Awareness of semantic prosody

[metal56]

Louw says:

"a text receiver needs to utilise the knowledge of semantic prosody to percieve irony in the message or to judge the degree of sincerity of its proponent. Access to information on prosody from the corpus is paticulary important for nonnative speakers, since they are more liable to miss such irony and be more vulnerable to the hidden intentions of the producer than native speakers, who probably have some sensitivity to it at some subconscious level."

How can we help our students become more aware of the semantic prosody of English words and expressions? What practical steps can we take to prevent our students becoming disadvantaged in such areas of usage?

[Anuradha Chepur]

I'm not much into this in my classes.
Sometimes, though, I give them this example:

I won't kill you. (Somebody else will)
I won't kill you. (I'll kill somebody else)
I won't kill you. (I'll cause other harm)

This is traslated from a famous local language movie, rendered by the most famous actor here. I tell them this in our language and then in English to show that change in meaning based on prosody is similar in both languages.

[Lotus]

I feel that I have a tremendous advantage in this area since I work one on one with my students in a tutorial capacity. We talk about films they have seen, discussing any questions they bring up. Usually, many questions take the "What did he mean by this?" form. Naturally, the prosody issue is involved quite a bit. I also have my students do a lot of reading. In discussing texts, it's not difficult to talk about nuance and "hidden meanings". As a matter of fact, most school's English lit books (most of the ones I have seen, at any rate) devote entire sections to discussing prosody. I'm not really sure how I would handle this in a class situation. I do know teachers who do films in class. That is one option, if you have the time. I suppose it would depend on your curriculum. Some teachers have the option of inviting students into their homes. Perhaps a movie and discussion night once a week could help. I really like Anuradha's example. Teachers who can point out the similarities between the native language and English should use this to their advantage at every opportunity.

[metal56]

I'm not much into this in my classes.
Sometimes, though, I give them this example:

I won't kill you. (Somebody else will)
I won't kill you. (I'll kill somebody else)
I won't kill you. (I'll cause other harm)

This is traslated from a famous local language movie, rendered by the most famous actor here. I tell them this in our language and then in English to show that change in meaning based on prosody is similar in both languages.

I was thinking more about this definition of the term:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_prosody

[metal56]

As a matter of fact, most school's English lit books (most of the ones I have seen, at any rate) devote entire sections to discussing prosody.

Really? That wouldn't be a common thing in most ESL/EFL books.

[Lotus]

As a matter of fact, most school's English lit books (most of the ones I have seen, at any rate) devote entire sections to discussing prosody.

Really? That wouldn't be a common thing in most ESL/EFL books.

You're right. Hong Kong is a very different sort of environment for teaching ESL/EFL. Previously, most secondary schools, and a lot of primary schools and kindergartens, used English as the teaching medium. Since the introduction of mother tongue instruction, English instruction has taken the form of EFL in a lot of classrooms. Yet there are schools that still insist on using English as the teaching medium, and many of these schools use totally English texts. These English lit books do contain sections on prosody. My students bring their text books to me for help with homework assignments. I should have indicated in my previous post that I am dealing with an odd situation as far as ESL/EFL is concerned due to working in Hong Kong.

[metal56]

These English lit books do contain sections on prosody.

Can you give us a few examples of such?

Since the introduction of mother tongue instruction, English instruction has taken the form of EFL in a lot of classrooms.

Why EFL and not ESL? Is English not a second language in contemporary Hong Kong?

[Anuradha Chepur]

The particular definition is more about collocation and semantics and less about prosody.
Intonational semantics is deployed in all languages, presumably.
Obviously Louw is justifying his research by saying what he is saying.
I think not all English can be taught, a lot of it has to be learnt. Intonational implications and other such nuances are advanced skills the learner has to pick up by observation.
Of course, we can surely caution them about such nuances, if not actually design exercises to teach them, and not that I disrecommend the latter.

[Lotus]

These English lit books do contain sections on prosody.

Can you give us a few examples of such?

Summer hols have just started and students are not bringing these books home now. Sorry, I don't know the names and publishers off the top of my head.

Since the introduction of mother tongue instruction, English instruction has taken the form of EFL in a lot of classrooms.

Why EFL and not ESL? Is English not a second language in contemporary Hong Kong?

One would think so, but in actual usage, English is often an EFL, even in contemporary HK. This is even more the case since the introduction of mother tongue instruction in schools. Many people do speak English as a second language and do it admirably well. Still, there are millions who simply do not learn English well enough to speak it. Of these, many can read and write; others have trouble with that. HK is a polyglot city. While the British were in charge, we had two official languages - English and Cantonese. Now that Beijing has resumed sovereignty, we have three official languages - Cantonese, Mandarin and English. English is not always given the top priority.

[metal56]

Summer hols have just started and students are not bringing these books home now. Sorry, I don't know the names and publishers off the top of my head.

I was more interested in whether you could give us an example of how such books would deal with talking about or teaching semantic prosody. Do you remember any examples?

[Lotus]

Summer hols have just started and students are not bringing these books home now. Sorry, I don't know the names and publishers off the top of my head.

I was more interested in whether you could give us an example of how such books would deal with talking about or teaching semantic prosody. Do you remember any examples?

I deal with both international and local schools students. The international schools, even in their ESL programs, use regular English lit books from either England or America. These are the same texts that students use in those countries.

The first real introduction most students get to the concept of prosody is through poetry. From there, metaphors and similes are applied to prose. I think Anuradha's assessment of the term prosody being applied to collocations and semantics is an important point. In Hong Kong ESL circles, collocation seems to be the buzz word of the year.

I do remember several local school students coming home with Longman books. Other publications follow this same general pattern. In elementary levels, the books include a story, vocabulary, and questions. Upper elementary and secondary books will include thought questions: What does the rabbit mean when he begs the fox not to throw him into the brier patch? In addition, there are also cloze passages and fill in the blank exercises. The books I see and the questions students ask indicate an awareness of prosody.

I do not know how teachers teach this concept in classrooms. Some of my students are rather miffed to realize that a word can have more than one meaning, depending on how it is used. Many students fall back on their very first experience with a particular vocabulary item, and refuse to budge from this "default setting". Because they once learned one meaning, and that meaning was reinforced in classes, then I must be wrong. That's when I find it helpful to point out examples from their own speech in their own language. It opens a door, but it is sometimes very difficult to persuade some students that English can be used differently just like Cantonese.

This brings me back to your original post, Metal:

How can we help our students become more aware of the semantic prosody of English words and expressions? What practical steps can we take to prevent our students becoming disadvantaged in such areas of usage?

If I had to answer this in one word, it would be READING. There is no substitute for reading well written literature in copious amounts. The companion volume to reading is WRITING. I have my students write about their reading. For younger and intermediate students, I will write a study guide that includes questions for them to answer, as well as essay topics for them to express opinions and predictions about what they think may happen. They keep a vocabulary notebook, which gives opportunities for teaching multiple meanings. I also have them write any queries they may have about the text as they read it. Later, they answer their own questions from their reading. Such a reading strategy must cover prosody at some points, but as a natural part of the reading and discussion. I just love to hear a student ask, "What did he mean by... "

[metal56]

The first real introduction most students get to the concept of prosody is through poetry. From there, metaphors and similes are applied to prose. I think Anuradha's assessment of the term prosody being applied to collocations and semantics is an important point. In Hong Kong ESL circles, collocation seems to be the buzz word of the year.

Before I reply to the rest of your post, could you tell me if you see the difference between prosody and semantic prosody? Then we can move on to your post.

One or two questions though:

They keep a vocabulary notebook, which gives opportunities for teaching multiple meanings.

Is that vocabulary recorded as single words or with collocations?

There is no substitute for reading well written literature in copious amounts.

Why only literature? Students need a variety of text types if they are to become proficient users, don't they?

[Lotus]

Before I reply to the rest of your post, could you tell me if you see the difference between prosody and semantic prosody?

As I understand it, prosody is concerned with versification, meter, intonation and stress - all elements of poetry; whereas semantic prosody is more concerned with collocation assignment.

Is that vocabulary recorded as single words or with collocations?

Both, actually. As well as recording the word, with it's part of speech and dictionary meaning, my students also record the original context in which the word is found and then write at least one original sentence that is supposed to demonstrate their understanding of the word. I do not assign the words: students record words from their reading. It takes a little practice for students to understand the concept of collocations, so at first they record only single words. Since they also must provide the context in which they find the word, I can deal with collocations as needed. This results in whole new sections being added to their notebooks.

Why only literature? Students need a variety of text types if they are to become proficient users, don't they?

Of course. I do not restrict their reading to "only literature". However, if I expect students to write well, then well written examples are useful in training them how to write well. They read plenty of other things, and I expect them to make entries in their vocabulary notebooks from all their reading: from newspapers and magazines to their science or history textbooks. My writing assignments are not restricted to only "good writing". We do all kinds of writing, including news articles, essays, emails, arguments, etc.

Before you "reply to the rest of my post", I would like to know two things, Metal. Where do you teach? What steps have you taken to ensure that your students understand semantic prosody?

[fluffyhamster]

http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... 4684#34684

[metal56]

Before you "reply to the rest of my post", I would like to know two things, Metal. Where do you teach? What steps have you taken to ensure that your students understand semantic prosody?

I teach and teacher-train in an academy in Spain. I teach EFL, ESP and EAP. I haven't as yet taken many steps in communicating semantic prosody to my students . We do do a lot of work with concordancers though.