Unit 2 English in the Past.ppt

Unit 2 English in the Past Liang Li kathysjz@163.com Introduction How does Germanic Language came to Britain? What is meant by Family Relationships among languages? What family does Chinese belong to? What family does English belong to? Why is English so rich in synonyms? Why do English dialects or varieties in different regions of Britain differ from each other? Explain what is meant by the following: Standard English, Received Pronunciation, productive teaching, descriptive teaching, prescriptive teaching. Explain how RP originated. Outline A.1 E. of Earlier Times A.2 L. Families A.3 Standard E. Other Varieties A.4 Changes Additions to the E. Lexicon A.5 Received Pronunciation English of Earlier Times Activity 1 Task 1 Origins of Regional Varieties Skim the Passage (pp.56-57) Is English the only language spoken in the UK at any time? Why are the regional varieties so different from each other? How many historical varieties can you find in the passage? Arrange the following concepts according to the time sequence. (Received Pronunciation, regional varieties, Standard English) Task 23 E. Text Samples of the Past Samuel Johnson: Rasselas (18th C.) William Shakespeare: The Tempest (17th C.) Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (14th C.) Can you underline the words that are rarely used today from the texts (pp.58-62) and guess their equivalent ones? What do you think of the change of English? Are you willing to spend time on its historical varieties? Why? Language Families Activity 2 Task 1 Family Relationships Language family语系: a group of languages that are believed to have developed from a common source, such as the Roman language family (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian) which are all derived from Latin in the Middle Ages (Richards Schmidt, 2005). English belongs to the Indo-European family (Germanic group), and Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family. It is easier to learn a new language that belongs to the same family as your mother