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Saturday 6 November 2010

Your Presentations

I very much enjoyed your presentations - well done everyone for being so engaged and enthusiastic! It was great that we covered such a wide range of issues. I also felt that our discussions were most interesting and useful. I'm keen to know what you think of the module so far - how's it going for you?

6 comments:

  1. I think the module is definitely interesting. However i just feel confused about the feasibility of ELF, about its future.Is is applicable in reality. Some opponents' ideas are given in the book named English in the World from your book review, like ELF so hererogenous and diverse, is ELF core able to cover that all; moreover the discussion in the classroom show that Jenkin's analysis have probelms; limited the development of ELF; focus on communicatives skill or strategies to overcome miscommunication; learner's aspiration...though ELF should have its own rights for various reasons,I just feel concerned about its feasibility...

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  2. Feasibility where, in what sense? in which context?

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  3. I mean the ELF CORE's feasibility. Is it possible to establish such a core? so many opposing ideas on this.

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  4. I found this on a keynote speech Jenkins gave in Japan. Last week I believe Alan mentioned (threw down the gauntlet for us to take up ??) that he didn't think there was anything that NNS using ELF did that NS didn't also do or vice versa. Looking at the 'lexical innovations' that Jenkins lists below, I would have to say I agree with him as I can quite easily think of examples where NS would use the same 'innovations' particularly with regard the last 3 points.

    Lexical innovations in ELF from VOICE, Dewey, and Cheshire

    Extension to the collocational field of words with high semantic generality, e.g. take an operation

    Assigning meaning to function words, e.g. about, back, as in “I back to Korea next week”.

    Shift towards common meaning of ‘false friends’, e.g. BrEng actually (= ‘in fact’) shifts to mean ‘currently’ in ELF (‘true friends’)

    Word coinage, e.g: holder instead of BrEng ‘jacket’ or ‘cover’

    Novel collocations, e.g. severe criminals, space time

    Novel use of morphemes, e.g. angriness, touristic, importancy, smoothfully

    creation of hybrids: Drogenfreak, Telefon junkie, Metallfan

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  5. This course was one of the most interesting courses I have attended so far in Newcastle University. It was not boring as it kept giving us eye-opener and insipiring ideas. I love how I look at the World Englishes now. I observe how people use English and respect all Englishes. I worked on my assignment quite early, did lots of reading and put time and effort into it. I hope my hard work is paid of. Thanks Alan.
    Mona Helmi

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  6. one more thing about the presentation. When you first said you are going to help us find a topic to write about for the assignment from the presentation, I was wondering how could this be possible! How could a transcript of a conversation lead to an assignment topic.. But it was amazing how you could point out for every single one of us something to write about. I salute you for a great job.

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