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Why do we learn a new language? To what degree do we need to master that language? Ox-bridge supervision section Nov. 20 th By Eve Sun.

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Presentation on theme: "Why do we learn a new language? To what degree do we need to master that language? Ox-bridge supervision section Nov. 20 th By Eve Sun."— Presentation transcript:

1 Why do we learn a new language? To what degree do we need to master that language? Ox-bridge supervision section Nov. 20 th By Eve Sun

2 "I speak English, so I don't have to learn a foreign language...." – Only 5.6 % of the world's total population speaks English as a primary language. That number doubles when people who speak English as a second or third language are counted.

3 “Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Do you agree? – Why? Why not?

4 “We have strong evidence today that studying a foreign language has a ripple effect, helping to improve student performance in other subjects.” – Richard Riley, U.S. Secretary of Education under Bill Clinton – Can you think of some examples in other subjects that will support this statement?

5 “As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.” – Margaret Mead, American anthropologist – In what ways this statement can be true?

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7 An insurmountable challenge(?) – According to research, older educated native speakers of English know somewhere around 15,000 to 20,000 ‘functionally important’ word families. (Zechmeister et al., 1995)

8 Questions to be addressed – Is it possible for an L2 learner to reach a mental lexicon size equal to a native speaker? Is it advisable? – What does ‘knowing’ a word mean? – How is a word ‘learned’, and what does ‘learned’ mean? – What do we mean when we say ‘word’?


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