Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

Box 5.8 Sample punctuation sentence
Add the appropriate punctuation marks and capital letters to this sentence.
(Answer at the end of the chapter on page 103.)
now of old the name of that forest was greenwood the great and its wide halls
and aisles were the haunt of many beasts and of birds of bright song and there
was the realm of king thranduil under the oak and the beech but after many years
when well nigh a third of that age of the world had passed a darkness crept
slowly through the wood from the southward and fear walked there in shadowy
glades fell beasts came hunting and cruel and evil creatures laid there their snares
J.R.R. Tolkien (1977) The Silmarillion
Grammatical unit
Punctuation mark
sentence
clause
phrase
morpheme
Though Peter’s sight improved, the eye-doctor operated.
word
. ! ?
, –
, –
,
_ (space)
Figure 5.2 Punctuation and phrase structure in English
Box 5.9 Punctuation
●
Punctuation is used both as a guide for reading the sentence aloud and as a
way of showing sentence structure.
●
Punctuation includes punctuation marks, use of capitals, word spaces and
other features, all of which can vary between writing systems.
What do students need to learn about second writing
systems?
We can summarize what L2 students need to learn, assuming that they are already
literate in one writing system, that is, that it is not the L2 teacher’s job to cope
with basic literacy problems, which would be a different issue.

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The appropriate direction of reading and writing
Arabic students learning English need to acquire the left-to-right direction;
English students learning Arabic that it goes from right to left. If the second lan-
guage uses a different direction, this may be quite a burden on the student.