Exercises

1. The following two sentences are said to be ambiguous in meaning. How many interpretations would
you give to either of them? What can you do to solve such ambiguity?
a. He turned in his grave.
b. They gave preference to young men and women.
2. Identify the units that have reference and the units that indicate structure:
I saw May when I went to the library.
3. How would you judge the following two sentences? Are they good or bad sentences?
a. The moon is made of brown eggs.
b. Moon brown the is of made eggs.
c.
d.
4. How would you classify the following signs? What will these signs mean to you and how do

you come to know their meanings?

(a)

(c)

(b)

5. When you see smoke coming out of a house, what conclusion will you draw
and how do you come to such a conclusion
6. What does a flushed complexion signify for the physician?
7. Onomatopoetic words []are said to be iconic by some people. For
the cuckoo, the sequence of English sounds is /kuku:/, and the sequence of
Chinese sounds is "bg". Do you think both words are onomatopoetic?
8.

A Chinese father names his son Xiao Long (Little Dragon). How
would you use the concept of arbitrariness of account for this?

9.

If you have developed a new shampoo and wanted to put it into the
market, would you name it Pig Hair Shampoo? Why?
10. Discuss the relation of arbitrariness and
rules.
11. When

you

do

shopping

in

supermarket, which do you prefer to

use, the spoken language or the written? Why?
12. In foreign language learning, which one do you think should come
first, listening and speaking, or reading and writing? Why?
13. Some people say that humans and dogs can communicate with each

other. Do you agree?

14. In what way do you think is a parrot talking?
15. You can tell your cat to lie down. What do you think has happened?
16. Please explain the primacy of human language over animal communication.
17. Please explain the roles of technology in human communication.
18. Sometimes communication may break down. What do you think are the causes for such
breakdowns?
19. What do you think we should pay attention to in intercultural communication?

20. Identify the functions of the following sentences.

a. I like your house very much.
b. I now declare the meeting closed.
c. Nice to meet you.
d. I met Mary in the library this morning.
21. Please explain why some people like poetry.
22. When you get hit by a desk in the classroom, what would you do?
23. What is the difference between the general functions and the metafunctions?
24. Do you agree to the claim that one utterance performs only one function? Why?
25. What are the differences between Hallidays functional theory and the traditional grammar?
26. Which theory of the origin of language would you agree to? Why?
27. Please list five Chinese onomatopoetic words.
28. What are the functions of onomatopoetic words?
29. What criteria can be used when we are classifying languages into families?
30. Do you agree to the claim that all languages in the world derived from one common ancestor?
31. What do you think are the major causes for the language diversity in the world?
32. What is difference between the following two sentences? What factors should we take into
account when we are decoding them?
(a) Open the window.
(b) Would you open the window, please?
33. How can we conduct a study of language scientifically?
34. What is the real object of linguistics?
35. What is the importance of studying speech in linguistics?
36. Whats your opinion of correctness in language use?
37. Is a standard language possible? Why?
38. What do you think are the external factors related to language?
39. There have been many translation softwares in the market. Do you think machine translation
of texts will be possible?
40. What factors are involved in foreign language learning and teaching?
41. What changes have you found in linguistic studies?
42. What do you think is the proper way to study language?
43. Do you think a corpus is always needed in linguistics? Why?
44. Please express the distinction between acoustic phonetics and articulatory phonetics.
45. How many stages does the speech chain consist of? What activities are involved in the speech
chain?
46. Do you think spelling is the same as pronunciation in English? If not, give three examples and

47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.

55.
56.
57.
58.
59.

60.
61.
62.
63.

64.

65.
66.
67.

then make a comment.

How does the vocal tract work in the articulation of speech sounds?
How many types can speech sounds be classified into? What are they?
Explain the differences among bilabial, dental and labiodental.
Write the symbols for the vowel in the following words:
a) cough b) rough c) friend d) bread e) eat f) call
Transcribe the following words phonemically:
a) symbol b) nineteen c) square d) keyboard e) sofa f) bought
What are the major differences between vowels and consonants?
How is broad transcription different from narrow transcription?
Transcribe the following sentences into IPA:
a) Small numbers of adjectives and prepositions also occur in transcripts of early child
speech.
b) These two sentences are differently interpreted, yet each of them contains exactly the
same words.
What is a phoneme? And what is an allophone?
Transcribe the following words:
a) achieves b) sixth c) others d) classes e) measure
Why do say that [p] and [b] are different phonemes?
What is a minimal pair?
For each of the following pairs of consonants supply a minimal pair of English words in
which the contrast is made in the place indicated: initially, medially, and finally.
a) /p/ - /b/ b) /k/ - /g/ c) /f/ - /v/ d) /m/ - /n/ e) /r/ - /l/
Give phonemic symbols for the underlined part of the following words.
a) bought b) ghost c) phases d) ether e) bathe f) northern
What does the word distinctive mean in the term distinctive features?
Try to work out the distinctive features for each group of sounds:
a) [p, t, b, d]
b) [j, w, i, u]
Describe the similarities and differences between the sounds represented by the underline
letters:
a) life, lives
b) choice, choose
c) deduce, deduction
The pronunciation of words may be influenced by their spelling. Identify the words in which
pronunciation does not match the spelling.
a) Edinburgh
b) Wednesday c) Thames d) tortoise e) clothes
Do you think the following words are permissible in English? Why?
a) tpray b) btry
c) tgharg
What does complementary distribution mean?
Listen carefully to the following two sentences and then try to work out a phonological rule.
a)
b)

68. What is the structure of a syllables?

69. How many syllables are there in the following words? Please break them into spoken
syllables.

a) yesterday b) extra c) secretarial d) camera e) appreciation

70. What are the onset restrictions in English syllables?
71. Write the following words in phonemic transcription, including the stress marks:
a) birth-mark b) shop-owner c) regulation d) fruit-cake
72. What is the importance of stress in English?
73. What is pitch?
74. Please give some examples to show the importance of pitch in Chinese?
75. Describe the intonation patterns of the following English questions:
a) Do you want coffee or tea?
b) How much does it cost?
c) Do you have any money?
d) They came rather late, didnt they?
76. What is the difference between pitch and intonation?
77. What is the role of intonation in daily conversations?
78. What are the major features of word?
79. What is the relation between word and meaning?
80. How can you identify the meaning of a word?
81. Identify the word class of each word in the following paragraph.
In practice, writers on style have differed a great deal in their understanding of the subject, and
one source of disagreement has been the question To what or whom do we attribute style? In the
broadest sense, STYLE can be applied to both spoken and written, both literary and non-literary
varieties of language; but by tradition, it is particularly associated with written literary texts, and
this is the sense of the term which will concern us.

82. Do you the think the distribution of lexical words is the same as that of grammatical words in
speech and writing?
83. What is the difference between open-class words and closed-class words?
84. Divide the following words into morphemes by placing a + between each morpheme and
the next.
1) unbearable
2) watchful
3) personification 4) unexceptionally
5) uneducated
6) inspiring
7) soft-hearted
8) horsemanship
85. How many morphemes are there in each of the following words?
1) geography 2) internationally 3) forgotten 4) Washington
5) information 6) industrialization 7) predominant 8) preconscious
86. How many allomorphs does the plural form s have?
87. What does the prefix in- mean in the following words?
1) inspire
2) intransigent 3) insufficient
4) insert
5) insoluble 6) intact
7) impenetrable
8) immutable
9) illicit
10) irretrievable
88. Write the feminine form of each of the following words:
1) prince
5) fianc
9) wolf

2) emperor 3) waiter
6) hero
7) king
10) doctor

4) Paul
8) ox

89. Add an inflectional suffix to each of the following words, which end in derivational suffixes:
1) operation

2) responsibility

3) proposal

4) modernize

5) beautify 6) activate
7) funny
8) friendly
90. What role can English inflection play in the expression of meaning?
91. Do you think inflection is universal? Why?
92. Compare the differences of inflection between the English language and your second foreign
language?
93. Analyze the semantic relationship between the constituent morphemes of the following
compounds.
Model: a) mailbox: a box for mail
b) headache: ache of the head
1) password
2) housewife 3) sunshine
4) milkman
5) sunflower
6) apple pie 7) mosquito net
8) daydream
9) freezing-point 10) flashlight
94. What is abbreviation? Do you think the way English shortens a longer word is the same as the
Chinese language?
95. What are the major processes of adding new words to the vocabulary of the English language?
96. How many lexemes are there in each of the following
sentences?
a)
b)
c) Had the construction worker not seen the attack as he
was driving to work early Tuesday and jumped in to try
and help, she might well have died, police said.
d) Astronomers are elated by the discovery of an object that rivals the size of Pluto's moon.
97. What is the difference between lexeme and word?
98. How would you account for the linguistic phenomenon of collocation?
99. What are the structural features of English idioms?
100.
Why is the lexicon of a language constantly expanding?
101.
What are the social functions of proverbs?
102. Is immediate constituent analysis effective to explain discontinuous constituents?
103. Diagram the constituent structure of each of the following.
(a) a very old wooden house down the lane
(b) His old friend arrived yesterday.
104. For each of the following sentences state as precisely as you can in what ways it is

ambiguous:
(a) The door was closed.
(b) I dont like Jacks painting.
(c) I drew the woman with the chalk.
105. Use the appropriate phrase structure rules to draw a tree diagram of constituent structure for
each of the following sentences:
(a) A smart boy fooled the class.
(b) The pavilion on the hill collapsed in the wind.
(c) Everybody knew that the president would win the election.

106. Examine each of the following sentences and indicate if it is a simple, coordinate, or complex
sentence:
(a) I did it because I was asked to.
(b) Tom was never there, but his sister was.
(c) My parents live a happy life in the country.
107. Analyse the structure of the following sentences and explain how many clauses each sentence
contains, what the grammatical function of each clause is (namely, main clause, complement
clause, relative clause), what type of clause each is (namely, declarative, interrogative, imperative,
exclamatory), what the constituents of each clause are, and what function each constituent serves
within its containing clause (namely, subject, predicate, complement, or adjunct).
(a) The soldiers escaped.
(b) The soldiers shot a dog.
(c) The soldiers brutally attacked the dog that barked to them.
(d) Has anyone told the police the men who escaped were carrying guns?
108. Draw the tree diagrams for the following sentences:
(1) She found a book on Madison Street.
(2) Jack advised Henry to see the dentist.
(3) Jack promised Henry to see the doctor.
109. In each pair of the following sentences, indicate with N those that need not follow a
particular order when they are joined by and. Indicate with O those that need to be reordered.
(1) Sam went to bed.
He had a dream.
(2) John came in.
He closed the door.
(3) The sea is blue.
The grass is green.
(4) She walked away.
She got up from the bed.
110. What is the relationship between surface structure and deep structure?
111. Please state whether the following two sentences have the same deep structures? Why?
(a) He made her a good wife.

(b) He made her a good husband.

112. The formation of many sentences involves the operation of syntactic movement. Show the
deep structures for each of following sentences.
(a) The boss of the bus company was severely criticized by the public.
(b) The woman threw the rake away in the yard.
(c) Will the new school master hire her?
113. Please display the transformational rules involved in the following sentences.
(a) What can the computer program do for us?
(b) The window was broken by Jack.
(c) They gave the door a gentle push.
114. Paraphrase each of the following sentences in two different ways to show how syntactic rules
account for the ambiguity of sentences:
(a) Smoking cigars can be nauseating.
(b) The woman is too heavy to move.
(c) After a three-day debate, they finally decided on the plane.
(d) The little boy saw the old man with the telescope.
115. Please try to identify the meanings of the following words and sentence?
1) table
2) beautiful
3) man
4) Im hungry.
5) Theres a horse in the field.
Do you meet any difficulty in giving the meanings these words and sentences?
116. What are the associative meanings of the following words?
1) red
2) dragon
3) dog
4) cage
117. How many factors do you think contribute the formation of meaning?
118. How many kinds of meaning can you find in the following two sentences?
1) Would you please pass me the salt?
2) I wonder if Dr. Smith will be in his office this morning.
119. What is the difference between sentencing meaning and utterance meaning?
120. What do you think is the disadvantage of the traditional approach to meaning?
121. Group the following lexemes into three semantic fields:
shoulder, pencil, book, rose, dictionary, head, pen, notebook, neck, leg, chrysanthemum, tulip,
hand
122. Do you think thesauri are capable to represent the order of things and events in the world?
Why?
123. If you have ever used an English thesaurus, do you think it is really useful to your English
study?
124. Please explain why there are not true synonyms.
125. The following groups of words are said to be synonyms. Do you think they are synonymous?
a. statesman, politician
b. adult, grown-up
c. huge, gigantic, colossal, enormous
126. What category of antonym does each of the following pair of words belong to?
a. black, white
b. buy, sell
c. big, small
d. parent, child
e. upstairs, downstairs
f. polite, rude
127. Please specify the semantic relation among the words in the following groups.

1) cat, dog, pet

2) keyboard, monitor, hard disk, mouse
3) head, oral cavity, tongue 4) cabbage, cauliflower, celery, tomato
128. What is the semantic relation between the words in the following pairs.
1) hand, foot
2) rose, narcissus
3) tree, willow
4) bottle, cork
129. slug has four separate entries in Websters New World Students Dictionary. Please look it
up in the dictionary and explain why it has four entries.
130. The word hale means happy and strong when used as an adjective and to force a person
to go when used as a verb. Why?
131. What is the difference between polysemy and homonymy?
132. Try to identify the presuppositions that lie behind each of the following utterances:
a) John has stopped smoking.
b) She regretted having told him the secret.
c) The boy opened the door himself.
d) The paper turned red when it is dipped into the liquid.
133. What does each of the following utterances entail?
e) He lost his bike yesterday.
f) They went to the Great Wall.
g) Marys computer is terrific.
h) We met two of our friends at the party.
134. Please identify in each of the following groups of words the one word that does not belong
and give your reasons.
a) pen, pencil, ruler, cat
b) bathtub, soap, towel, oven
c) carpenter, professor, student, president
d) walk, stroll, run, sing
e) company, university, college, school
135. What are the advantages and disadvantages of componential analysis?
136. Please identify the types of predicate in each of the verbs in the following sentences.
a) He gave me the book.
b) It was snowing hard.
c) The computer is working properly.
d) Someone invented the story.
137. Try to correct the errors, if any, in the following sentences.
e) We wish you to come back soon.
f) He rose the heavy box easily.
g) Mary laughed me before the students.
138. Please try to imagine the context in which each of the following utterances is used.
a) Are you who you are?
b) Can you pass me the salt that you are passing me?
c) Eat the food you are eating!
139. Please comment on the role of tautology in the following:

140. What is the use of metaphor in verbal communication?

141. What are the differences between the utterances in each pair?
1) a. I admit that I was wrong.
b. I was wrong.
2) a. I order you to leave the room right now.
b. You must leave the room right now.
3) a. I warn you, the dog is vicious.
b. The dog is vicious.
4) a. I apologize.
b. Im sorry.
142. Decide whether each of the following utterances is performative. If not, please explain why
not.
1) He asserts that this is feasible.
2) I convince everyone with my arguments.
3) I was required to get everything ready for the parade.
4) I will fire you.
5) Do it again, please!
143. Give as many different illocutions for the utterance Its cold outside. Imagine the context in
which each of those illocutions would apply.
144. Give at least five different utterances which express the illocutionary force of request.
145. Explain how coherence is achieved in the following dialogue.
1) A: Thats the phone.
B: Im in the bathroom.
A: Okay.
2) Son: I need a ten-speed bicycle.
Mother: Im sure you do.
146. In each case below decide which maxim of the cooperative principle has been flouted and
what implicature might be drawn.
1) A: Where does Miss Rosebery live?
B: Somewhere in the suburbs of the city.
2) A: Im out of petrol.
B: There is a garage round the corner.
3) A: How do you think of Cathys singing?
B: Well, she has produced a series of sounds that correspond closely with the score of
Home sweet home.
4) Teacher: (towards the end of a lecture) What time is it now?
Student: Its 10:44 and 35.6 seconds.
5) A: Do you want some coffee?
B: Coffee would make me awake.
147. Explain how the maxims of the cooperative principle are flouted for the sake of politeness.
1) The following dialogue took place downstairs the flat of a lady after she had been invited to

dinner by a young man and escorted home.

Man: Would you like to invite me up for a coffee?
Woman: OhIm afraid the place is in a terrible mess
2) Host: Would you like a cocktail? Its my own invention.
Guest: Well, mmm uh its not that we dont not drink.
3) Mother: Someones eaten the icing off the cake.
Son: It wasnt ME.
4) A: What is she, small?
B: Yes, yes, shes small, smallish, um, not really small but certainly not very big.
148. In each of the following dialogues, there are three alternative responses for the second
speaker. Put them in increasing order of politeness.
1) Mary: Well, Ive just have my hair dyed blonde.
Jack: (a) Oh, how beautiful!
(b) Oh, how awful!
(c) Oh, how amazing!
2) Lodger: What can I do for you, lady?
Landlady: (a) Could you cut my lawn?
(b) Cut my lawn, please.
(c) If it doesnt bother, would you mind cutting my lawn?
149. For each of the following utterances, decide which ones contain the presupposition that The
dog barked at the shadow. What do these utterances have in common?
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

Did the dog bark at the shadow?

When did the dog bark at the shadow?
I was about to go to bed when the dog barked at the shadow.
I dont understand why the dog barked at the shadow.
I wonder if the dog barked at the shadow.

150. For each of the following utterances, decide which word or construction is the presupposition
trigger.
1)
2)
3)
4)

You should stop eating raw oysters.

Little Franz regretted not having studied French better before.
Catherine pretends she knows nothing about this event.
It was in the Mississippi valley that Mark Twain found the best setting for most of his best
novels.
5) We greatly appreciate your helping us in the experiment.
151. For each of the following utterances, two likely responses labeled (a) and (b) are given.
Decide which is the preferred response and which is the dispreferred.
1) A: Come and join us in the picnic.
B: (a) Its certainly nice of you to ask, but I havent been feeling well these days.
(b) Youre so kind to ask, and Im sure well have good time then.
2) A: Her performance last night was fantastic, wasnt it?

B: (a) Absolutely.
(b) Well, on the whole, it was OK, especially considering this was her first time on the
stage.
3) A: Can you help me fix this frame?
B: (a) With pleasure.
(b) MmmerId like to, but dont you think its too high for me?
152. Point out the reference items in each of the following and try to explain how they contribute
to the cohesion of the text:
1) The children next door stole a toy from my son. Their mothers told them to return the toy, but
they said it was theirs.
2) When he was at college, Alex was a great friend of mine.
3) It rained day and night for two weeks. The basement flooded and everything was under
water. It spoiled all our calculations.
4) I need a stamp. Do you have one?
5) Daddy still has a bit of cold, but otherwise all are well.
153. Point out the substitutions in each of the following and try to explain how they are used to
connect the sentences into a cohesive text.
1) The child doesnt like this book. Show him a more interesting one.
2) A: He never really succeeded in his ambitions.
B: No. He might have done, if it had not been for the restlessness of his nature.
3) A: The Chicago Bulls will win the game.
B: All my friends say so, but I dont think they will.
4) A: Will you join in our excursion this weekend?
B: Possibly not.
154. Identify the ellipses in each of the following and try to explain how they contribute to the
cohesion of the texts:
1) A: How long will you be in here?
B: I dont know. You could ask matron.
2) A: Did the children take the course?
B: George did, but Bob didnt care.
155. Identify the conjunctive expressions in each of the following passages and explain how they
contribute to the cohesion of the passages.
1) In the United States, the supposed role of the media is to report the news in an informational
manner in order to allow the public the ability to understand and derive their own opinions on
social, moral, and political events. Moreover, this role as an informational intermediary gives
the media a central role in shaping the social and moral norms in the society.
2) Dr. Henning studied how students who are learning English as a second language remember
vocabulary. To begin, the subjects listened to a recording of a native speaker reading a
paragraph in English. Following the recording, the subjects took a 15-question test to see which
words they remembered. Each question has four choices. The subjects had to circle the word

they had heard in the recording. Some of the questions had four choices that sound alike. For
example, weather, whether, wither, and wetter are four words that sound alike. Some of the
questions had four choices that have the same meaning/ Method, way, manner, and system
would be four words with the same meaning. Some of them had four unrelated choices. For
instance, weather, method, love, and recall could be used as four unrelated words. Finally the
subjects took a language proficiency test.
156. Identify the various lexical cohesive ties in each of the following passages and try to explain
how they contribute to the cohesion of the text in which they occur.
1) I had been born in the working class, and I was now, at the age of eighteen, beneath the point at
which I had started. I was down in the cellar of society, down in the subterranean depths of
misery about which it is neither nice nor proper to speak. I was in the pit, the abyss, the human
cesspool, the shambles and charnel-house of our civilization. This is the part of the edifice of
society that society chooses to ignore. Lack of space compels me here to ignore it, and I shall
say only that the things I there saw gave me a terrible scare.
2) Nor did I fare better with the masters themselves. I had expected to find men who were clean,
noble, and alive, whose ideas were clean, noble, and alive. I went about amongst the men who
sat in the high place the preachers, the businessmen, the professors, and the editors. I ate
with them, drank wine with them, automobiled with them, and studied them. It is true, I found
many that were clean and noble; but with rare exceptions, they were not alive. I do verily
believe I could count the exceptions on the fingers of my two hands. Where they were not alive
with rottenness, quick with unclean life, they were merely the unburied dead clean and
noble, like well-preserved mummies, but not alive. In this connection I may especially mention
the professors I met, the men who live up to that decadent university ideal, the passionless
pursuit of passionless intelligence.
157. Identify the thematic structure the following sentences.
1) You cant go away with it.
2) Theres no help for it.
3) Trees, forced by the damp heat, found too little soil for full growth.
4) Whether they come or not doesnt matter very much.
5) Getting the car on the boat was rather complicated.
6) It was rather difficult getting the car on the boat.
7) Is your country rich in materials?
8) Only once did his father discuss his future with him.
158. The New information in each of the following utterances is bold-typed. Please use a different
sentence structure for each so that the New information can be highlighted.
1) He owed the tailor twenty dollars.
2) The impossible has often proved possible.
3) We have oral practice every other day.
4) We didnt leave the flat until we could smell the smoke in the corridor.
5) The football match was cancelled because of the rain.

159. What is a regional dialect? And what is the relationship between a regional dialect and a
standard dialect?
160. What are the major features of the language used by women speakers of English?
161. Do you think there are differences between the vocabulary used by aged people and that used
by young people?
162. What are the differences between dialect and register?
163. Do you think there are any differences between the vocabulary scientists use when talking
about Information Technology among themselves and the vocabulary they use when talking
to little children about the same topic?
164. Below are given some sentences used in Black English (BE). Please try to find their
equivalents in Standard American English.
a) He nice.
b) They mine.
b) I gonna do it.
d) John be happy.
e) John happy.
f) He be late.
g) He late.
h) Do you be tired?
i) You tired?
165. Describe two features of Black English.
166. What is Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
167. How is language related to culture?
168. Some words may have different associative meanings in different cultures. What are the
associative meanings of dog to Chinese speakers and English speakers respectively?
169. Quite a lot of people in the world are completely bilingual or even multilingual. What does
this fact implied?
170. Observe the English kinship system and think over the various relationships covered by
terms. Is the Chinese kinship system the same as the English kinship system?
171. Politeness is assumed to be a principle observed by people in different cultures. Please give
some examples to show how politeness is expressed in English and Chinese.
172. With the development of Internet, many new words have entered the English language.
Please give five Internet-related words and their meanings.
173. Can an individual change language? Why?
174. Some linguists say that both English and Chinese are getting technologized. Please give some
examples.
175. Think of three words that have entered the language in the last ten years and then describe
briefly their sources.
i.
ii.
iii.
176. Think of three words that are getting out of fashioned. (Hint: Words marked with archaic in
dictionaries might be a help.)
i.
ii.
iii.
177. The vocabulary of English consists of native words as well as thousands of loan words.

Look up the following words in a dictionary that provides the etymologies (histories) of
words. Speculate how each word came to be borrowed from the particular language.
a) size
b) royal
c) aquatic
d) ranch
e) blouse
f) banana
g) hoodlum
h) astronaut
i) pagoda
j) bulldoze
178. Below are given some sentences taken from Old English, Middle English, and early Modern
English texts. Underline the parts of each sentence that differ from Modern English. Rewrite the
sentence in Modern English and then state what changes must have occurred.
Example: It not belongs to you.
Mod. Eng.: It does not belong to you.
Change: At one time, a negative sentence simply had a not before the verb. Today,
the word do, in its proper morphological form, must appear before the not.
a. It nothing pleased his master.
Mod. Eng.:
Change:
b. He hath said that we would lift them whom that him please.
Mod. Eng.:
Change:
c. I have a brother is condemned to die.
Mod. Eng.:
Change:
d. I bade them take away you.
Mod. Eng.:
Change:
e. I wish you was still more a Tartar.
Mod. Eng.:
Change:
f. Me was told.
Mod. Eng.:
Change:
179. How does standard language come into being?
180. What is the social role of standard language?
181. What are the differences between national language and official language?
182. What do you think are the decisive factors in the choice of a foreign language for students?
183. What are the major differences between acquisition and language learning?
184. Can you find evidence for the claim that mother tongue acquisition does not require a child to
memorize words and sentences?
185. What are the major difficulties most English learners in China face?
186. What do you think are the effects of formal instruction on second language acquisition?
187. How many stages does the child experience in his first language acquisition? What are the
general features of each stage?

188. What do you think is the role of parents in first language acquisition?
189. Think over the following dialogue between parent and child. What types of words
consistently appear in the childs sentences? What sorts of things does she leave out? How
can the parent understand her so easily when the child is omitting so many items?
a. Mummy book. Read book. (asking for a story)
b. Bubble allgone. (bubble has just popped)
c. Mummy chair. My chair. (saying whose chair is whose)
d. Teddy floor. He sad. (teddy has fallen on the floor)
e. Pat it. Face cold. (has just touched sisters face)
f. More juice. Juice cup. (holding out her cup)
190. What is the role of the language classroom in second language acquisition?
191. The following two utterances are produced by a Chinese learner of English. Are they correct
English expressions? Why?
(a) There are some people came to watch football game.
(b) My father often go to work in evening.
192. Please list the advantage of positive transfer.
193. What are the major social factors that influence the process of L2 learning?
194. Input is said to be helpful in L2 learning. Some people argue for the desirability of using
authentic unmodified L2 materials in the classroom. Do you agree with this? Why or why
not?
195. Different learners achieve different levels of success in L2 learning. Why?
196. What are the differences between Jackendoffs account of the relation between language and
thought and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
197. Some people think that language determines thought. Do you agree? Why and why not?
198. Do you think that language and thought are independent of each other?
199. In what areas in the brain are speech and language considered to be localized?
200. Can you image the activities of language perception when you are reading something?
201. Please give a brief account of how language processing takes place.
202. Which process is more facilitative, the top-down process or the bottom-up process? Why?
203. How is the structural approach to language teaching related to linguistics?
204. Why is the teaching of English becoming more important in the world?
205. What are the differences between the structural approach and the mentalistic approaches to
language teaching?
206. The following are some extracts from two English textbooks. Point out which approach each
textbook follows and tell the characters of the approach as demonstrated in the two textbooks.
1) 1
2)
207. What are the major features of the grammatical syllabus?
208. Do you think grammar can be ignored in learning English as a foreign language? Why?
209. The following is an excerpt from a textbook written on the basis of situational syllabus. Study
the excerpt carefully and then try to tell the differences between the situational syllabus and
the grammatical syllabus.

210. What are the major features of the communicative syllabus?

211. What do you is the learners role in a communicative syllabus?
212. What is the use of language tests?
213. What is the relationship between linguistics and language testing?
214. How can we decide whether a test is good or bad? What factors are normally involved?
215. What is the relationship between validity and reliability?
216. The following are some questions taken from some test papers. Decide which type of test
they belong to: (a) the discrete point test, (b) integrative test, and (c) the communicative test.
1) Directions: There are 30 incomplete sentences in this part. For each sentence there are
four choices marked A, B, C, and D. Choose the ONE answer that best completes the
sentence. Then mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through
the center.
31. By the time he arrives in Beijing, we _________ here for two days.
A. have been staying
C. shall stay

B. have stayed
D. will have stayed

2) Directions: In this section, you will, you will hear a passage three times. When the
passage is read for the first time, you should listen carefully for the general idea. When the
passage is read for the second time, you are required to fill in the blanks numbered from S1
to S7 with the exact words you have just heard. For blanks numbered S8 to S10 you are
required to fill in the missing information. You can either use the exact words you have just
heard or write down the main points in your own words. Finally, when the passage is read
for the third time, you should check what you have written.
If you are a college student, most of your concerns about your health and happiness in life are
probably (S1) __________ on the present. Basically, you want to feel good physically,
mentally, and (S2) __________ now. You probably dont spend much time worrying about
the (S3) __________, such as whether you will develop heart disease, or (S4) __________,
how you will take care of yourself in your (S5) __________ years, or how you are going to
live.
217. What do you think are the strong points and drawbacks of each of the following types of test:
(a) the achievement test, (b) the proficiency test, (c) the aptitude test, (d) the diagnosis test, (e) the
subjective test, and (f) the objective test.
218 .What factors are involved in the development of a test?
219. Please comment on the proportion of each section in CET-4.
220. The following utterances are given by some Chinese students. Decide (a) what type of error
each of them belongs to and (b) what might be the causes of the error(s).
(1) She didnt went back.
(2) Do she works in factory?
(3) Works she in the factory?

(4) These flower need badly watering now.

(5) He is one of the greatest alive novelists.

(6) I spotted the two aircrafts from a distance.
221. When a Chinese student met his American teacher before the class, he greeted the teacher by
saying Have you eaten, Teacher?. Do you think the students utterance is an error? Why?
222. What are the differences between the traditional approach and the procedural approach?
223. How can you have a proper attitude towards the errors and mistakes made by foreign
language learners?