2015-08-21
359
Read short excerpts from the easy reading books and match the levels of English language learners and the text excerpts
| Text excerpts | Level |
| A. Charlie put the phone down and smiled for the first time in a week. Monday. And this was only Friday! He had the weekend to think of something to save his business (Fleischer, L. Rain Man. Penguin Readers) | Level 1 |
| B. We arrived at our hotel early on Saturday morning. The Hotel Vista. Susan and I always stay there. It is very quiet, very friendly and the food is good (Stewart, P. Brown Eyes. Penguin Readers) | Level 2 |
| C. School was finished and mark had four cigarettes in his pocket. Other boys drank beer, and some tried drugs, but Mark just liked cigarettes (Grisham, J. The Client. Penguin Readers) | Level 3 |
In an attempt to understand how the language produces meaning, attention was focused on cognitive linguistics (Langacker, R. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Stanford University Press). This trend in linguistics studies the language as the tool in the human cognitive processes. Language is described in cognitive linguistics through “concepts”, “language models of the world”, “frames”, “scripts” and “schemata”. Mental models of the world (Johnson-Laird, P. 1983. Mental Models. CUP) consist of the concepts that enable language users to encode the reality. Frames (Fillmore, C. 1982. Frame semantics. Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Seul) function as stereotypes of perceiving real-world situations, living beings, objects and processes. Scripts (Abelson, R. 1981. Psychological status of the script concept. American Psychologist. 36. 715-729) are successions of acts both lingual and extra-linguistic in situational settings. Another term to convey the same idea is scenario (outline of the linguistic or extra-linguistic activity in the process of real-world communication) Schemata (singular: schema) (Bartlett, F. 1932. Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. CUP) is an active organisation of prior knowledge and cognitive processes that makes a person ready to learn and to know. It consists of “slots and fillers” in the individual mind and the connections between them. This enables cognitive processes develop in a certain direction. E.g. due to the innate schemata human beings are “pre-wired” to perceive the world in three dimensions. Schemata are essential in language comprehension (Harley, T. 1997.The Psychology of Language. Psychology Press. P. 207-242)
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