Introduction to linguistics course is an essential and useful course for college students in the second or third semester. The status of this course is compulsory. It means that all college students have to learn the course. If the students do not take the course, they cannot continue to take several courses in which the basis is studied. Furthermore, the course has to be taken and passed by all students in English Department. As stated on the handbook “The Study Of Language written by George Yule, Louisiana State University”, there are many subjects have to be known and understood in the course by the students in order to continue studying the following courses after getting the course, such as: Morphology, Phonology, Syntax, etc. Those are the examples of the courses in the following semester. In addition, the course can affect the students’ following study because it contains the basic acquisitions of English language. Therefore, the purpose of this essay is to analyze the effects of studying Introduction to linguistics for college students which are in the form of speaking improvement, mastery of English structure, and logical thinking enhancement.
The first effect of studying Introduction to Linguistics that you can get is good speaking skills. In terms of speaking improvement, we can analyze the effects of studying Introduction to Linguistics is to be able to produce and pronounce sound of letters. Furthermore, the students are expected to be able to speak English using the correct pronunciation because the purpose of this course is to give the basic knowledge for the following courses in the next semester which is related to this material. Since many students still encounter some difficulties in pronouncing English words, Linguistics course will be able to help them minimize the mispronounced. The reason of this problem is that they do not know how to produce sound. Mr. Harsono, an Introduction to linguistics lecture, teaches all students in the class. He explains what the sounds, where the sounds come, how to produce sound, and how to pronounce a letter, word, and sentence. Not only that, there are a lot of practices in class, for instance, pronouncing voiced “z, d, g, etc” and voiceless “s, t, k, etc”. As the result of that material, many students can improve speaking skill in saying English correctly─ in terms of speaking improvement.
The second and an essential effect of studying Introduction to Linguistics is mastering of English structure. The first subject which is learnt by people is the structure in English. For the evidence, we can have a look the students at elementary, junior and senior high school. They learn more about structure, particularly grammar. When we learn Introduction to Linguistic Course, the students get some knowledge which is related to structure, such as: grammar and syntax. This course is a good thing to make students know about structure even though it is just the basic knowledge of structure in English. In addition, the course can make the students ready to learn the advance structure. Mr. Harsono, in chapter 8-10, teaches and explains to the students about structure in English. Not only that, he sometimes relates English structure to Indonesian structure as an example and comparison. There are three main points which are how to make phrases and sentences in the correct structure (syntax), how to analyze the part of speech in English grammar, how to identify the correct English grammar. For the example, let us deal with this sentence, “George helped Myrna yesterday”. The analysis is the sentence uses the simple past tense. Furthermore, we can analyze, George→ noun phrase (proper noun), helped Myrna yesterday→ verb phrase. The verb phrase can be explained again: helped as verb, Myrna as proper noun, and yesterday as adverb.
The third and great effect of studying Introduction to Linguistics is logical thinking enhancement. In chapter XI, there are two main points which are affected the students’ logical thinking. The points are semantics which deals with the description of word and sentence meaning, and pragmatics which deals with the characterization of speaker meaning. It can be simplified by analyzing three main points: what the concept the good and ideal sentence is, whether it is logically accepted in a common sense, and how to identify sentences because the content of the whole chapter XI is explaining logical meaning of sentences. Let me give you an example to enhance logical thinking. “The hamburger ate the man”, according the structure, it uses a good structure, but the meaning is not accepted by common sense. From the explanation, it can be stated as the example of semantics. In addition, the word man in English involves the components (human, male, and adult). This word man can be explained the symbol or characterization of something, as the example of pragmatics.
In conclusion, Introduction to linguistics course is needed to be taken and passed by college students in the second or third semester. There are many materials which have to be known and understood in the course by the students in order to continue studying the following courses in the next semester after getting the course, such as: Morphology, Phonology, Syntax, etc. The main advantages are that the students can improve their speaking skill in term of pronouncing words, master English structure in term of grammar and syntax, and enhance logical thinking about the correct sentence in term of meaning. If you have not taken the course yet, you can take normally in the third semester or learn it by reading the handbook “The Study of Language written by George Yule, Louisiana State University”. You should learn it seriously because it relates to many courses that you will get someday.
Written by
Restu Maulidianto
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