Language games using homophones in english classes=trò chơi ngôn ngữ sử dụng từ đồng âm trong các lớp học tiếng anh

More importantly, the author givessome main types of games using homophones for teaching English.. Language Games...17 CHAPTER 2: HOMOPHONES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 2.1.. That can be u

VINH UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

VINH UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

For the completion of this work, I have been fortunate to receiveinvaluable contributions from many people First of all, I should like to express

my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Mrs Phan Van Huong, M.A for her

expert advice, excellent suggestions and detailed comments, without which thework would not have been completed

I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to all my classmates for theirvarious kinds of help and encouragement

I repeat my thanks to my brother for all the useful web sites he gave to mewith constant support

Finally, I am too aware that despite all the advice and assistance, I feel thatthe project is far from perfect; it is, therefore, my sole responsibility for anyinadequacies and shortcomings that the thesis may be considered to have

Vinh, May, 10th, 2010

Tran Thi Hao

Homophone is a topic that has been studied by a number of students inour department In fact, it is an interesting topic, and it is really useful forEnglish learners In this thesis, the author gives the readers a brief account ofinformation about homonyms and homophones in terms of semantics Thecomparison of English and Vietnamese homophones is also mentioned to helpthe readers know more about this topic More importantly, the author givessome main types of games using homophones for teaching English These will

be illustrated by specific examples and practice to help the readers understandand use homophones for games effectively

A: answer

C.f.: compare E.g.: example

Table of Content

Page

Acknowledgement i

Abstract ii

Abbreviations iii

Table of contents iv

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 Justification of the Study 1

2 Aims of the Study 2

3 Research questions 3

4 Scope of the Study 3

5 Methods of the Study 4

6 Format of the Study 4

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Word and Word Meanings 6

1.1.1 The Notion of Word 6

1.1.2 Characteristics of Words 7

1.1.3 Word Meaning 9

1.1.3.1 Words as Meaningful Units 9

1.1.3.2 Components of Word-meaning … 10

a Denotative Meaning 10

b Connotative Meaning 10

c Structural/ Associative Meanings 11

d Categorial Meaning 13

1.2 Homonymy 13

1.2.1 Definition 13

1.2.2 Homonymy and Polysemy 13

1.2.3 Types of Homonyms 16

1.2.3.1 Full Homonyms 16

1.2.3.2 Homophones 17

1.2.3.3 Homographs 17

1.3 Language Games 17

CHAPTER 2: HOMOPHONES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 2.1 Overall Understanding of Vietnamese and English 20

2.1.1 Language Family 20

2.1.2 Language Type 20

2.1.3 Vocabulary 21

2.1.4 Grammar 21

2.2 Types of Homophones in Vietnamese and English 23

2.3 The Use of Homophones in Games in English 24

CHAPTER 3: LANGUAGE GAMES USING HOMOPHONES 3.1 Homophone Games 25

3.2 The Benefits 25

3.3 Types 26

3.3.1 Visual Aid Homophone Games 26

a Definition 26

b The Aim and the Object 26

c The Method and Practice 27

3.3.2 Homophone Quiz 31

a Definition 31

b The Aim and the Object 31

c The Method and Practice 31

3.3.3 Riddle 35

a Definition 35

b The Aim and the Object 36

c The Method and Practice 36

3.4 Suggested Tips for Controlling Effective Homophone Games 38 PART III: CONCLUSION

Review of the Study 40 Applications of the Study 41 Suggestions for Further Studies 41 REFERENCES

APPENDIXES

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Justification of the Study

English has become an international language and it is becoming moreand more important in all fields of our life Learning English well is not at all

an easy task Homophone is a difficult but interesting part of English.Sometimes what are pronounced similarly have different meanings and totallydistinguish from each other

Homophone plays an important role in forming the abundance andvariety of English That also forms great interest for English learners.Mastering 'homophone' helps us to possess a huge knowledge of Englishvocabulary and the way to use them in various situations

Knowing about homophone the students can improve theirpronunciation When they can master a huge number of homophones, it will beeasy for them to recognize and pronounce the words accurately Therefore,their speaking English skill one of four main skills in studying English, isenhanced step by step Taking part in interesting homophone games thestudents not only can relax, be more active and creative but they can alsodevelop their knowledge and practice their listening and speaking English

In fact, language learning is a hard task which can sometimes befrustrating Constant effort is required to understand, produce and manipulatethe target language Well-chosen games are invaluable as they give students abreak and at the same time allow students to practice language skills Gamesare highly motivating since they are amusing and challenging as well.Furthermore, they employ meaningful and useful language in real contexts.They also encourage and increase cooperation

Homophone really works when the teachers want to bring the studentsgood knowledge of vocabulary or speaking skills and listening ones Language

games are widely used by many teachers when they want to catch the students'attention at the beginning of the class, to help them relax during the lesson, oreven in any club in terms of entertainment only Therefore, the connection ofhomophone and games is really interesting and useful in teaching Languagegames using homophones catch much attention from both teachers andstudents That can be used in classes, in clubs, between pairs, in the wholeclass or among the crowd, which is really helpful to bring amusing atmospherewith the high educational function by forming the students’ ability to have agood reaction, developing their intelligence, their creativity or enlarging theirknowledge of English words, and promoting language skills

For the above mentioned reasons, the author has decided to carry out a

study entitled “Language games using homophones in English classes” with

the hope to contribute useful ways to improve languages skills in learningEnglish with higher pedagogical values

2 Aims of the Study

The thesis has been done with the aims to:

- help the author and the readers to understand more deeply the subject

“lexicology and semantics” which is vital in any English course bycatching the view of homophone and some kinds of homophone, alsoseveral important points of semantics such as word and characteristics ofword, word meanings, components of word meanings

- enable the readers to master English vocabulary, which seems to be verydifficult to any foreign language learners, and use them effectively in manycommunicative contexts

- point out a brief account of differences between Vietnamese and Englishhomophones, which are resulted from the overall differences betweenVietnamese and English languages, to help the readers understandhomophones more profoundly and use them more effectively in various

communicative situations.

- suggest some main useful homophone games that are valuable in learningand teaching English From those, English learners can improve theirlanguage skills especially speaking and listening with games in sense ofhumor and high creativity

- bring initiative for recreation in teaching and learning Homophone gamesare used in various situations such as forming activities for clubs, practicalteaching, extracurricular activities, etc to gain higher pedagogical value.That is particularly, helpful for the third-years students of English andmore important for the fourth-year ones

3 Research Questions

The study aims to answer the following questions:

3.1 What are homophones?

3.2 What are the main differences between Vietnamese and Englishhomophones? How do the differences between Vietnamese and Englishlanguage affect homophones in the two languages?

3.3 What are benefits of homophone games in learning and teaching English?3.4 What are common types of homophone games that can be useful inEnglish classes? What are their benefits, objects and methods?

4 Scope of the Study

Homonymy is an interesting topic but also a complicated one Thereare many types of homonyms This study only focuses on homophones, wordshaving the same pronunciation

English has many homophones and their uses are also very abundant.There are no rules to help you remember what homophones are, although a lot

of practice with homophone can help Therefore, the writer only would like togive the readers some main types of homophones which are used in games in

English classes, based on the sameness of form according to Nguyen Hoa(2004).

Homophones are used variably in games and the application ofhomophones in games is also an important part in this research However, insome way, the writer only focuses on pointing out some useful games usedpopularly such as riddle, visual aid homophone games and homophone quiz

5 Methods of the Study

Writing this research, the writer uses three main methods:summarizing, analyzing, and comparative method with three steps: first,studying theories relating to homophone, classifying its types with differentuses and then forming games appropriately with specific users

The writer will summarize theoretical points relating to homophonesand then points out some main points which are necessary for highlighting theissue we want to mention, homophone in games Also, she will summarize thecommon games using homophone, then analyze these sources to put them in agood range of games that enables the readers to understand and use thesegames in learning and teaching English effectively

The comparative method is partly used when the writer wants to pointout some overall differences between Vietnamese and English, different points

in Vietnamese and English homophones, and the differences in use of somehomophone games

6 Format of the Study

Apart from acknowledgement, table of content, references and appendixes,the study consists of three main parts: introduction, development, and

conclusion The first part, Introduction, discusses the justification, aims of the

study, scope of the study, methods of the study and format of the study The

second part, Development, includes three chapters: chapter 1: theoretical

background, chapter 2: Homophones in English and Vietnamese and chapter 3: Language games using homophones Part 3, Conclusion, presents reviews of

the study, applications of the study and provides some suggestions for furtherstudies

PART II: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 Word and Word Meaning

1.1.1 The Notion of Word

According to Jackson, H & Ze’ Amvela, E 2000, the word may be

defined differently depending on whether we focus on its representation, thethought which it expresses, or purely formal criteria What a word is relies onwhich domain the readers are interested in

The first type of definition relies mainly on writing traditions thatseparate by spaces sequences of letters or characters Words that are

distinguished from each other by their spaces are orthographic word

For example: in the phrase: “a beautiful girl”, there are three spacesbetween each set of letters, so there are three words recognized: “a”,

“beautiful” and “girl”

Secondly, words that are distinguished from each other by their

pronunciation are phonological words Even that, two words have the same

spelling, but different pronunciations, they are recognized as two differentwords

For example: house (v) and house (n) are two separate words

In addition, words that are identified by grammatical variation are

word formation Words which represent different grammatical functions are

different words

For example: “The”: definite article is one word and “a/ an”: indefinitearticle are different words

“House” (v) and “house” (n) are also two different words

Fourthly, words that are identified as “items of meaning” are lexemes.

For example: “is/are/am” is recognized as one word because these aredifferent appearance of only one lexeme: “to be”.

Therefore, with the following sentence, the numbers of words aredifferent with the varied notion of words:

“In their conceptual world, words are at once containers, tools and

weapons, just as in the physical world a bag is container, a screw-driver is a tool, and a gun is weapon.”

There are 34 orthographic words: i.e sequences of letters bounded

by spaces

There are 23 grammatical words (or 24 if you count “at” and “at

once” separately) “a” occurs 6 times, “is” 3 times, “and” twice, “in” twiceand “world” twice

There are 19 lexemes: “is” and “are” are separate grammatical words

but belong to the same lexeme; and the following have both a singular and aplural form: “container”, “tool”, “weapon”

The above are some domains that the readers can base on to understandthe varied notion of the word However, in general, words are defined as

following way: Word is an interruptible unit of structure consisting of one or

more morphemes and which typically occurs in the structure of phrases.

(Jackson, H & Ze’ Amvela, E 2000)

1.1.2 Characteristics of Words

Words themselves have the main following characteristics which areconsidered essential in our definition of the word in English, according toHudson, Richard A (1995) and Palmer, Frank R (1986)

Firstly, the word is an indivisible/ interruptible unit When elements are

added to a word to modify its meaning, they are never included within theword The respect the internal stability of the word and are added either at thebeginning as prefixes of the word or at the end as suffixes For example, the

prefix un- and the suffix -able may be added to the words aware and drink,and give unaware and drinkable respectively We cannot insert any elementsinto a word If we divide the word into smaller parts, these then have nomeanings or different ideas from the original word

For example: The word “cat” we can not divide it into “ca” and “t”.

Or: “cat” is different from “ca +s +t” ~ cast”

Secondly, the word may consist of one or more morphemes When it

consists of one morpheme only, then it cannot be broken down into smaller

meaningful units, e.g dog, hand, man, out, work These are called ‘simple” word E.g.: dog, man, out are words that consist of only one morpheme

When words consist of more than one morpheme, they may be eithercomplex or compound Complex word may be broken down into one free

form or more bound forms: e.g dogs, quicker are words having 2 morphemes: dog-s and quick-er Whereas, compound words consist of more

than one free form: e.g birth+day, black+bird, candle+stick, etc

Thirdly, the word occurs typically in the structure of phrases That is

morphemes are used to build words, words to build phrases, phrases to buildclauses and clauses to build sentences This is the typical mapping, a higher

level unit may be used in a lower level unit For example, four words: “the”,

“girl”, “with”, “glasses” can build the phrase: “the girl with glasses” This phrase can be used to build a full sentence “The girl with glasses is my

sister.” Or, a clause such as who came late may be used like an adjective

(word) to modify the head noun man in the sentence such as: “the man who

came late was my brother”

Finally, the word belongs to a specific word class or part of speech,

including noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunctionand interjection Where the same form appears in more than one class, asfrequently happens in English, we regard the various occurrences as separate

words

E.g.: Smoke (v) as distinct from smoke (n).

House (v) as distinct from house (n)

It may even be suggested that a word is defined by two factors: itssemantic “nucleus” and the class to which it belongs

So far, we have mentioned four main characteristics of words: theword is an indivisible/ interruptible unit, the word may consist of one or moremorphemes, the word occurs typically in the structure of phrases and theword belongs to a specific word class or part of speech

1.1.3 Word Meaning

1.1.3.1 Words as Meaningful Units

It is generally agreed that the words, phrases and sentences oflanguage have meanings and sentences are made up of words (phrases) ofwhich it is made up Since there are quite a whole lot of definitions of theterm “word”, what the author tries to do is not to redefine something whichhas become some sort of a “nightmare” for linguists Instead, the author willoffer a working definition of what the word is, fully aware of the inherenttraps

“Words are regarded as the smallest indivisible meaningful units of a language which can operate independently.” (Nguyen Hoa, 2004)

In this definition, one may ask what we mean by “independently’, forexample At least, we know that even a sentence is not “independent” since ithas to combine with other sentences to create a communicatively meaningfulwhole Words, on the other hand, may be considered purely as forms,

whether written of spoken, or alternatively, as composite expressions, which

combine forms and meanings

is used to be reminded that there are two structural principles that seem to lie

at the basis of all linguistic patterning: contrastiveness and structure) E.g

Woman= + human, -male, + adult as distinct from boy, that can be defined

as, +human, +male, - adult For example,

* A table may be defined as a piece of furniture used for writing at.

(ii) Referential

This is the ability to refer to objects or things (often called referent)

C.f.: Can you get me a book? Vs I bought a book this afternoon.

b) Connotative Meaning

It is the communicative value an expression has by virtue of what itrefers to, over and above its purely conceptual content This kind of meaning

is rather unstable: that is they vary considerably according to culture,historical period, and the experience of the individual.

There is variation according to: dialect, time (language of the 18th

century), province (law), status (polite, colloquial, slang), modality (language

of memoranda, lectures, and jokes), singularly the style of Dickens, and thestyle of Hemingway)

Connotative meaning is open-ended in the same way as ourknowledge and beliefs about the universe

This kind of meaning may fall into:

(i) Stylistic: when associations at work concern the situation inwhich the word is uttered, the social circumstances (formal, familiar,colloquial….), the social relationships between the interlocutors (polite,rough), and this connotation is stylistic E.g horse vs steed; help vs assist;residence vs house

(ii) An emotional or affective connotation is acquired by the word

as a result of its frequent use in context corresponding to emotional situations

or because the referent conceptualized and named in the denotative meaning

is associated with emotion For example, beseech means to ask eagerly andalso anxiously

(iii) Evaluative connotation expresses approval or disapproval; C.f.:

magic, witchcraft and sorcery.

(iv) Intensifying connotation, which is expressive and emphatic

E.g magnificent, splendid, superb, terribly, extremely.

c) Structural/ associative meanings include

(i) Reflected meaning

This is the meaning which arises in cases of multiple conceptualmeaning, when one sense of a word forms part of our response to another

sense For example, the 40 th president of the US and the Great

Communicator both refer to Ronald Reagan The Great Communicator

sounds better, and is more about Reagan’ personality than his job (the 40 th

President of the US), which sounds cool.

(ii) Collocative meaning

It consists of the associations a word acquires on account of themeanings of words which tend to occur in its environment

girl boy

Pretty boy Handsome man

woman car

flower airliner

There can be handsome boy and pretty woman.

It should be noted that reflected, collective, social and affective

meanings have more in common with connotative meaning that withconceptual meaning; they all have the same open-ended, variable character,and lend themselves to analysis in terms of scales or ranges

(iii) Associative meaning

This is also the meaning which arises because of its association withother meanings For example, good vs bad; buy vs sell; hard vs soft When

a person hears the world “good” for example, he is more likely to think ofbad as well

(iv) Thematic meaning

This is the kind of meaning which is communicated by the way inwhich a speaker or writer organizes the message in terms of ordering, focus,and emphasis

* A man is waiting in the hall vs There’s a man waiting in the hall

* The dog chased the cat vs The cat was chased by the dog.

As competent learners of English, we know that the above examples

have different topics or theme “A man is waiting in the hall.” tells us where

the man is, whereas “There’s a man is waiting in the hall” is an existential

sentence signaling the existence of the man

d) Categorical meaning

Actually, categorical meaning is one part of grammatical meaningwhich words derive from being a member of one category rather than another(nouns rather than verbs and so on) Words fall into such categories asNouns, Verb, Adjectives, Prepositions, Conjunctions, etc

1.2 Homonymy

1.2.1 Definition

Homonymy refers to a situation where different words happensaccidentally to have the same forms (Nguyen Hoa, 2004)

1.2.2 Homonymy and Polysemy

Homonymy refers to a situation where different words happenaccidentally to have the same forms while polysemy designates a situation inwhich a single word has a set of related meanings Sameness of formsgenerally refers to phonetic forms However, it is necessary to distinguishsameness of phonetics form and graphic form As far as polysemy isconcerned, we should distinguish between polysemy proper and generality ofmeaning This is a situation where a single meaning can be used in a number

of contexts For example, the word “right” used in the following examples:

* What she said was right.

* I believe that it was the right thing to do.

Consider the following example of homonymy:

“Mine is a long and sad tale” said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing.

“It is a long tail, certainly”, said Alice looking down with wonder at the Mouse’s tail, but why do you call it sad?”

The key to the exchange is “tale” vs “tail” In the story, tale /teil/ can

be both long and sad but with tail /teil/, it is hard to imagine it is sad unlessone has to stretch one’s imagination a bit further

Homonymy and polysemy are closely related and often treatedtogether because, on face value, what we see its various meanings areassociated with the same forms They are distinguished from each other interms of semantic relatedness If different meanings associated with one formare perceived as related, they constitute a polysematic word; if thesemeanings are correlated in any way, they are treated as homonyms

One-to-one relationship is not common in natural languages Thushomonyms are a source of ambiguity; for example

* I met her at the bank.

“The bank” may refer to the side of a river or a financial institution But it

is necessary to keep in mind that ambiguity is a matter of semantics ratherthan pragmatics since it is not sustained by the context In fact, the context

will disambiguate it We can think of another sentence following the above: I

met her at the bank where she worked Upon hearing “where she worked”,

the hearer can determine that the bank in this context means the financialinstitution

We can discuss the notion of absolute vs partial homonymy.Absolute homonyms should satisfy the following three conditions

(i) They will be unrelated in meaning

(ii) All their forms will be identical

(iii) The identical forms will be grammatically equivalent

Absolute homonyms are common enough: bank (a financial institution or the bank of a river; sole (a fish and bottom of foot or shoe).

Partial homonyms are common, too For example, find (v) and found (v)

are two partial homonyms “Found” (v) may be the past form or past

participle form of the irregular verb “find” Rose (n) and Rose (past tenseform of rise).

Context does have a role in making clear the meanings of homonyms.N.N Amosova distinguishes between lexical and grammatical context Forexample, in “The mouth of the river”, it is the world river which realizes themeaning of the mouth Thus this kind of context is called lexical On theother hand, the structure may play a central role in this Such context isgrammatical Consider:

* Mr Smith probably made him marry her

* He accepted the order, with the benevolent air.

* A few minutes later, Hyman asked to go up on deck where he said there might be some more air.

* He laid it aside with the unmistakable air of one visualizing another’s response to some plant or hint.

* She arrived by air on Monday.

Sources of homonyms:

(i): Disintegration of split of polysemy The Latin “buxus” results in box (a kind of small evergreen shrub), box (a receptacle made of wood), box v, to put in box), box (a slap with the hand on the ear), and box (a sport term) (ii) Convergent sound development: “sound-healthy” from zesund (healthy) and ‘sound-strait” from sund (swimming), and

(iii) Borrowing (race vs race), sound (from French –sonus- to measure the

depth)

Polysemy (multiple meaning is property of single words Polysemy ischaracteristic of most words in English

* I run home vs I run this office.

The criteria used to distinguish between homonymy and polysemy are the

following points The first is relatedness of meanings, and etymology, this

supports the native speaker’s untutored intuition about particular words For

example, most native speakers would probably classify “bat” furry mammal with membranous wings” and “bat “– implement for striking a ball in certain games as different words But sole (bottom of the foot) and sole (a kind of

fish) actually come from the same source On the other hand, shock (shock of corn) and shock (shock of hair) are from different origins.

1.2.3 Types of Homonyms

There have been many ways to classify homonyms

Based on the grammatical function, homonyms are classified into twomain types: absolute homonyms and partial homonyms

The first type of homonym is absolute homonyms These are thewords that are unrelated in meaning, all their forms are identical, and theiridentical forms are grammatical equivalent

E.g.: Spell: formula of words supposed to have magic power

Spell: period of time of weather/ activity

The second type of homonym is partial homonyms These are thewords that are unrelated in meaning, but do not have the same grammaticalfunction

E.g.:

Rose (n) and rose (v): past tense of “rise”

Found (v) and found (v): past tense of “find”

In this research, the author will follow the way based on thesameness of form, according to Nguyen Hoa (2001) and Nguyen Hoa (2004)and, homonym is classified with 3 main types in this division They are: fullhomonym, homophone, and homograph

1.2.3.1 Full homonym

Full homonyms are words that are identical in both pronunciation andspellings

E.g 1: “Bark”: outer covering of a tree and “Bark”: noise made by adog

“Punch”: a tool/ machine for shaping/ engraving and

“Punch”: strike with a fist

1.2.3.2 Homophone

Homophones are words that have the same pronunciation as eachother but different spellings and meanings

E.g 1: Air vs heir

“Air”: the mixture of gases that surrounds the earth and that webreathe

“Heir”: a person who has the legal right to receive somebody’sproperty, money or title when that person dies

1.2.3.3 Homograph

Homographs are words that are spelt the same as each other but havedifferent pronunciation and meaning

E.g 1: “Wind” (n) /wind/: a current of air

and “Wind” (v) /waind/: to empower a clock

or: “house” (n) /haus/ and “house” (v) /hauz/

Of three main types of homonyms divided according to thesameness of form, in this thesis, the study is restricted to the use ofhomophones in games in English classes

1.3 Language Games

The primary goal of materials in teaching is to make classroom

activities as meaningful as possible supplying “the extralinguistic context

that helps the acquirer to understand and thereby to acquire” (Krashen and

Terrell 1983: 55), by relating classroom activities to the real world, and by

fostering real communication among the learners Materials come from theworld of realia rather than from text books Language games, in general, are

seen as useful classroom materials, since “games by their nature, focus thestudents on what it is they are doing and use the language as a tool for

reaching the goal rather than as a goal in itself (Terrell 1982: 121, cited in

Richards and Rodgers 2001).

In fact, games are highly motivating because they are amusing andinteresting They can be used to give practice in all language skills and beused to practice many types of communication In an effort to supplementlesson plans in the EFL classroom, teachers often turn to games Thejustification for using games in the classroom has been well demonstrated asbenefiting students in a variety of ways According to Martha, L and Caser,

M (1997), these benefits range from cognitive aspects of language learning

to more co-operative group dynamics

For affective benefits, games help to lower affective filter,

encourage creative and spontaneous use of language, promotecommunicative competence, motivate students and have fun

Concerned about cognitive aspects of language learning, using gamesreinforces, reviews and extends the knowledge and also focuses on grammarcommunicatively

Moreover, for class dynamics, when using games, we can control astudent centered class, where teacher acts only as facilitator, builds classcohesion, fosters whole class participation, and promotes healthy competitionfor students

In addition, using games has adaptability They are easily adjustedfor age, level, and interests We can use them four all four skills, and gamesrequire minimum preparation after development

According to Richard-Amato "Games can lower anxiety, thus

making the acquisition of input more likely" (1988:147, cited in Agnieszka

Uberman, 1998) They are highly motivating and entertaining, and they can

give shy students more opportunity to express their opinions and feelings

(Hansen 1994:118, cited in Agnieszka Uberman, 1998) They also enable

learners to acquire new experiences within a foreign language which are notalways possible during a typical lesson Furthermore, to quote Richard-Amato, they, "add diversion to the regular classroom activities," break theice, "[but also] they are used to introduce new ideas" (1988:147) In the easy,relaxed atmosphere which is created by using games, students remember

things faster and better (Wierus 1994:218, cited in Agnieszka Uberman,

1998).

Well-chosen games are invaluable as they give students a breakand at the same time allow students to practice language skills

CHAPTER 2: HOMOPHONES IN ENGLISH

AND VIETNAMESE

2.1 Overall Understanding of Vietnamese and English

As far as we know, Vietnamese belongs to the group of isolating languageswhere there are no inflectional endings and all the words are invariable.Meanwhile, English, the European language, is an inflectional one There are somedifferences between these two types of languages in terms of language family,language type, vocabulary, and grammar

2.1.1 Language family

Vietnamese is classified in the Viet - Muong group of the Mon-Khmerbranch that belongs to the Austro-Asiatic language family Vietnamese is alsoknown to have a similarity with languages in the Tai family The Vietnamesevocabulary features a large amount of Sino-Vietnamese words Moreover, by being

in contact with the French language, Vietnamese was enriched not only in

vocabulary but also in syntax by the calque (or loan translation) of French

grammar

The English language belongs to the Anglo-Frisian sub-group of the WestGermanic branch of the Germanic family, a member of the Indo-Europeanlanguages The closest living relatives of English are the Scots language, spokenprimarily in Scotland and parts of Ireland, and Frisian, spoken on the southernfringes of the North Sea in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany

2.1.2 Language Type

Vietnamese is an isolating language, but English is an inflectional language

As a result, there are different characteristics between the two languages with thefollowing specificities:

Firstly, Vietnamese is a monosyllabic language, in contrast to English, aninflectional one

Secondly, Vietnamese word forms never change, which is contrary tooccidental languages that make use of morphological variations (plural form,conjugation ) as in English

Hence, all grammatical relations in Vietnamese are manifested by wordorder and tool words Meanwhile, there are other tense markers with the variedtenses in English that we will discuss later in the 2.1.4

2.1.3 Vocabulary

Though the vocabulary of the two languages is really large and has changed considerably over the centuries, word formation in English is different with that in Vietnamese where word form never changes In fact, with the varied ways of word formation in English, vocabulary is not only an interesting part but also a difficult one to learners of English as a foreign language

2.1.4 Grammar

As other isolating languages, the most important syntactic information source in Vietnamese is word order The basic word order is Subject - Verb - Object, which is similar to English, an inflectional one

As grammar concerned, grammatical relationships are expressed not by changing the internal structure of the words (the use of inflectional endings), but

by the use of auxiliary words and word order For example, in a noun phrase, the main noun precedes the adjectives and the genitive follows the governing noun In this sense, the traditionally recognized inflectional morphology is not applicable to Vietnamese

Regarding to morphology, Vietnamese morphology is not as complex as themorphology of inflected languages Vietnamese has a number of tense markers.Unlike European languages, including English, in which a verb in a sentence musthave a tense form (past, present or future), in Vietnamese a tense marker is usuallyleft out if there is a time expression in the sentence or if the tense is clear from thecontext In those cases a sentence with a tense marker may sound unnatural For

example, in order to convey the meaning of the question/answer “Why didn't youcome to class yesterday?”- “I didn't come to class because I was sick”, the learners

would say “Vì sao hôm qua anh đã không đi học?” – “Hôm qua tôi đã không đi

học vì tôi đã bị ốm” “Đã” should be omitted in both the question and the answer.

The time expression “hôm qua” makes the tense clear

In English, aspect is a grammatical category referring to the way that thetime denoted by the verb is regarded English has two aspects: the progressive (orcontinuous) aspect (He is teaching French.) and the perfect aspect (He has taughtFrench for ten years.) The meaning of each aspect in Vietnamese is expressed by agroup of words Learners should be drilled on the use of a number of wordsindicating aspects like “vừa, mới, đang, liền, thì, rồi etc” For example, they should

recognize the difference between the two sentences “Tôi học tiếng Việt ba năm.” (I learned Vietnamese for three years.) and “Tôi học tiếng Việt ba năm rồi.” (I have

learned Vietnamese for three years.) The position of the adverbial of time is critical

for the use of the word “mới” in the sense of "just" /Anh ấy mới về tối qua (He just came back last night.) and in the sense of "not … until…" Tối qua anh ấy mới về.

(He did not come back until last night.)

Regarding to syntax, Vietnamese and English have the same basic SVOword order Vietnamese is an isolating language in which the relationship betweenparts of a sentence is indicated by the word order and auxiliaries As a result, wordorder is critical to convey the meaning of a sentence Learners should focus their

attention on the following points: A word follows the noun it modifies (sách mới,

anh tôi, vấn đề đầu tiên, văn học Việt Nam hiện đại), unlike English which has the

reverse word order (new book, my brother, first issue, modern Vietnameseliterature) The basic word order of noun phrases should be stressed