Dr. Antar Abdellah

In the language curriculum

sentences Determiners Parts of speech

 1. Nouns (countable – uncountable)  2. pronouns  3. prepositions  4. verbs (transitive.intransitive)  5. conjunction  6. adjectives (comparison, superlative)  7. Adverbs  8. interjections

IndicativeSubjunctive

 Statements (present, past, future)  Negatives (present, past, future)  Subjunctive  Commands  Questions  Conditionals  Unreal past  Wishes  Exclamations

past present Future simple Continuous perfect Simple Continuous perfect Simple continuous perfect

Questions Q tags Commands Conditionals If Exclamations (what, how..) Wishes Unreal past Praying & saluting Past, present, future; affirmative, negative

The- A An- articles Much - few, a few Many - a lot of, lots of Number/ quantity Very, too, so, such Quite, rather Intensifiers

In the language curriculum

 The relation between sound and letter.  English has 26 letters, but 46 sounds.  This means that each letter can have more than one sound  And each sound can be represented in more than one letter.  For example, the /f/ sound can be represented in [f = fish, ph = elephant, gh =enough, eu = lieutenant]  And the letter [a] can be pronounced differently; “warm – want – man- make- car – about” 

 Arabic is different from English with respect to the sound-letter problem.  1. Arabic is an abjadic language, English is alphabetic  2. English underwent great changes and invasions, Arabic didn’t.  3 Arabic relied on the spoken form more than n the written form.  The only differences between sound and letter in Arabic are the ة, ى and the sun ل  Modern dialects however have remarkable changes

 IPA system: International Phonetic Alphabet  Identifying the sounds in human languages and assigning symbols form them.  You need to master these symbols in order to be able to pronounce well.  They are made easy for you by reference words  Why do not we have rules for pronunciation?  The only available rule is analogy [just like the broken plural in Arabic]

 G= / ʒ / if g+ e, i, y  Gender, geology, ginger  G = / ɡ / if g+ consonant, other vowels except /h/  Good, grammar  G = /f/, /ou/ if g+ h  Enough, although  Exceptions: girl, get / ɡ /

 C = /s/ if c+ i, e, y  City, receive cycle  C = /k/ if c+ other phonemes except /h/  College, click  C = / ʧ / if c+ /h/  Chair, church  Exceptions: school, chemistry, Celtic, foci

 Consonants  These are similar to some Arabic sounds/letters  Some other need special training  These are 24 in number, compared to 25 in Arabic  This does not mean that Arabic has more consonants, each language has a different set of consonants  Vowels  These are remarkably different from Arabic and need special care and long practice to pronounce them right.  These are 22 in number [9 short,5 long, &8 complex] compared to six in standard Arabic [3 long & 3 short vowels]

In the language curriculum

 Semantic fields & lexical sets  Homonymy  - homophones  - homographs  Synonymy  Polsymy  antonymy

 a set of lexemes which cover a certain conceptual domain  Fruit, vegetable, electronics, houses, people  All are examples of semantic fields

 Lexical sets are examples of words which may be grouped under a semantic field.  “Mango, banana, apple, orange” are lexical sets under the semantic field “fruit”.  Cabbage, pepper, cress are under vegetable  Villa, chalet, cottage, bungalow, hut, apartment are under houses  Engineer, teacher, doctor, solider are under jobs.

 Homonomy refers to words that share an identical feature 

 two words are homophones if they are pronounced the same way but differ in meaning or spelling or both (e.g. bare and bear)  Sun, sonrest, wrest  Mail, malemain, mane  Ate, eightdam, damn  Read, reddraft, Draught  Write, rightyou, ewe

 One of two or more words that have the same spelling but differ in origin, meaning, and sometimes pronunciation, such as fair (pleasing in appearance) and fair (market) or wind (wnd) and wind (wnd).  Project, projectclose, close  Present, present desert, desert  Bow, bow house. House  Dove, dove lead, lead  Use, uselive, live

 Words that share a common meaning, although there may be a difference in use; happy and glad.  Abandondiscardvacate  Accordagreegrant  Adversitydifficultymisfortune  Affluentplentifulrich  blendcombinemix  Blisshappinessjoy  Bluffboastfeign  Bolddaringfearless  Bonusawardgift

 Words that are opposite in meaning.  Absence, presenceaccept, refuse  accurate, inaccurate advantage, disadvantage  alive, dead always, never  Ancient, modern answer, question -query  approval, disapproval approached, departed  abundant, scarce admit, deny  advance, retreat artificial, natural  arrival, departure ascend, descend  Attack, defense attention, inattention

 Words that can have more than one meaning in different contexts; kind (sort), kind (affectionate).  Bank (building + side of river)  Position (physical + job)  Book (reading+ a hotel)  Room (house + space)