Write a reflection on the experience of elicitation. Discuss the value of such a project and any implications it may have for teaching English language learners.

1. For this assignment, you will interview someone who speaks a language other than English, and elicit linguistic samples from them to analyze the similarities/differences between their language and English (sound system, spelling (symbols), sentence structure/word order, etc.) See guidelines below for the type of data to collect/include in your project.

Elicitation (Group/Individual) Answers (14 points)*

You develop your own questions. The speaker gives you the answers. The answers may touch on some of the questions below. If they do not, that is fine. You should record what you learned from the speaker when he/she answered your questions.

a. Phonological Findings

What phonological differences did you notice between the language you studied and English? Were there any unfamiliar vowel sounds? Were there any unfamiliar consonant clusters? What did you notice about the intonation or rhythm of the language? Was there vowel harmony?

b. Morphological and Syntactical Findings

What morphological differences did you notice between the language you studied and English? Were there any inflectional endings (such as for the plural, past tense, or possessive)? What word order is used in the target language (subject-verb-object, subject-object verb, and so on)?

c. Writing System Findings

What did you learn about the writing system?

d. Nonverbal Behavior

What did you learn about nonverbal behavior in the target culture? Are the emblems similar? What are other features of their nonverbal behavior, e.g. proxemics, eye contact, and so on?

e. Culture, Greetings, Number Systems, and Other Information

What did you learn about the target culture? Which greetings did you learn? Does the target culture use a number system similar to ours? What other information did you elicit?

 

 

 

Part 2

Individual Reflection (6 pts)

Write a reflection on the experience of elicitation. Discuss the value of such a project and any implications it may have for teaching English language learners. (300-word minimum)

The individual reflections should come at the end of the project, after you have all the content answers in place. In other words, I want one document (from each group) that includes both the results of the elicitation and your individual reflections.

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