Close Reading

What's reading?

1. Perceiving a written text in order to understand its contents. This can be down silently (silent reading).The understanding that result is called reading comprehension.
2. Saying a written text aloud (oral reading). This can be down with or without an understanding of the contents.
Different types of reading comprehension are often distinguished:
a.Literal comprehension: reading in order to understand, remember, or recall the information explicitly contained in a passage.
b. Inferential comprehension: reading in order to find information which is not explicitly stated in a passage, using the reader's experience and intuition, and by infering.
c. Critical or Evaluating comprehension: reading in order to compare inormation in a passage with the reader's own knowledge and values.
d. appreciative comprehension: reading in order to gain an emotional or other kind of valued response from a passage. (Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics)

What is close reading?
1.Close reading is the most important skill we need for any form of literary studies. It means paying especially close  attention to what is printed on the page.
2. Close reading means not only reading and understanding the meaning of the individual printed word, it also involves making ourselves sensetive to all the nuances and connotations of language as it is used by skilled writers.
3. Close reading involves almost everything from the smallest linguistic items to the largest issues of literary understanding and jugement. (vocabulary, sentence construction, ...)
4. Close reading can be seen as four separate levels of attention which we can bring to the text. Most normal people read without being aware of them, and employ all four simultaneously.
Linguistic
Semantic
Structural
Cultural

Linguistic reading: is largely descriptive.
Semantic reading: is cognitive.
Structural reading: is analytic.
Cultural reading: is interpretive

Vladimir Nabokov: "Curiousity enough, One can not read a book: one should notice and fondle the details".  





 

The Acquisition - Learning Hypothesis

It is believed that children acquire their first language (they don't learn it). According to Krashen we acquire a new language subcounsciosly as we use the language for various purposes. For example, if we are living in a foreign country and go to the store to buy some food, we may acquire new vocabulary or syntactic structures in the process of negotiating the purchase. In other words, we are not focused on the language. Rather, we are using the language for real purposes, and acquisition occurs naturally as we attempt to conduct our business. He also suggests that we can acquire language as we read. Indeed acquisition is contrasted with learning in Krashen's theory. Learning is a councious process in which we focus on various aspects of the language itself. On the whole it can be said learning is associated with explicit instruction.    

Today is Friday March 20nd.

One of the most important seminar about Methedology of Investigation in Language and Culture was held in our university "UPTC". As everybody thought it was a great academic activity both in Spanish and English language with a marvelous presentation of the students in Master and Phd degree. What is understood about this academic event is although it was the first international seminar about the methedology of investigation in language and culture, but demontrated that it can be one of the most important  academic event in Colombia and in South America. Infact having 14 Phd students in language and culture is an honour university activity which can be expanded not only in Colombia, but also in South American countries in high level situation.

Being with professor Julian from UK was a great upportunity for the teachers and the students who believe themselves that our university has a tremendes capacity of education both in language and culture.
God bless education. God bless Colombia. Bijan. 22.03.2013.    

Master programe in Language Teaching
Dr.  Fajardo   UPTC   2013
       Bijan  Nassiri

                                                 Vocaulary (3)   further information

Learning a language is necessitated knowing a lot of vocabularies because the more words we know, the more we will be able to understand what we hear and read; and the better we will be able to say what we want to when speaking and writing. Moreover to communicate with people in a foreign language everybody needs to know sufficient vocabulary because they are essencial part of understanding a language.

                                                        How to learn words

By experience learning vocabulary by itself will not be a suitable manner to learn if there is not continuing way   in order to use it. Once we have chosen the words to learn, we next have to decide how we are going to learn them:

* write the words and definitions on small cards
* write the words in a notebook
* put the words in a different groups
* making short sentences with words
* use the words in our own speaking and writing
learning words or vocabularies won't be enough if we learn them through a list. it would be better to learn them in the context and even better to create new sentences with them in various forms. For instance, learning that "to appologize" means to say sorry is a good start, but it's much better to learn a whole expression containing the word, e.g. I apologized for being late. Not only is this often easier to remember, but we are also learning some very important information on how the word is used.


                                            Learning vocabulary by reading


The way we learned very many of the words in our own language was by meeting them in the books or magazines we read.The context of a new word in a sentence or story was often enough for us to guess the meaning. Meeting the word again and again in our reading helped we learn it for use in our own speaking and writing. Doing lots of extra reading for pleasure both fiction or non - fiction is an excellent way to learn new english words,too. But choose books that we find quite easy to read. Difficult stories or texts that we struggle to understand will not help us to develop our vocabulary the natural way. To learn new words from reading we have to read a lot.


                                       passive and active vocabulary


The vocabulary we know can be divided into two groups - passive vocabulary and active vocabulary. passive vocabulary contains all the words that we understand when we read or listen, but which we do not use or can not remember in our writing or speaking. Active vocabulary is all the words  we understand, plus all the words that we can use ourselves.

* how it is spelled
* how it is pronounced
* how it is inflected ( how it changes if it is a verb, noun, or adjective)
* grammar information about it
* how it collocates ( what other words are often used with it)

It is believed that native speakers learn the words by hearing them again and again. This is the best way for us to learn them, too.

                           Dear colleagues, be familiar with the following idioms.

He jumped out of his skin.     (shock or fright)    
He lost his head.         (panic or rage)
He got it off his chest.   (relief or confession)
I don't see eye to eye with him.   (disagreement)
I'm on my last legs.      (exhausion)


 











  

masterlinguistics UPTC Bijan Nassiri 2013
Dr. Fajardo   LIguistics

Neurolinguistics and the memory of language competence

It is evident that the brain does not issue motor commands one segment at a time...when it is being considred that the whole range of the factors tha t affect the timimg of speech events(such as breathing rate, the movement and coordination of the articulators, the onset of vocal fold vibration of pauses. then it should be evident that a highly control system must be employed, otherwise would degenerate into a disorganized set of noise. (Dvid Crystal 2010)

As a matter of fact, speech and language are innate capacities of the human brain has longly been widely accepted, but only recently has an entry point into the genetic basis of these remarkable faculties been found.During embriological development this gene has enabled neuroscientists to trace the neural expression in human brain. The effects of this gene mutation on brain structure and function.

What has been disputed of FOXP2 a gene encoding a forkhead - domain transcription factor, causes a severe developmental disorder of verbal communication improving profound articulation deficits, acompanied  by linguistics and grammatical impairments. on the whole the innate capacities of the human brain with speech and language have been related to genetic basis.

What is language?

Language is the method of human communication using spoken and written words. (MacMillan English Dictionary 2006), but on the whole it can be stated that language is a natural phenomeno that has been donated to the human beings in order to understand and communicate with each other and create an ideal life   that all the time they are looking for it.

Where is language?

As a matter of fact, Language does exist by itself and there is no doubt that what has been existed a long piriod of the time and has been lived with human beings as far as people alive is going to be discussed. Language has been considered as a necessitiy of our body in other words in our brain and it can not be separable.  What has been observed during one century language has been improved remarkably with  human being in all aspects. It's countinued...  




 







  

what's Nuero-linguistics?

Is the interdisciplinary study of language processing in the brain, with an emphasis on the processing of spoken language when certain areas of the brain are damaged. It also describes the how our bodies function and language determines how we interface and communicate with other people. It  involves strategic thinking and an understanding of the mental and cognitive processes behind behavior.

What could learning language and teaching benifit from nuerolinguistics studies?

As a matter of  fact, the brain does not issue motor commands one segment at a time... when we consider the whole range of factors that affect the timing of speech events (such as breathing rate, the movement and coordination of the articulators, the onset of vocal - fold vibration, the location of stress, and the placement and duration of pauses). It is evident that a highly sophisticated control system must be employed, otherwise speech would degenerate into an erratic, disorganized set of noise.(David Crystal 2010)

Dr. Fajardo
MASTER PROGAM
UPTC- TUNJA   first semester 2013
Bijan Nassiri

                                                 Awakening

Movie
Post- encephalictic patients
The story took place in 1969
Director:
As a matter of fact, brain diseases have been considered as serious problem for the human beings since a long time ago. The causes have sometimes  been diagnosed and sometimes there is ambiquity about them. one of the most serious disease of brain is called post-encephalictic problem that can be called parkinson's disease.

The patients who have problems in brain are alive inside with emotions, feelings, and love, but they are unable to move in a normal way.One of the most interesting point that I can mentioned in this film is a lot of patients are concious around themselves. For instance, they could catch an object which was falling down. On the other hand it can be mentioned that they are concious inside, but are not able to perform as a normal human benig.

 As we know brain is a fantastic, vital and it can be said one the most mysterious organs in the body of the human beings.Then if something happens to it, the whole body will be in serious problem.
The patints are not  able to talk clearly. Maybe they lose their ability to talk for ever. They will have serious limitations to move their hands, feet, and bodies and finally they are in a meserable situation of life. But out of these limitations they can back to their normal life mysteriously. What is understood, brain is a msterpiece divice of the human beings and nobody knows its mystery.

           Who knows? Maybe in near future the scientiests can discover the mystry of the this organ that I call it "the black secret box of the human body".

                                 Awakening is the moment when we realizse or experience something.