Language more
specifically human language refers to the grammar and other rules and norms
that allow humans to make utterances and sounds in a way that others can
understand, notes linguist John McWhorter, an associate professor of English and comparative
literature at Columbia University. Or as Guy Deutscher said in his seminal
work, "The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's
Greatest Invention," language is "what makes us human."
Discovering what is language, then, requires a brief look at its origins, its
evolution through the centuries, and its central role in human existence and
evolution.
According to Collins
Dictionary: A language is a system of communication which
consists of a set of sounds and written symbols which are used by the people of
a particular country or region for talking or
writing.
English language is
like a key in expanding all the knowledge in all around the world. Being
capable in using English will open the wider opportunities in expanding
knowledge. Due to have that language or to teach it we have to learn the language first. There are various ways to learn a language and there are lots of languages actually, but in this blog I just want to use English language and social media as example.
Social media continues to evolve. Today there are numbers of sites where users can interact with each other and share information. The influence of social networks on learning a language unquestionable today. One thing has been established by all of them. Social network sites may affect people's minds in different ways depending on what kind of information is shown to them.
There are 12 types of language.
1. Argot
An argot is a language primarily developed to disguise conversation, originally
because of a criminal enterprise, though the term is also used loosely to refer
to informal jargon.
2. Cant
Cant is
somewhat synonymous with argot and jargon and refers to the vocabulary of an
in-group that uses it to deceive or exclude nonusers.
3. Colloquial Language
Anything not employed in formal writing or conversation, including terms that
might fall under one or more of most of the other categories in this list, is colloquialism. Colloquial and colloquialism may
be perceived to be pejorative terms, but they merely refer to informal
terminology.
4. Creole
A creole is a more sophisticated development of a pidgin, derived from two or
more parent languages and used by people all ages as a native language.
5. Dialect
A dialect is a way of speaking based on geographical or social factors.
6. Jargon
Jargon is a body of words and phrases that apply to a specific activity or
profession, such as a particular art form or athletic or recreational endeavor,
or a medical or scientific subject. Jargon is often necessary for precision
when referring to procedures and materials integral to a certain pursuit. However,
in some fields, jargon is employed to an excessive and gratuitous degree, often
to conceal the truth or deceive or exclude outsiders. Various types of jargon
notorious for obstructing rather than facilitating communication are given
names often appended with -ese or -speak, such as bureaucratese or corporate-speak.
7. Lingo
This term vaguely refers to the speech of a particular community or group and
is therefore loosely synonymous with many of the other words in this list.
8. Lingua Franca
A lingua franca is a language often adopted as a common tongue to enable
communication between speakers of separate languages, though pidgins and
creoles, both admixtures of two or more languages, are also considered lingua
francas.
9. Patois
Patois refers loosely to a nonstandard
language such as a creole, a dialect, or a pidgin, with a connotation of the
speakers’ social inferiority to those who speak the standard language.
10. Pidgin
A simplified language arising from the efforts of people speaking different
languages to communicate is a pidgin. These languages generally develop to
facilitate trade between people without a common language. In time, pidgins
often evolve into creoles.
11. Slang
A vocabulary of terms (at least initially) employed in a specific subculture is
slang. Slang terms, either invented words or those whose meanings are adapted
to new senses, develop out of a subculture’s desire to disguise or exclude others
from their conversations. As US society becomes more youth oriented and more
homogenous, slang becomes more widespread in usage, and subcultures continually
invent new slang as older terms are appropriated by the mainstream population.
12. Vernacular
A vernacular is a native language or dialect, as opposed to another tongue also
in use, such as Spanish, French, or Italian and their dialects as compared to
their mother language, Latin. Alternatively, a vernacular is a dialect itself
as compared to a standard language (though it should be remembered that a
standard language is simply a dialect or combination of dialects that has come
to predominate).
1. Also referred to as ‘social networking’, ‘social software’,
‘Web 2.0.’
2. Older terms: ‘ICTs’, ‘computer conferencing’, ‘CMC’,
‘online discussion groups.’
3. Examples: Facebook, Twitter, wikis, blogs, YouTube and
much more.
4. Online, free, open, requires user account.
5. Widely-used: Facebook has 2.20 billion monthly active
users and 1.45 billion daily active users on average as of March 31, 2018.
6. Two main affordances of social media: information exchange (‘media’) and communication (‘social’).
7. The challenge to educators: not to use
social media merely because ‘it is there’ and it is pervasive; how to harness
the dual features of social media for educational purposes
Why use Social Media in (Language) Teaching and
Learning? The Pedagogical Argument
1. Familiarity:
all students are already using them for purposes that include the social and
the educational
2. Use
in class/after class –social media bring learning outside the classroom
3. Authentic,
autonomous and independent learning
4. Motivational
and fun
5. Meaningful
interaction peer-peer, student-instructor (communication)
6. Vast
resource of authentic written, audio, video materials with which both receptive
and productive skills may be practised. (information)
7. Swain’s
output hypothesis: “the act of producing language (speaking or writing)
constitutes, under certain circumstances, part of the process of second
language learning” (2007).
The Importance of Instructional Design
Five
factors to consider when designing Web-based learning (Miller and Miller 2000)
1.
theoretical orientation
2.
course content
3.
learning goals
4.
learner characteristics
5.
technological capabilities
Online Community of Inquiry
‘Community of Inquiry’ Model as a model of good practice for the online classroom and online learning (Garrison and Vaughan 2008): higher-order learning occurs through the interaction of three core elements: social presence, teaching presence and cognitive presence.
Disadvantages of Facebook as a Learning Tool
1.
Privacy
issues
2.
Distractive
multitasking while using Facebook
3.
Lack
of access in schools
4.
Sentiment
amongst students (and parents?) that Facebook is a place to socialize, separate
from academic work (Hew 2011) separation between ‘pleasure’ (socializing) and
‘pain’ (learning)
5.
Students
may consider Facebook to be more of a “social study space” that is off limits
to teachers difficulties in attempts to formalize the use of Facebook in the
classroom (Grayet al., 2010).
6.
Terminology
of Facebook: why does the teacher want to be my ‘friend’.
Conclusion
In this era almost everyone using social media and it is important to learn a language in a fun way, that is why lots of people chose social media to learn a new language. It's really worth your time to spend your day learning a language with just a little effort. Nowadays, people use social media as a tool to increase their knowledge, but sometimes instead of learning they got distracted.
References
Garrison,
D. R., & Vaughan, N. (2008). Blended learning in higher education.San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Miller, S.
and Miller, K. (2000). Theoretical and Practical Considerations in the Design
of Web-Based Instruction. In: B. Abbey, ed. Instructional and
Cognitive Impacts of Web-Based Education. Hershey & London: Idea
Publishing Group, pp. 156-177.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/language, accessed June 20th 2018.
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-language-1691218, accessed June 20th 2018.
/http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/, accessed June 21st 2018.
