"What is Language?" reflection writting

I have been hearing incessantly that amongst all of the subjects lectured at IFL for the teacher trainees in year 4, Applied Linguistic is the most difficult one. Some students, who studied this subject in the previous years, said that they could not top up their score and some of them even said that they failed the exam on this subject and needed to take the supplementary test because it was very difficult for them to catch the meaning of the subject. However, after having attended the Introduction to Applied Linguistics session during my first class with my lecturer Sim Siden, a Fullbright winner and a highly knowledgeable professor at IFL, and read the first chapter titled “What is language?”, I have come to believe that what I have heard is true. It is complicated but not impossible to understand. I think that it takes time and needs commitment if we are to fully understand about the content of this subject. After having been reading through a few pages of this subject, I would like to say that Applied Linguistics is one of the most interesting subjects ever.

In chapter 1 titled “What is language?”, the definition illustrated in this chapter is quite abstract and also hard for me to understand. I have read three times, but I could only understand a small segment of what is stated in this chapter. It is not a great surprise for me because I think that it is because I am a new comer to come into this philosophical discipline—I call it so because it is a content based subject. However, I believe that I will be able to understand its concept clearly after reading several times and attending the lectures given by my lecturer.

One of the most interesting things in chapter 1 is the question “What is language?” I always thought that language is merely something we use to communicate. I thought it was just so simple that I had never taken it for serious. But everything is different. I’ve just learnt, after reading this chapter, that language is defined differently from individual to individual. Some people define it as a social fact while others view it as a mental reality. And some people even give more complicated definition to language. Therefore, we can say that there is no fixed answer to what language is, but there are some common characteristics of the aspect of language. It can not be far beyond the ability of people to understand. That common characteristic is its structure. To illustrate this, let take a glance at the example taken from the book on page 11. It writes “We can say Kim kissed the crocodile or The crocodile kissed Kim, be we cannot choose to say, as a meaningful English, Kissed crocodile Kim the.”

To sum up, my comment on this subject is that it is a difficult subject but interesting and beneficial for us as teacher trainees. And the above illustration is my first comment on chapter one or the subject as a whole. I hope that I will be able to fully understand the concept of this subject clearly by attending this course.