Collections of Professor Dr David Ngin Sian Pau

3.6. Teaching The Usage of The English Language

Usage is the correlation of the language features of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammatical forms with the environmental factors of the speaker, his subject, his audience, and the time and place of utterance. The term “usage” is frequently confused with the term “grammar” which is a description of and the study of the structure of language. In other words, grammar is a description of the system; usage tells us how the system is used in any given situation by various groups of people. If your standard usage causes other people to consider you stupid or ignorant, you may want to consider changing it. You have the right to express yourself in any manner you please, but if you wish to communicate effectively, you should use nonstandard English only when you intend to, rather than fall into it because you don’t know any better.

For example, some people following the British tradition object to this usage; it’s standard in the US. The expression probably evolved in analogy to expressions like “call me,” “phone me” and “tell me.” In the US, “write me” will do just fine in informal writing. The original Scottish dialect form was indeed “pernickety,” but Americans changed it to “persnickety” a century ago, and “pernickety” is generally unknown in the US. The Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary calls “pernickety” obsolet, it’s still in wide use across the Atlantic.

Therefore, teaching the usage of English language becomes important to EAP students in 21^st century without which students of English may not be well informed about the language and its usage.

4.Teaching Large Heterogenous Classes

EAP classes are heterogeneous classes because the learners joining these classes are from various departments excluding the English department. Most of them do not know each other before they join the class. Generally speaking, a language classroom needs a supportive atmosphere in which conditions are conducive for students to learn. To achieve this atmosphere is not an easy task for English teachers because of various factors such as students’ backgrounds, behaviours, learning styles and many others.

Integrating culture in the language classroom makes learners become a whole person. Language study seems senseless if the learners know nothing about the people who speak the target language or the country in which the target language is spoken. Many researchers have discussed the importance of including cultural components into L2 curriculum because people involved in language teaching have begun to understand the intertwined relation between culture and language. Establishing a ‘sphere of interculturality’, which means that teaching culture is not transferring information between cultures but a foreign culture should be put in relation with the English learner’s own. The intercultural approach includes a reflection on both cultures. Some of my students told me that I should be friendlier and accept invitations if I wanted to be a foreign English teacher in China. I have to adopt the requirement if it’s the case they hired me as an English teacher and I think being friendly and accepting invitation to English corner or debate clubs matches the Chinese culture though many foreign English teachers think it’s a kind of exploitation as it is out of their schedule. It maybe the same as replacing the teaching of facts and