Language II (English)
Language II (English) is a 30-mark paper covering comprehension, grammar and usage, vocabulary, phonology and the pedagogy of English as a second language.
Grammar core
- Tense and time markers: since + point of time, for + duration.
- Articles: a/an chosen by sound, the for unique, superlative and ordinal nouns.
- Subject–verb agreement: 'one of the + plural noun + singular verb'; collective nouns take singular verbs when acting as a unit.
- Active/passive and direct/indirect speech with tense backshift.
- Prepositions of time and place.
Phonology and vocabulary
Word stress, minimal pairs (ship/sheep), silent letters; synonyms, antonyms, one-word substitutions, idioms and phrasal verbs.
Pedagogy
Krashen's comprehensible input and affective filter; Communicative Language Teaching; Total Physical Response; skimming for gist versus scanning for specific detail; intensive versus extensive reading; process versus product writing; error correction - treat errors as evidence of interlanguage and correct selectively, especially during fluency tasks.
Worked example
'She said, "I am going to Amritsar tomorrow."' becomes 'She said that she was going to Amritsar the next day.' The steps: drop quotation marks, backshift am → was, keep the progressive form, and shift tomorrow → the next day. Because said has no object here, told would require me.
Traps
Using since with a duration; backshifting a universal truth ('He said that the earth revolves around the sun'); confusing skimming with scanning; correcting every spoken error during a fluency activity; choosing a/an by spelling rather than initial sound.