Language in Use 111-112
When we attempt to understand language which is unfamiliar to us, we make use
of many more features in a text than we are normally aware of doing. By
asking a class to reconstruct the original sequence of three short passages,
the sentences of which have been put in random order, the unit aims to develop
an awareness of just how much is going on when we try to make sense of unfamiliar
language. For this reason, the texts should be well outside the normal reading
experience of the class. An example of what is required is set out at the
end of the unit, but the teacher must judge for himself what texts might be
best suited to his class.
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[1] For this session, the class should divide into pairs or small groups, each with the set of sentences. Ask them to work out which sentences belong together and what their correct order should be. Circulate the results, and spend the remaining time on an initial class discussion of them, paying particular attention to ones that are not correctly ordered.
[2] The aim of this session is to look at what specific clues in the
sentences were used to decide which went together. The class should have their
versions in front of them for the discussion.
The following points should be considered:
(a) how much was achieved by working from the known words to the unknown;
(b) how much use was made of grammatical links between sentences like references
forwards or backwards, sequence of
tense, words like 'it', 'then', 'however', which indicate
sequence;
(c) words and phrases that seemed to belong to the same kind of technical language;
(d) any single words which indicated the field of experience of one or other
of the passages so plainly that the other sentences
in it were immediately identifiable.
[3] In this session, the class are presented with a set of sentences and asked to work out whether or not they come from actual texts or are nonsense sentences. They should work in the same groups as for session [1]. The ensuing discussion should focus upon the reasons for believing any one sentence to be nonsense. Build up on the board a picture of what clues have, in fact, been used, so that the class will see how much can be made out from a text which one does not, in any literal sense, 'understand'. This last session may lead to a discussion of the way in which the tech- terms of a subject (see G8) are used to economise effort and to provide a framework of precise meanings for those engaged in it. E5 looks at abstractions and G9 takes further the exploration of the language of school subjects.
Examples for [I]
(a) pulsed infusion shotfiring has been made possible by the introduction of
a permitted explosive which will
propagate reliably under the conditions pre- in this technique
(b) the hormones made by the adrenal glands stimulate neurons of the hypothalamus
and of the reticular formation
(c) hand gumming can rarely be done properly with an ordinary shovel
(d) a bishop added rochet, gloves, buskins and a crozier, and an archbishop
the pallium
(e) the very fastest conducting fibres are used as the afferent fibres of the
essential reflexes of movements and
posture unbaptised children are shown as chrysomes in swaddling
clothes
(g) capped fuses have the advantage of ensuring an efficient and waterproof
crimp
(h) the jupon and, later, the tabard were shown in heraldic colours by gouging
out the brass and filling the sunken
and hatched areas with coloured mastic
(i) at the lower ends of the receptors are seen the synapses of the nerve fibres,
which take the nerve impulses to the central nervous
System.
(The sources from which these sentences come are Blasting in the Collicries (I.C.I.); Monumental Brasses-Mann (King Penguin); The Nervous System-Nathan (Pelican).)
Examples for [3] (Two of these have been made up).
(a) crystalline arrays were reported in the proplastids of pea radicles and
in the stroma of isolated spinach
choroplasts
(b) the ectoplast and tonoplast were disrupted during the final stages
(c) cadreous prostiles were confluted continuously with the palodcs
(d) linear sinusoidal spin distributions formed the model basis
(e) all baleodines and stergines were simultaneously detonified.