According to the New World Encyclopedia, Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for Analytic Philosophers has been concerned with four central problems, which are:

(Available at: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Philosophy_of_language )

Concerning Bilingualism, analyze the following statements (Gleason, J. B. e Ratner, N. B. The Development of Language. Pearson: Boston, 2009):

I. When a speaker gains a second language while retaining a first language, the process is called additive language. Often, the acquisition of the second language is seen as an asset, as enhancing the prestige and social and economic prowess of the speaker.

II. Subtractive bilingualism refers to the loss of fluency in one’s native language that occurs when acquiring a second language.

III. Being younger is an advantage in terms of the rate of acquisition, as younger learners acquire a second language more rapidly than older learners in untutored settings.

IV. The acquisition of a second language could occur in submersion settings in which the person is surrounded by native speakers of that second language, or in immersion settings, in which the person and other people received instruction in that second language only.

V. Children growing up learning two or more languages simultaneously can do so without difficulty and in much the same way as do monolingual children.

Check the alternative that presents the number of the CORRECT statements:

Differences between Brazilian Portuguese and English can result in difficulties in oral comprehension and production due to transfer. These difficulties can result in intelligibility and comprehensibility problems that can be overcome when teachers understand why and how the difficulties happen. Mark the alternative in which only common phonological processes that trigger mispronunciations produced by Brazilians when speaking English are mentioned.

Norman Fairclough is one of the founders of Critical discourse analysis (CDA), which studies how power is exercised through language. According to him, CDA is a positioning concerning language that associates linguistic text analysis with a social theory of the functioning of language in political and ideological processes (Fairclough, N. Critical Language Awareness. Routledge: London, 1992). Write (T) for those that are true and (F) for those that are false in relation to the CDA theoretical basis.

( ) The object of analysis is linguistic texts which are analyzed in terms of their own specificity.

( ) In addition to text, the processes of text production and interpretation are themselves analyzed. Analysis is interpretation.

( ) Texts must be homogeneous and ambiguous and features of different genre types might be drawn upon in interpreting them.

( ) Discourse is socially constructive, constituting social subjects, social relations and systems of knowledge and belief.

( ) Discourse analysis is concerned only with power relations in discourse and how it transform the social practices of a society.

( ) Analysis of discourse attends to its functioning in the creative transformation of ideologies and practices as well as its function in securing their reproduction.

Check the alternative that shows the CORRECT sequence:

The use of authentic materials in the classroom can be beneficial to the learner because of the real language exposure supporting a more creative approach to teaching, the possibility of practicing skimming and scanning, the encouragement to reading for pleasure, among others. Nevertheless, using authentic materials in ESP classes can also have some disadvantages, such as:

In relation to designing translation courses, three approaches, or three organizing principles can be followed: (1) the inductive approach, (2) the deductive approach, or (3) the functional approach. Associate the approaches (1), (2) and (3) on the right column, to the propositions that characterize them on the left column.

(1) the inductive approach

(2) the deductive approach

(3) the functional approach

( ) Teaching is based on certain topics related to translation techniques

( ) Teachers decide what skills are necessary for translation and aim to develop these skills without necessarily using translation tasks.

( ) In this approach, teaching does not begin with a text but with a translation problem

( ) The process of teaching is organized by text-selection

( ) In this approach teaching is organized around particular skills to be developed

( ) Since in a text-based class only problems occurring in the given text appear, it might happen that important translation problems remain untackled.

The CORRECT sequence, from top to bottom, is:

The following are aspects or concerns of a Genre Approach to English as a second language:

I. The relationship between texts and their contexts.

II. The purpose or intention of a text.

III. Reader has the main role.

IV. Writing as a social activity.

V. Teacher’s role is authoritarian.

Choose the CORRECT option: