Language II (English): Structure, Phonology and ELT Pedagogy
Language II (English) contributes 30 marks to WB TET Paper II. Expect a comprehension passage, discrete grammar and vocabulary items, phonology and word-structure questions, and pedagogy of English as a second language. Accuracy in identifying forms matters more than translation.
Grammar under test
- Tense and aspect: present perfect is incompatible with a finished past time marker (yesterday, in 2019).
- Subject–verb concord: one of the + plural noun + singular verb; collective nouns take singular verbs when acting as a unit.
- Articles, prepositions, modals, conditionals (types 1, 2, 3), active–passive voice, reported speech, non-finites (gerund, infinitive, participle), relative clauses, question tags.
- Countability: fewer with count nouns, less with mass nouns.
Phonology and morphology
RP English has 44 phonemes: 24 consonants, 12 pure vowels, 8 diphthongs. A phoneme is a distinctive sound, not a letter - enough has five letters but four phonemes. Morphemes are free (happy) or bound; bound morphemes are inflectional (-s, -ed, -ing, -er, -est) or derivational (un-, -ness, -ly). Word formation: affixation, compounding, conversion, blending, clipping, acronym.
Pedagogy
Krashen's comprehensible input (i+1) and affective filter; acquisition versus learning. Communicative Language Teaching prioritises communicative competence over form drills; TBLT organises the lesson around a task. Errors are systematic and reveal interlingual transfer or overgeneralisation; mistakes are slips. Cloze and dictation are integrative tests; discrete-point items test one element at a time.
Worked example
Count the morphemes in unhappiness: un- (bound, derivational prefix) + happy (free base) + -ness (bound, derivational suffix) = 3. By contrast, cats = cat + -s, an inflectional suffix, so 2 morphemes. Counting syllables or letters instead of morphemes is the usual error.
Traps that cost marks
Confusing phonemes with letters; labelling -s in cats as derivational; using present perfect with a definite past time; treating a learner error as carelessness rather than evidence of an interlanguage rule.