble a conversation between equals – not an interrogation! You are strongly advised to use this speaking placement test alongside the other In Company Placement Tests in order to ensure an accurate assessment and to choose the right In Company book.

Speaking Placement Test
Elementary
Business and work
·    Do you work for…? (name of company)    What do you do?
·    What time do you start / finish work?
·    How often do you use English in your job? Can you write e-mails in English? Can you telephone in English?
·    Have you got a boss? What’s his/her name? What does he/she do?
·    When did you join this company?
·    What are you working on at the moment?
Social and travel
·    Hello. How are you today?
·    What’s your name?
·    Can you spell it for me?
·    Are you from…? (name of country)
·    What do you do in your free time? Do you like any sports?
·    What do you normally do at the weekend? What are you doing this weekend?

Pre-Intermediate
Business and work
·    How long have you worked for your company?    Where did you work before this?
·    What sort of company do you work for? What are its main activities?
·    Tell me about a colleague…
·    What does he/she do? Has he worked at the company longer than you?
·    What does your job involve?   If someone applied for your job, what qualities would they need?
·    Do you think your job will change in the future?

Social and travel
·    Are you married? Where did you meet your husband/wife?
·    How much holiday do you get a year?    Do you travel for your job?    Where have you visited?   What do you think of…? (name of country visited)   
·    Did you like the food there?
·    What kind of food did you eat?     What’s a typical dish in your country? What’s it made of/served with?

Intermediate
Business and work
·    If you started again, would you have done a different job?
·    What’s the hardest thing about your job? What do you like about it?
·    Who are your main competitors? What are the key differences between them and you?
·    What do you think makes a good boss?
·    What kind of decisions do you make at work?   Which are the hardest decisions?
·    What kind of meetings do you attend?      How do you prepare? What makes an effective meeting?
Social and travel
·    Do you eat out much? Do you take visitors? How important is entertaining visitors in your work? What kind of things do you talk about?
·    When you go on business trips which airline do you normally fly with?   Tell me about a recent trip…
·    Was it successful? Why? Why not?     What was the hotel/flight like?
·    Do you find travel stressful? How do cope with stress?  How do you relax at the end of a day?

Upper Intermediate
Business and work
·  Does your company have a logo? What does it say about your company? How do you think your customers describe your company?
Social and travel
·  How easy is it to combine your work with your family?
·  When you’re out with colleagues, are there any topics you avoid?
·  Have you seen any good films recently? What happened?
·  What recent news story made you angry recently? Why?

Linguistic Evolution

By Simone Gilson

Source    :

Languages are constantly changing. New words are added to the English language every year, either borrowed or coined, and there is often railing against the 'decline' of the language by public figures. Some languages, such as French and Finnish, have academies to protect them against foreign imports. Yet languages are species-like constructs, which evolve naturally over time. Migration, imperialism, and globalization have blurred
boundaries between many of them, producing new ones (such as creoles) and driving some to extinction.

This book examines the processes by which languages change, from the macroecological perspective of competition and natural selection. In a series of chapters, Salikoko Mufwene examines such themes as:

*natural selection in language the actuation question and the invisible hand that drives evolution multilingualism and language contact language birth and language death
the emergence of Creoles and Pidgins the varying impacts of colonization and globalization on language vitality This comprehensive examination of the organic evolution of language will be essential reading for graduate and senior undergraduate students, and for researchers on the social dynamics of language variation and change,
language vitality and death, and even the origins of linguistic diversity.

"Inspired by evolutionary biology, Salikoko Mufwene's spectacularly comprehensive and thought-provoking new book goes for the big picture and illuminates fundamental principles of language evolution and language contact. Showcasing the peculiar (or not so peculiar, after all) evolutionary conditions of creoles, Mufwene reaches novel and unorthodox insights which build upon concepts such as the importance of ecology,
competition and selection, imperfect replication, and family resemblance. He questions and retunes some fundamental notions in linguistics like "system", "transmission" or "acquisition", thus coming considerably closer to an understanding of how language has evolved than earlier linguistic theory. Ingenious imagery like the highway traffic analogy show how patterns have emerged through "invisible hand" evolution, the convergence of communal behavior, and how imperfection, far from being imperfect, generates real-life structures. Principles like the ubiquity of contact and hybridism, the understanding of languages as species and complex adaptive systems, the relationship between mutual accommodation between individuals and emergent communal behavior, or the link between globalization and indigenization invoke a new down-to-earth linguistics in which the interactions of real-life individuals are at the core of far-reaching
developments. A must-read for theorists of language change and language
contact, and for anybody interested in how language really works." - Professor Edgar W. Schneider, Chair of English Linguistics, University of Regensburg, Germany
Linguistic Field (s): Linguistic Theories Sociolinguistics Written In: English (eng ) See this book announcement on our website: http://linguistlist.org/getbook.html


My Comment:
I think every language has a change or has been evolution by periode, and we must  conciderly that our language can be replaced by other language if we can’t protect own language from language evolution, because a language can be gone if they not used for a long time, example hieroglyph language in egypt, it not used for thousand year’s and the result the hieroglyph language is absolutely not used in oral communication, but we can found it in ancient script or another ancient civilitation ruins or musem in egypt.