They look at the inner workings of language. Why language works like it does, in other words. Think of learning about linguistics in the same way you’d learn how an internal combustion engine works. Linguistics is what’s under the hood… you don’t need to know it to drive a car, but it helps understand what’s going on if you ever break down!
So… TEFL teachers should find these useful in providing more of a background to their teaching and students, too, will find them helpful in understanding language at a slightly deeper level.
Puns are ambiguous; they are words (or phrases) which sound the same but which have two very different meanings used for humorous effect. (A traditional explanation of a pun is a “play on words” but since this defines everything from puns to Spoonerisms to Malapropsims to Pig Latin it really […]
Homophones are words that sound the same but with very different meanings. The words are usually spelt differently or, if they are spelt the same, come from different roots. For example, the words may be spelt the same, such as rose (as in the flower) and rose (as in the […]
What are Anagrams? Anagrams are simply rearrangements of letters from one word or phrase to make another word or phrase. The word itself comes from the Greek, anagrammatismos, ana- (up, again, back, new) + -gram (letter). For example, the following are a few interesting anagrams. dormitory – dirty room Clint […]
A Palindrome is a word or phrase which can be read correctly either right-to-left or left-to-right. These are palindromes: civic deified dewed kayak level madam minim racecar radar redder refer rotator rotavator rotor sagas solos sexes stats If punctuation is ignored, then these phrases are also palindromes: Do geese […]
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a root (or stem) of a word to form another word. For example, take the word reason and add two affixes: un + reason + able Prefixes and suffixes are common types of affixes. A prefix is an affix which is […]