Foundations of Linguistics · 33 min read
Phonetics, Phonology, and the IPA
Pronunciation questions on the Praxis ESOL test rarely ask for definitions alone. You may hear a student read a word aloud, see a transcription such as /ʃɪp/, or compare two learners’ errors and decide which sound contrast to teach. This chapter builds the vocabulary for that analysis: how sounds are produced, how English organizes them into a system, how stress and intonation carry meaning, and how a learner’s first language shapes what that learner hears and says.
Phonetics, Phonology, and the Phoneme
Phonetics studies the physical sounds of speech: how they are produced (articulatory phonetics), how they travel (acoustic phonetics), and how they are perceived. Phonology studies how a particular language organizes sounds into a system, which differences change meaning, and which sounds may combine. A sound difference can be phonetically real but phonologically irrelevant in one language and meaning-changing in another.
Any speech sound as actually produced, written in square brackets
Smallest unit of sound that changes meaning in a language, written in
/p/ vs /b/ in pat and bat
A predictable variant of one phoneme; swapping allophones does not
Aspirated [pʰ] in pin vs unaspirated [p] in spin
Two words that differ in only one sound, proving the two sounds are ship /ʃɪp/ vs sheep /ʃip/
Puff of air after a voiceless stop at the start of a stressed syllable
[tʰ] in top, but plain [t] in stop
Quick tap of the tongue replacing /t/ or /d/ between vowels in American
Allophones of one English phoneme can be separate phonemes in another language. English treats [pʰ] and [p] as one phoneme, but languages such as Hindi and Thai use aspiration to distinguish words. Conversely, Spanish treats [d] and [ð] as variants of one phoneme, so a Spanish-speaking learner may not hear the English contrast in den and then until it is taught explicitly.
Describing Consonants: Voicing, Place, and Manner
Every English consonant can be described with three features. Voicing asks whether the vocal folds vibrate (/b/, /d/, /z/) or not (/p/, /t/, /s/); place your fingers on your throat to feel the difference. Place of articulation names where the airflow is constricted, from the lips back to the glottis. Manner of articulation names how the air is constricted: fully stopped, narrowed to create friction, or released through the nose.
Labiodental (lower lip and upper teeth)
Interdental or dental (tongue between or behind teeth)
Alveolar (tongue tip on the ridge behind the teeth)
Palatal or post-alveolar (tongue blade near the hard palate)
Velar (back of tongue on the soft palate)
/t d s z n l/
Soft palate (velum) velar sounds /k g ŋ/
Lips /p b m w/ (bilabial)
Simplified schematic: English consonants are classified by where the airflow is constricted, from the lips at the front of the mouth to the glottis in the
Stops (plosives) /p b t d k g/
Airflow is completely blocked, then released in a burst
Air is forced through a narrow opening, creating friction or hissing
Fricatives /f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ
A stop released directly into a fricative (church, judge)
The velum lowers and air flows through the nose
Partial obstruction; air flows around the sides of the tongue (/l/) or over a bunched or curled
Vowel-like movement into a following vowel (we, yes)
Each pair shares place and manner and differs only in voicing, so voicing errors (e.g., final /z/ said as /s/) are a common
learner pattern.
Items often give a three-feature description and ask for the sound, or give a sound and ask which feature distinguishes it from another. Voiced labiodental fricative = /v/; /s/ and /z/ differ only in voicing; /t/ and /k/ differ only in place. When two answer choices name real features, check all three features before choosing.
Vowels are described by tongue height (high, mid, low), tongue advancement (front, central, back), lip rounding, and tenseness (tense vowels such as /i/ are longer and more peripheral than lax vowels such as /ɪ/). General American English has about 14–15 vowel phonemes, including diphthongs, while Spanish has five. That difference explains why many learners merge pairs such as ship and sheep or full and fool.
/i/ beet High front tense, unrounded
High front lax (slightly lower and shorter than /i/)
Mid front, diphthongized toward /ɪ/
/ɛ/ bet Mid front lax
/ɑ/ hot Low back unrounded
Low-mid back rounded; merged with /ɑ/ for many American speakers
Mid back rounded, diphthongized toward /ʊ/
/ʊ/ book High back lax rounded
/u/ boot High back tense rounded
/ʌ/ but Mid central, stressed
Schwa: mid central, unstressed; the most common English vowel
Stressed r-colored central vowel (also written /ɜr/)
Diphthongs: the tongue glides from one vowel position to another
Schwa /ə/ appears in unstressed syllables across English: the first syllable of about, the last of sofa, the middle of president. Because English reduces most unstressed vowels to schwa, spelling is a poor guide to pronunciation. Learners who give every vowel its full spelled value (ba-NA-NA with three identical vowels) sound choppy even when every consonant is accurate.
Reading and Writing IPA Transcriptions
The International Phonetic Alphabet assigns one symbol to one sound, so transcription removes the ambiguity of English spelling. Phonemic transcription in slashes records only meaning-relevant sounds; phonetic transcription in brackets adds detail such as aspiration or flapping. The stress mark ˈ is placed before the stressed syllable. On the test, work through a transcription sound by sound rather than guessing from the overall shape.
th is one sound /θ/; n before /k/ is pronounced /ŋ/
Voiced /ð/ contrasts with voiceless /θ/ in think
Two letters sh = one phoneme /ʃ/
/ʒ/ is rare in English and spelled s; stress on the first syllable
Affricate /tʃ/ at both ends; r-colored vowel judge /dʒʌdʒ/ j and dge both spell /dʒ/
IPA /j/ is the y sound, not the j sound ng = one velar nasal /ŋ/; no /g/ is pronounced
Silent k and gh; six letters, three sounds
Phonetic transcription shows the American flap [ɾ]
How many phonemes are in thought? Three: /θ/ + /ɔ/ (or /ɑ/) + /t/. Seven letters, three sounds.
Which word does /ˈkɑmənt/ represent, noun or verb? comment; stress on the first syllable and a schwa in the second.
What does [pʰɪn] show that /pɪn/ does not?
The aspiration of /p/ at the start of a stressed syllable, a phonetic (allophonic) detail.
A minimal pair proves that two sounds are separate phonemes, and it is also the standard tool for diagnosing and teaching a contrast a learner is missing. Teachers use pairs for discrimination first (Are ship and sheep the same or different? Point to the picture you hear) and production second (say the word that matches the picture, then use it in a
Speakers of Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and other languages with one high front vowel
Speakers of Japanese, Korean, and some Chinese varieties
Speakers of many languages without /θ/, including Mandarin and French
Speakers of Spanish, where b and v represent one phoneme
Speakers of Arabic, which lacks /p/
Speakers of languages without a low front /æ/
Speakers of Spanish and Portuguese varieties
Ms. Ortiz notices that Diego, a third grader at WIDA level 2 whose first language is Spanish, writes I want to leave in a big house and reads ship as sheep. Best response: run a short listening discrimination task with picture cards for ship/sheep and live/leave, then move to production in meaningful sentences. Why: the errors in reading, speaking, and spelling share one source, a missing /ɪ/–/i/ contrast, so perception practice comes before production practice.
Syllable Structure and Consonant Clusters
A syllable has an optional onset (consonants before the vowel), a nucleus (usually a vowel), and an optional coda (consonants after it). English allows up to three consonants in an onset (strength /stɹɛŋθ/) and up to four in a coda (texts /tɛksts/). Many languages allow far simpler syllables, so learners repair English clusters by inserting a vowel (epenthesis)
or dropping a consonant (deletion).
A vowel is inserted to break a cluster: school → eschool (common among Spanish speakers), milk → miruku in Japanese loanword patterns.
Final consonant deletion
A coda consonant is dropped: walked → walk, desk → des. Common when the L1 has few final consonants, as in Mandarin or Vietnamese.
Cluster reduction
One member of a cluster drops: first → firs. Native speakers also reduce clusters in casual speech (firs’ time).
Grammar consequences
Deleted final /s/, /z/, /t/, or /d/ can erase plural, third-person, and past-tense endings, so a pronunciation pattern may look like a grammar gap.
When a learner omits -ed or -s only in speech but writes the endings correctly, the best answer usually points to syllable structure or L1 phonology, not to a lack of grammatical knowledge. Look for evidence across domains
Stressed syllables are louder, longer, and higher in pitch, and their vowels are full rather than reduced. In many two- syllable noun–verb pairs, stress shifts to signal the part of speech, and the unstressed vowel often reduces to schwa. Misplaced word stress can make a word unrecognizable even when every sound is correct.
record ˈrecord (a new record) /ˈɹɛkərd/ present ˈpresent (a birthday present)
object ˈobject (a small object)
permit ˈpermit (a parking permit)
English is stress-timed: stressed syllables occur at roughly regular intervals, and unstressed syllables between them are compressed and reduced. Sentence stress falls on content words (nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs), while function words (articles, auxiliaries, prepositions, pronouns) are usually unstressed. In the CAT is on the MAT and the CAT has been SITting on the MAT, the time between stresses stays similar, so the extra words are squeezed.
Spanish, French, and many other languages are often described as syllable-timed, giving each syllable similar length. Learners transferring that rhythm stress every word equally, which listeners perceive as a strong accent. Contrastive stress moves the main stress to signal meaning: I didn’t take your BOOK (I took something else) vs I didn’t take YOUR book (I took someone else’s).
She lives in Dallas. ↘ · Where do you live? ↘
Do you live in Dallas? ↗
Each item rises; the final item falls to show the list is complete apples ↗, pears ↗, and plums ↘
Rising on a statement Uncertainty, surprise, or an echo question
She lives in Dallas? ↗ (surprise)
Listening items may play a sentence and ask what the intonation signals. A rise on a declarative sentence turns it into a question or shows surprise; a fall on a wh-question is normal and not rude. If a learner uses flat or rising intonation on every statement, the instructional answer is modeling and practice of falling intonation in meaningful
In natural speech, words blend at their boundaries. Learners trained on careful, word-by-word pronunciation often understand classroom English but struggle with peers, videos, and fast teacher talk. Teaching connected speech improves listening comprehension first; most learners do not need to produce every reduction.
Linking A final consonant joins the next word’s initial vowel turn it off → /tɝnɪtɔf/
Elision A sound is dropped next day → /nɛks deɪ/; last night
Assimilation A sound changes to resemble a neighbor
Reduction Function words weaken, often to schwa
Contraction Grammatical words combine in speech and writing
I am → I’m; do not → don’t
Phonetic Environment: the -ed and -s Endings
The pronunciation of a morpheme can depend on the sound next to it, its phonetic environment. The past-tense -ed and the plural, possessive, and third-person -s each have three predictable pronunciations (allomorphs). The rule depends on the final sound, not the final letter, so laughed ends in voiceless /f/ and takes /t/ even though it is spelled with gh.
Voiceless (/p k f θ s ʃ tʃ/) /t/: walked, stopped, laughed
Voiced, including vowels (/b g v m n l /d/: played, robbed, called r/)
Sibilants (/s z ʃ ʒ tʃ dʒ/) —
DECIDING THE -ED PRONUNCIATION
Is it /t/ or /d/? Add /
Say the base verb Identify its final
A sixth grader at WIDA level 3 reads He jumped and laughed as He jump-ED and laugh-ED, adding a syllable to each verb. Best response: teach the three -ed sounds with a sorting activity (/t/, /d/, /ɪd/ columns), having students say each base verb and feel for voicing before sorting. Why: the student is over-applying spelling to pronunciation; the rule is predictable from the
phonetic environment, and an inductive sort builds that awareness.
A learner’s first language shapes which contrasts the learner perceives and which syllable shapes feel natural. These patterns are positive evidence of a developing system, not carelessness. Use them as hypotheses to check, never as assumptions about an individual: learners vary widely by age, exposure, dialect of the L1, and other languages known.
Practice /s/ held before the stop: sss-chool; link from a preceding word (this school)
Spanish: one high front vowel; /b/ and /v/ one ship = sheep; very = phoneme berry
Minimal-pair discrimination before production; show lip–teeth contact for /v/
Spanish: final /z/ uncommon dogs with final /s/
Contrast bus / buzz; feel throat vibration
Mirror work: tongue tip between the teeth; pairs thin / tin, thin / sin
Japanese, Korean, some Chinese varieties: light = right no /l/–/r/ contrast
Discrimination with pictures; contrast tongue-tip contact (/l/) with no contact (/r/)
Mandarin, Vietnamese: few final consonants desk → des; dropped -ed
Practice codas with linking (desk_is); connect to grammar endings
Arabic: no /p/ phoneme bark for park
Aspirated /pʰ/ with a paper strip or hand to feel the air puff
The goal of pronunciation instruction in K–12 settings is intelligibility and comprehensibility, not the elimination of accent. Prioritize features that most affect understanding, which are often stress, rhythm, and key vowel contrasts, and integrate practice into meaningful communication rather than isolated drills alone.
Listen first Make sounds visible
Use rhythm and music
Chants, songs, poetry, and clapping make stress-timing physical and memorable.
Mirrors, diagrams of the mouth, hand gestures for stress, and IPA or color odd-one-out listening. coding for older learners.
Practice in context Self-monitor
Give targeted feedback
Recast or prompt only the feature being taught; avoid correcting every sound, which raises anxiety.
to a model, and set a pronunciation and information-gap tasks that need the
An accent is not a disability or a reading error. In oral reading records, count a word as correct when it is recognizable and
A phoneme changes meaning (/p/ vs /b/); allophones are predictable variants ([pʰ] vs [p]). Consonants = voicing + place + manner; /v/ is a voiced labiodental fricative. Schwa /ə/ is the most common English vowel; English is stress-timed and reduces unstressed vowels. Noun–verb stress pairs: ˈrecord (noun), reˈcord (verb). Falling intonation for statements and wh-questions; rising
An ESOL teacher must look at a learner sentence and explain exactly what the learner knows and what comes next. This chapter covers how words are built (morphology), how they combine into sentences (syntax), and the conventions of written English (mechanics). Test items in this area often present a student writing sample and ask you to identify the error type, the likely source, or the most useful instructional focus.
A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries meaning or grammatical function. A free morpheme can stand alone as a word (book, run, happy); a bound morpheme must attach to another morpheme (un-, -ness, -s). The root or base carries the core meaning, and affixes attach to it as prefixes (before) or suffixes (after). Some roots are bound, such as -rupt in erupt and interrupt.
Free morpheme
Stands alone: cat, teach, green. Content words and many function words (the, and) are free.
Bound morpheme
Inflectional morpheme
Adds grammatical information; never changes the part of speech; English has only eight.
Derivational morpheme
Creates a new word, often changing the part of speech or meaning: teach → teacher.
-s Verbs Third-person singular present
-en / -ed Verbs Past participle
Inflectional morphemes never change the part of speech and always come last in the word: teach + er + s, never teach + s + er. Derivational morphemes can change the part of speech (nation noun → national adjective → nationalize verb) or the meaning (happy → unhappy). A word such as teacher contains the derivational -er (one who teaches), which is different from the inflectional comparative -er in taller.
Derivational Morphemes and Word Formation
Derivation is one of several processes English uses to create new words. Knowing these processes helps teachers explain vocabulary families and helps learners unlock unfamiliar academic words: a student who knows -tion forms nouns from verbs can infer that evaporation names the process of evaporate.
Compounding Joining two free morphemes
Blending Merging parts of two words
Clipping Shortening a longer word
Acronyms and initialisms Initial letters form a word or abbreviation
Borrowing Adopting a word from another language taco (Spanish), kindergarten (German), algebra (Arabic)
Conversion (zero derivation) A word shifts part of speech with no affix to text, to google, a run
Back-formation Removing what looks like an affix edit from editor, donate from donation
Count morphemes by meaning, not by syllables or letters. Elephant has three syllables but one morpheme; cats has one syllable but two morphemes. Identify the free root first, then label each affix as inflectional or derivational.
2: free root + inflectional plural
2: free root + inflectional past
3: derivational prefix + root + inflectional past participle
3: two derivational affixes; verb → adjective
4: root + three derivational suffixes
1: a single free morpheme despite three syllables children child + -ren 2: irregular plural marking
Items often ask which word contains an inflectional (or derivational) morpheme, or which word has the most morphemes. Watch for traps: -er in teacher is derivational, -er in bigger is inflectional; -ing in a building (noun) is derivational, -ing in is building is inflectional; sing contains no -ing suffix at all.
Irregular Forms, Spelling Rules, and Overgeneralization
High-frequency English words are often irregular because they preserve older patterns. Learners first memorize some irregular forms as whole chunks (went), then discover the regular rule and apply it everywhere (goed), and finally sort out exceptions. This U-shaped development is seen in both first- and second-language acquisition, so overgeneralization errors are evidence of rule learning, not regression.
Teach as word pairs with pictures
Zero plurals sheep, deer, fish
Number shown by determiners: one sheep, three sheep
Common in academic texts; teach in content units
Group by pattern (bring, think, buy → -ought)
Rely on context or auxiliaries for time
Drop silent e before a vowel suffix hope → hoping; make → making
Double the final consonant after a short, stressed vowel happy → happiness; carry → carried
Change y to i after a consonant i before e except after c (many exceptions)
Traditional grammar defines parts of speech by meaning, but linguists use three kinds of evidence. Structural (formal) features are the endings a word can take and the slots it fills. Semantic features are the kinds of meaning it usually expresses. Functional features are the job it does in a sentence. A word such as run can be a noun or a verb, so structure and function often settle the question when meaning does not.
Noun Takes plural -s and possessive ‘s; follows the, a, my
Action or state; heads the predicate
Adjective Takes -er/-est or more/most; follows very
Quality; modifies a noun or follows a linking verb
Adverb Often ends in -ly; moves within the sentence
Pronoun Changes for case: I/me/my
Replaces a noun phrase; creates cohesion
Preposition Followed by a noun phrase (in the box)
Joins words, phrases, or clauses
Interjection Stands alone, often with !
Content (lexical) words (nouns, main verbs, adjectives, most adverbs) carry meaning, are an open class that accepts new members, and receive sentence stress. Function (grammatical) words (articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliaries) are a closed class, are often unstressed, and are among the hardest items for
ELs because their meaning is relational and varies by language.
English declarative sentences follow a basic subject–verb–object (SVO) order: The student read the book. Because English has little inflection, word order carries much of the meaning; The dog bit the boy and The boy bit the dog differ only in order. Questions and negatives depend on the auxiliary (helping verb), and when no auxiliary is present, English
Yes/no question with auxiliary Invert subject and auxiliary
She is reading. → Is she reading?
Insert do/does/did; main verb becomes the base form
She likes math. → Does she like math?
Move the wh-word to the front, then invert
No inversion and no do when the wh-word is the subject
Negative with auxiliary Place not after the first auxiliary
She is not reading. She can’t swim.
Negative without auxiliary Use do + not + base verb
She does not like math.
No + word or phrase: No school. No like.
Rising intonation on a word or statement: You like pizza?
No or not before the verb: He no like it.
Wh-word fronted without inversion: Where you are going?
Don’t as an unanalyzed chunk: He don’t like it. I don’t can swim.
Partial inversion with some auxiliaries: Can you help me?
Auxiliary + not with correct do forms: He doesn’t like it. I can’t swim.
Full inversion with do-support: Where are you going? What does it mean?
Expect a learner sentence such as She no want lunch with the question “Which stage does this reflect?” or “What is the most appropriate next step?” The best answer recognizes a predictable developmental stage and targets the next one (here, don’t/doesn’t with do-support), rather than treating the error as random or as L1 interference only.
A clause contains a subject and a verb. An independent clause can stand alone; a dependent (subordinate) clause begins with a subordinator such as because, although, when, or a relative pronoun (who, which, that) and cannot stand alone. Academic writing requires combining clauses, so sentence-combining instruction is a high-leverage practice for
Compound Two independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction or semicolon
The seeds sprouted, but the plants died.
One independent clause + at least one dependent clause
Because the soil was dry, the plants died.
Two or more independent clauses + at least one dependent
The seeds sprouted, but the plants died because the soil was dry.
Articles and Count vs Noncount Nouns
Many languages, including Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Vietnamese, have no articles, while Spanish and Arabic use them under different rules. English article choice depends on whether a noun is count or noncount and whether its referent is specific and known to the listener. Learners commonly omit articles, overuse the, or pluralize
Singular count noun, first mention or nonspecific a / an I saw a dog.
Specific noun known to both speakers the The dog was barking.
Plural or noncount noun, general meaning
Zero article Dogs are loyal. Water is essential.
the the sun, the United States
Measure words a piece of advice, two cups of rice
Phrasal verbs
Verb + particle with an idiomatic meaning: look up (search), give up (quit), turn down (refuse). Some are separable (look the word up), some are not (look after the baby). Their meaning is often not predictable from the parts.
Tense and aspect
Tense locates time (present, past); aspect shows how an action unfolds (simple, progressive, perfect, perfect progressive). She has lived here for five years uses present perfect for a situation continuing to now.
Passive voice
be + past participle shifts focus to the receiver: The samples were tested. Common in science texts and difficult for ELs to parse.
Progressive She is writing. (in progress now)
She was writing. (in progress at a past moment)
Perfect She has written. (past action, present relevance)
She had written. (before another past event)
Perfect progressive She has been writing. (ongoing up to now)
She had been writing. (ongoing before a past event)
Mr. Chen’s seventh-grade science class includes Minh, a WIDA level 3 student whose first language is Vietnamese. Minh writes Yesterday we test the water and it have many bacteria. Best response: acknowledge the accurate content, then teach a focused mini-lesson on past-tense marking in lab reports, using time words (yesterday) as a cue and a sentence frame (Yesterday we ___ed the ___.). Why: Vietnamese marks time with words rather than verb endings, so tense inflection is a
predictable transfer target; tying it to the genre gives it purpose.
Mechanics are the conventions of written English. Writing systems differ: Arabic is written right to left and has no capital letters; Chinese and Japanese do not use spaces between words; Spanish uses inverted opening marks (¿ ¡) and does not capitalize days, months, or nationality adjectives. Some mechanical errors are therefore transfer, while others are i went on monday; spanish class
First word of a sentence, the pronoun I, proper nouns, days, months,
End Period, question mark, exclamation point punctuation
Missing end marks; ¿ carried over from Spanish
After introductory elements, between items in a series, before a coordinating
Comma splices joining two sentences its / it’s; the dogs bone
One long paragraph; a different organizational pattern carried from L1 writing
Topic sentence, supporting details, concluding sentence; formation indentation or block spacing
Error Analysis of a Student Writing Sample
WRITING SAMPLE: GRADE 5, WIDA LEVEL 2–3, L1 SPANISH yesterday me and my familia go to the park. We playd soccer and my brother he kick the ball very hard. it was a beautiful day the sky was blue and the trees was green. i like to go with my family because we have fun yesterday, it, i not Mechanics: capitalization capitalized
Developmental and transfer (Spanish yo is lowercase). Teach as an editing-checklist item me and my familia Pronoun case; L1 word
Familia is a cognate used as a bridge (positive strategy); model my family and I as subject go (for went) Morphology: irregular past
Tense marked once by yesterday; teach high-frequency irregular verbs
Phonetic spelling of /d/; shows the student hears the ending. Teach that -ed is always spelled -ed my brother he kick Syntax: subject pronoun copy; missing past tense
Developmental; model My brother kicked it was a beautiful day the Run-on (fused sentence) sky was blue
Teach sentence boundaries and combining with and or a period the trees was green Subject–verb agreement
Teach was/were with plural subjects
No final period Mechanics: end punctuation
Add to an editing checklist
For error-analysis items, separate errors that block meaning from those that do not, and choose an instructional focus that is high-frequency and teachable now. In the sample above, past-tense marking appears in three places and is the strongest single target; correcting every error at once is rarely the best answer.
Morpheme = smallest unit of meaning; free vs bound; roots and affixes. English has eight inflectional morphemes; they never change part of speech and come last. Derivational morphemes create new words and often change part of speech (teach → teacher). Overgeneralization (goed, foots) is developmental evidence of rule learning. Questions and negatives use the auxiliary; with no auxiliary, English adds do (do-support). Negation develops from No + verb, to don’t as a chunk, to auxiliary + not. In error analysis, prioritize patterns that are frequent, meaning-blocking, and teachable next.
Knowing a language means more than producing correct forms. Speakers choose words with the right shade of meaning, interpret what others intend beyond their literal words, adjust language to the setting and listener, and organize ideas into texts that readers expect. This chapter covers meaning (semantics), meaning in context (pragmatics), language in society (sociolinguistics), and connected text (discourse), and closes with the communicative competence framework that ties
Semantics: Word and Sentence Meaning
Semantics studies meaning in words, phrases, and sentences. Denotation is the literal dictionary meaning; connotation is the emotional or cultural association. Thrifty, frugal, and cheap share a denotation but differ in connotation, which is why simple synonym lists can mislead ELs. Teach word choice with example sentences and attention to positive, neutral,
Synonyms Words with similar meaning (rarely identical in use)
big / large; begin / start
Antonyms Words with opposite meaning hot / cold; alive / dead
Homophones Same sound, different spelling and meaning
Same spelling, different meaning, sometimes different pronunciation lead (metal) / lead (guide); wind / wind
Homonyms Same spelling and sound, unrelated meanings
Polysemy One word with related meanings head of a person, a table, a school
Hyponymy A specific term within a general category rose is a hyponym of flower
A collocation is a word combination that native speakers prefer for no logical reason: make a decision but do homework, heavy rain but strong coffee. Collocation errors (do a mistake, strong rain) are grammatically possible but sound unnatural. An idiom is a fixed expression whose meaning cannot be predicted from its parts (break the ice, under the weather). Both must be taught as units, ideally in context and with visuals.
Verb + noun make a decision, take a test, do research do a decision, make a test
Adjective + noun heavy traffic, strong coffee, high temperature
Verb + preposition depend on, listen to, interested in depend of, listen the music
Idiom It’s raining cats and dogs.
Literal interpretation, confusion, or avoidance
Cognates, False Cognates, and Cross-Linguistic Comparison
Cognates are words in two languages that share origin, spelling, and meaning: Spanish familia and English family, animal and animal, información and information. Because much academic English comes from Latin, Spanish and Portuguese speakers often find Tier 2 and Tier 3 words easier than everyday English words (rapid / rápido vs fast). False cognates look similar but differ in meaning.
observar / observe observe (true cognate)
Contrastive analysis compares an L1 with English to predict areas of positive transfer (shared features) and negative transfer (differences). Predictions are not always accurate, since many errors are developmental and appear across all L1 groups, but the comparison helps teachers anticipate patterns and value what students already know.
Phonology Spanish: five vowels; no word-initial s + consonant
Phonology Mandarin and Vietnamese: tonal; limited final consonants
Dropped final consonants and endings; pitch differences
Phonology Arabic: no /p/; Japanese: no /l/–/r/ contrast bark for park; light/right confusion
Morphology Mandarin and Vietnamese: no tense or plural inflection
Yesterday I go; three book
Strong awareness of word families; root-based vocabulary strategies transfer
Spanish: adjective usually after the noun; subject pronoun often the house white; Is raining.
Syntax Spanish: double negation is standard
Japanese and Korean: subject–object–verb order, postpositions
Verb placed last in early speech
Syntax Arabic: no present-tense be in many sentences; Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese: no articles
He teacher.; I have book.
Cognate advantage; he/she mix-ups in speech pronoun tā for he, she, and it
Norms for directness, politeness formulas, and turn-taking vary
Requests that sound too blunt or too indirect
Questions about transfer ask you to tell negative transfer (an error traceable to an L1 rule, such as the house white) from developmental errors shared by learners of all backgrounds (goed). The strongest answers use cognates and L1 knowledge as assets, for example teaching students to check for cognates while also flagging common false
Pragmatics studies how speakers use language in context and how listeners infer what speakers intend. Philosopher J. L. Austin and later John Searle described speech acts: utterances that perform actions such as requesting, apologizing, promising, complimenting, or refusing. The form and the function of an utterance often differ, as when a question (Can you open the window?) functions as a request.
Speech act An utterance that performs an action
Indirect speech Function differs from grammatical form act
It’s cold in here = please close the window
Implicature Meaning implied beyond what is said (Grice’s cooperative principle)
A: Is the test hard? B: Study chapter 4. = yes, and it focuses on chapter 4
Politeness and Strategies that protect the listener’s self-image (Brown face and Levinson)
Could you possibly…, I was wondering if…
Pragmatic failure A grammatically correct utterance that is socially inappropriate
Give me the pencil said to the principal
Discourse norms Turn-taking, greetings, small talk, closings
Interrupting, or waiting too long to take a turn
Listeners often forgive grammar errors but judge pragmatic failure as rudeness or personality. A learner who says I want water to a teacher has used correct grammar but a bluntness that may be misread. Teach pragmatics explicitly: compare request forms on a politeness continuum (Give me… / Can I have… / Could I please have…), role- play situations with different listeners, and discuss how norms vary by context and culture.
Code-switching is alternating between two languages, or two dialects, within one conversation or even one sentence: Vamos al store después de school. It follows grammatical constraints and serves social purposes such as marking identity, quoting someone, filling a lexical gap, emphasizing a point, or including or excluding listeners. It is a normal, skilled bilingual practice, not evidence of confusion, deficit, or disability.
During small-group work, two fourth graders at WIDA level 3 switch between Spanish and English while solving a fraction problem. A colleague suggests enforcing an English-only rule. Best response: allow strategic L1 use for reasoning and clarification, then require the group’s final explanation in English with a sentence frame. Why: using the L1 supports concept development through common underlying proficiency, and code-switching is a resource; English output is still practiced
through the final report.
Sociolinguistics studies how language varies with region, social group, ethnicity, age, gender, and situation. Every speaker uses a dialect, and every dialect is systematic and rule-governed. The variety called Standard English carries social prestige in schools and workplaces, but it is not linguistically superior. Teachers add the school variety to students’ repertoires without devaluing the home variety.
Southern U.S. y’all; Appalachian English
Regional or social variety with its own pronunciation, vocabulary, and
Variety associated with a social group (class, age, occupation)
Idiolect An individual’s personal way of speaking
Register Variety suited to a situation’s formality and purpose
Playground talk vs a lab report
Speech Group sharing norms for language use community
A bilingual neighborhood; a school club
Language builds identity, solidarity, power, and group membership
Switching to a home variety with friends
Habitual be She be working.
Marks a regular, repeated action (she usually works)
Copula deletion She working right now.
Is/are may be omitted where Standard English allows contraction
Multiple negation He don’t want nothing.
Negatives agree, as in Spanish and many languages
Zero third-person -s She walk to school.
Person is marked by the subject, not the verb
Final consonant cluster reduction tes’ for test
Systematic simplification of final clusters
Items about dialect reward answers that respect the home variety and teach contrastive analysis (comparing home and school forms and when to use each). Answers that call dialect features “bad grammar,” recommend correcting them in casual speech, or refer a dialect speaker for special education are wrong.
English is used worldwide by many speakers who learned it as an additional language, and it has developed many established national varieties. Linguist Braj Kachru described this spread with three concentric circles. ELs from Outer Circle countries may already be fluent in a legitimate English variety with different vocabulary, pronunciation, and usage, and they should be assessed and placed with that in mind.
Inner Circle Primary or native language of most of the population
United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada
Official or institutional second language in government, schooling, and
Foreign language learned for international communication
Discourse: Rhetorical Patterns, Genres, and Devices
Discourse is language beyond the sentence. Cohesion links sentences through pronouns, transitions, and repeated or related words; coherence is the overall logical sense of a text. Academic texts follow predictable structures signaled by key words, and teaching those signals, together with matching graphic organizers, helps ELs read and write in each
Sequence / Order of events or steps chronological
Description Characteristics of a topic for example, such as, includes; web
Cause–effect Why something happens and its results
Problem–solution A problem and responses to it the problem is, one solution, so that; problem-solution chart
Narrative A story with characters, setting, and plot once, after that, in the end; story map
Persuasive / argument A claim supported by evidence and reasoning
I believe, evidence shows, in contrast; claim–evidence– reasoning chart
Writing organization also reflects cultural expectations. Robert Kaplan‘s work on contrastive rhetoric proposed that preferred patterns of organizing paragraphs vary across languages and cultures; for example, a direct thesis-first structure is expected in U.S. academic writing but not in every tradition. Treat such patterns as tendencies, and teach U.S. academic genre expectations explicitly rather than labeling a different organization as poor thinking.
Simile Comparison using like or as as brave as a lion
Metaphor Direct comparison without like or as
The classroom was a zoo.
Personification Human qualities given to nonhuman things
I have a million things to do.
Alliteration Repeated initial consonant sounds
Onomatopoeia Words that imitate sounds
Idiom Fixed expression with nonliteral meaning
A high school EL at WIDA level 4, whose first language is Arabic, reads a poem stating Hope is a thing with feathers and asks why hope would have feathers. Best response: explain metaphor explicitly, map the comparison on a chart (hope ↔ bird: light, rises, sings), and invite the student to share metaphors from Arabic poetry or proverbs. Why: figurative language is culturally loaded; explicit mapping builds the skill, and drawing on the L1 oral and literary tradition values the student’s
Sociolinguist Dell Hymes introduced communicative competence to describe the knowledge needed to use language appropriately, not just correctly. Michael Canale and Merrill Swain later defined four components that remain the standard framework in teacher preparation and underlie Communicative Language Teaching. A complete ESOL program develops all four, not grammar alone.
Grammatical Vocabulary, pronunciation, spelling, word formation, and sentence structure
Mini-lesson on past tense; minimal-pair practice
Sociolinguistic Appropriateness to setting, purpose, and relationship; register and politeness
Role-play asking a friend vs a principal for help
Discourse Connecting sentences into cohesive, coherent conversation or text
Using transitions to write a sequence paragraph; retelling a story in order
Strategic Verbal and nonverbal strategies to prevent or repair breakdowns
Circumlocution (the thing you write with), gestures, asking Can you repeat that?
Grammatical breakdown
He go store yesterday. Meaning is recoverable, but forms are inaccurate.
Sociolinguistic breakdown
Hey, gimme my grade. to a teacher: correct enough, wrong register.
Discourse breakdown
Accurate sentences with no links, so the reader cannot follow the sequence.
Strategic strength
A student who forgets thermometer says the thing that measures hot and keeps communicating.
Scenario items describe a learner behavior and ask which component it shows. Asking for repetition, paraphrasing, or gesturing to keep a conversation going is strategic competence; choosing the right level of formality is sociolinguistic; linking ideas with however and as a result is discourse; accurate verb endings are grammatical.
Denotation is literal meaning; connotation is association. Collocations and idioms must be taught as units. Cognates are assets; teach common false cognates (embarazada, librería, éxito). Pragmatic failure is correct grammar used inappropriately; teach requests and politeness explicitly. Code-switching is a normal, rule-governed bilingual skill, not confusion or disability. All dialects, including AAE, are rule-governed; teach contrastive analysis without devaluing the home variety. Kachru: Inner Circle (U.S., UK), Outer Circle (India, Nigeria), Expanding Circle (China, Japan). Communicative competence = grammatical + sociolinguistic + discourse + strategic (Canale and Swain).
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