language as a system

Next comes morphology, this is the knowledge of how words can be formed. Speakers of languages know the sound combinations which can create meaning within their society, and they also know which sound combinations are not words. They can add affixes such as prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and circumfixes to add to or alter the meaning of a word. They know these systems and rules and can use the affixes to extend their own vocabulary. For example, by using a suffix to change a verb to the past tense, or by using a prefix to reverse the meaning of a word. This is another system of language and as such it has patterns which ELLs can learn and apply in various situations. They can learn the leanings of prefixes and suffixes to help them infer the meanings of new words given in context. (If I know the prefix -un and the word happy, I can infer that unhappy means not happy or sad) They can also be taught to look for familiar root words. (If I know that geo means Earth and ology means study of I can infer that geology is the study of the earth.) Chunking helps so much with information storage and retrieval. We store words and morphemes in our brains and we also store combinatorial rules. The more of each that we have, the greater our lexicon to draw from. Additionally students can be taught to recognize compound words. (If I know the word tooth and the word brush and see them together as in the word toothbrush I can infer that a tooth brush is a brush used for the teeth.) While students can use the parts of words to help infer meaning, the relationship between speech sounds and meanings is arbitrary (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2014) The meaning of words is a culturally determined meaning, a group of people have agreed that some sound or combination of sounds has a certain meaning and thus the lexical meaning of words must be memorized by ELLs. Yep. This was the original claim by Ferdinand de Saussure in the 1880s. However, learning and understanding the system of morphology and understanding prefixes, suffixes, roots and compound words will help students to infer the meanings of many more words on their own and to become more proficient speakers.
All languages also have a creative aspect, “words are rearrangable units” (Pinker, 1994). People can use their systems of grammar to rearrange these units into infinitely different sentences. “People are born with an innate ability to compose meaningful sentences” (Pinker, 1994). We know this because children can construct sentences that they have never learned or heard before. This is the skill of syntax, the ability of language speakers to combine words into phrases and sentences to create limitless new sentences and meanings which can be understood by other speakers of the same language. Syntax is another system of language, a system which follows predictable patterns and allows its speakers to combine words and phrases correctly. Native speakers are born with this knowledge of descriptive grammar, an ability to share messages and knowledge through language patterns, it is important for teachers to help ELLs notice these same patterns so that they will also be able to create original messages.
The rules of syntax allow speakers to know the correct word order for a language, subject, verb, object, for English, they also describe the meaning between specific groups of words. (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2014) In the sentence, “The blue frog ate a large fly.” we know that blue describes the color of the frog while large describes the size of the fly because adjectives come before the nouns they describe. We also know that the frog is the subject who did the eating because it is mentioned first in the sentence. Because the fly is the object of the sentence and comes after the verb we know that the fly was eaten. Sentences can be represented by a tree diagram to graphically show the structure of a sentence and allow students to better notice patterns in a language (Fromkin, Rodman, & Hyams, 2014, p. 82). These tree diagrams can help students to see which words can be grouped, into a noun phrase or verb phrase for example, and can allow students to notice patterns in which groups of words may be moved in the sentence and which must stay together. Syntax is a very important system for ELLs to learn as they can use the patterns of sentence formation and study tree diagrams to internalize ways of speaking new grammatically correct sentences. This gives English language learners the ability and independence to utter their own original ideas and comprehend the ideas of others.
When the systems of phonology and morphology, the lexicon of the language, and syntax work together a correct sentence may be uttered. However, meaning must ultimately be derived based upon the individual, the context of the situation, the culture, the dialect, and the truth conditions of the statement. This ultimate understanding of an utterance is semantics. Culture is also a major contributor to meaning. Speakers must reflect upon the context of the situation, and understand the meaning of any figurative language, this ability is referred to as a knowledge of pragmatics. Often, words and syntactic structures have a deeper meaning than what they may seem to represent on the surface. Parameswaran (2014) points out that while a sentence may be structurally and grammatically unambiguous, the deeper meaning of the sentence is rooted in situational and cultural understanding, often the speakers must have knowledge of the situation in order to comprehend meaning.
Teachers of English as a Second Language need to have knowledge of this language system in order to help their students use and recognize it. Even high achieving ELLs must gain new English language skills along with learning new content. Because this does not always happen they are often under identified in gifted and talented programs (Pereira & Oliveira, 2015). It is critical that ESOL instructors provide students with comprehensive language instruction and help them to see and understand language as a system with rules and patterns. Students should be able to recognize and apply language patterns which are both