Quotes About Language

Perhaps the single most important aspect of knowing a word for nonnative learners—besides or in addition to the obviously requisite synonym or denotation meaning—is the

collocation(s) of a new vocabulary item. The meaning of collocation is apparent in its constituent parts: co (together) + location (place). A collocation is a word or phrase that naturally and frequently occurs before, after, or very near the target vocabulary item.

vocabulary is actually more important than grammar.

Though Olsen's (1999) descriptive study of Norwegian EFL learners focused primarily on cross-linguistic influences on learner errors, one interesting conclusion was that external factors such as teaching confusing pairs such as sea and see, by and buy, want and won't, or lose and loose at the same time actually causes errors. Olsen recommends that each word be taught in its own context at different times.

Vocabulary knowledge is critical to any communication. Wilkins (1972) summarizes the situation best: "While without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed" (p. 111).

Miranda rolls her eyes. "Passing over," she says. "That's nice. Is that anything like kicking the bucket? Keeling over, taking a dirt nap, biting the big one?

ELA teachers to cut back on the reading of literature and poetry. This trend of moving students away from literary reading is antithetical to good ELA instruction. Kids need more literary reading, not less.

In the real world, writing is not artificially separated into specific discourses. It is blended for effect.

I was dating this guy and we would spend all day text messaging each other. And he thought that he could tell that he liked me more because he actually spelt the word 'YOU' and I just put the letter 'U'.

Words are what I have and it's the words as words that interest me.

Weigh words, don't count 'em.

Recognizing that words are symbols for ideas and not the ideas themselves.

was customary to take the brightest from a captive nation and teach them the native Babylonian language. Three years also gave enough time to prove they were not carrying any disease. Daniel

Comrades and friends,' he begins, the translation and lip-synch software maxing his street-cred as usual in all the languages of the Community. For this particular nation and region, he comes across speaking English with a gravely Central Belt Scottish accent, which I know for a fact has been swiped from old tapes of the Communist trade union leader and authentic working class hero Mick MacGahey.

English is so past,' she said. 'Sure, we need people who can write about what we do, but they don't have to be English graduates. Theology graduates who don't believe any of it – that would be useful.

As soon as we have the power to release our minds from the immediate here and now, in a sense we are free. We are free to revisit the past, free to reframe the present, and free to anticipate a whole range of possible futures. Imagination is the foundation of everything that is uniquely and distinctively human. It is the basis of language, the arts, the sciences, systems of philosophy, and the all the vast intricacies of human culture.

Languages are the bearers of the cultural genes. As we learn a language, accents, and ways of speaking, we also learn ways of thinking, feeling, and relating.

Perhaps best known is the case of Koko, the gorilla to whom the Gorilla Foundation taught American Sign Language. Koko learned more than a thousand signs, created compound signs to convey new information, and showed a significant understanding of spoken English.9

In other words, the biblical writers were speaking to those who shared a rich cultural context, which shaped the way they communicated. I grew up in Detroit and share a rich cultural context with other Detroiters. When I say words like lions, tigers, and wings, I don't have to specify that I mean the professional football, baseball, and hockey teams. Fellow Detroiters get it because we share a rich cultural context.

What we can say with some certainty is that American young people have enormous trouble putting faith into words. It was unclear whether the young people we interviewed in the NSYR were unfamiliar with religious language or just uncomfortable using it in public (a number of youth we talked to thought talking about religion at school was illegal). The difficulty escalated when the conversation turned to particulars (the name "Jesus" was especially absent from our interviews).

These are only words, not incisions or shocks, so their violence may be harder to see...a man's wrist lifts as he pours water from a pitcher, making it seem as if water, wrist, world, exist so this angle can be. A parallelogram of moonlight reads the bumps on his back as he sleeps in my arms. When I fix on these images, I know that to transform the desire they embody into loathing would be a violence as sure as a knife across a painting

Magnificent phrases like 'inductive reactance' flow effortlessly from the lips of guys who can't cook hot dogs or find the flashing blue light in a K-Mart store.

Words matter, words have import.

Music and language are a vital element. We, as actors and directors, offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves.