CTEL Prep Workshop
©2010
Todd A. Morano, Ed.D.
Use only with permission
The CTEL Exam
• 3 separate subtests & 3 hours:
1. Language & Language Development
2. Assessment & Instruction
3. Culture & Inclusion
• Criterion-referenced
• Multiple choice & constructed response
1: 50 MC + 1CR
2: 60 MC + 2 CR
3: 40 MC + 1 CR
CTEL 1: Language & Language
Development
2 Domains:
• Language Structure & Use
Linguistic structure of language
• L1 & L2 Development & Their Relationship to
Academic Achievement
Theories & stages of language acquisition
Factors that influence language development
CTEL 1-Domain 1: Language Structure & Use
First off…All Languages have 5 things in common
Any Guesses??
Hint #1: Without this we couldn’t hear or speak a
language…
Good! The #1 common thing is PHONOLOGY
(phonemes are the sounds)
Phonology
1. Individual & necessary sounds:
How many phonemes in English? What is an
“unnecessary” sound for English, but still
used?
Can you think of 1 Spanish sound not found in
English?
What are the conditions (rules) for English
sounds? Do you know what a “plosive”
is…how about a “fricative”?
Phonemes
The individual/meaningful sounds
English has 43-45 (depending on where you’re from) – 24
consonant sounds & 21 vowel sounds
What’s the difference between a pronunciation error and an
accent?
How many phonemes in:
Cat
School
Telephone
Phoneme
When a student can’t distinguish a
sound, what works?
Minimal pair activities (pat/pot)
Rhyming activities (pin/bin)
Rhymes in context (songs, poems, etc.)
More on Phonology…
2. Other phonological factors:
Pitch: Intonation & Stress
How can we tell a question?, an exclamation?, sadness
or excitement?
Stress: at the syllable or word level
So, an EL must be able to articulate phonemes AND
properly control pitch (intonation & stress)
Moving on…what’s next on the list of 5?
Hint #2: When you hook a bunch of sounds together
you get ____.
Right! Words.
We call those Morphemes, so MORPHOLOGY is
common thing #2
Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a
language...ask me about “free” & “bound”
morphemes
I’m glad you asked…
Free Morphemes:
Stand alone & carry meaning
We call them words…cat, chair, over, the…and so
on
Content words have a “solid” meaning
Grammatical words are necessary, but no
independent meaning (the word what takes
15,000 words & 5 pages to define in the
Oxford Dictionary)
Bound morphemes…
Change or adapt the meaning of a free morpheme
Cannot stand alone
Cats
Unclear
Unnecessarily
Brighter
Jumped
How many morphemes in: thoughtfully, helplessly,
geese, undeservedly
Ok, what’s the next thing all languages
have in common?
Hint #3: Clumping a bunch of words together gives
you a _____.
Cool! Common thing #3 is sentences and the rules that
govern them…called SYNTAX
Syntax is more than just the sum total of words in a
sentence, though.
What does this mean?
Head principal teacher class the of to the his the
brought.
How about now?
The teacher brought his principal to the head of the
class.
What happens here?
The class brought to the teacher the head of his
principal.
From Alice in Wonderland…
“Say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.
“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least I mean what I
say – that’s the same thing, you know.”
“Not the same thing a bit,” said the Hatter, “Why,
you might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is
the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’”
…“Or that,” added the Dormouse, “‘I breathe when
I sleep’ means the same as ‘I sleep when I
breathe’!”
Now try this…
Draw the following sentence:
The boy saw the man with a telescope.
Which did you draw?
WHY?
It’s all about…
SEMANTICS (the #4 common thing).
Semantics gives meaning to our
sentences.
It is also what adds to the confusion in
English…what if the boy saw a whale?
Semantics & Syntax also give us
wordplay in English – double meanings,
etc.
Why is it so hard to make a clear
sentence?
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the 500
words used most in the English language each
have an average of 23 different meanings.
The word "round," for instance, has 70 distinctly
different meanings.
What does this sentence mean?
Put the box on the table by the window in the
kitchen
All of the possibilities:
• Put the box onto the table that is by the
window in the kitchen.
• Take the box that is on the table and put it by
the window in the kitchen.
• Take the box off the table that is by the
window and put it in the kitchen.
• To understand the first and third meanings, it
may be helpful to imagine that in the kitchen
there are two tables: one by the window and
one not.
Just for fun…Headlines
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
KIDS MAKE NUTRITIOUS SNACKS
GRANDMOTHER OF EIGHT MAKES HOLE IN ONE
MILK DRINKERS ARE TURNING TO POWDER
STOLEN PAINTING FOUND BY TREE
LUNG CANCER IN WOMEN MUSHROOMS
QUEEN MARY HAVING BOTTOM SCRAPED
MINERS REFUSE TO WORK AFTER DEATH
JUVENILE COURT TO TRY SHOOTING DEFENDANT
COMPLAINTS ABOUT NBA REFEREES GROWING UGLY
PANDA MATING FAILS; VETERINARIAN TAKES OVER
POLICE BEGIN CAMPAIGN TO RUN DOWN JAYWALKERS
So, how can we make English work?
First, there are different types of meaning:
Linguistic – encompasses both sense and
reference (word position & rules)
Social – relies on social characteristics and
situations (“I pronounce you man & wife”)
Affective – emotional connotations associated
with words (“Cockroaches taste good!”)
These types of meanings are associated with
words, sentences, and utterances
Next, we look in the garage.
Words that go together are organized into Semantic Fields: dog,
cat, turtle, bird, fish…
These words also belong to the same semantic field: aardvark,
newt, gnu, urchin
Because they are less common members of the semantic field of
“animals”, they are said to be more marked than the first set
of animal words
More marked = more specific and less commonly used than the
“less marked” words in the same semantic field.
It is by creating this hierarchy of meanings that we each
build word/concept relationships.
Another example…
Our brains would organize these words in the
following way:
Color (Superordinate – the semantic field)
green white
red orange
blue brown (hyponyms)
teal aquamarine royal blue
(more marked hyponyms)
Another way our brains organize words:
In addition to organizing by semantic fields, our brains also organize word by
their Part/Whole relationships.
Example: House and bedroom would be organized together, but since room is
not a “kind of house”, it is not a hyponym.
Part/Whole Relationship
House
kitchen garage bedroom
Hyponymic Relationship
Room
bedroom living room family room
Can you think of other part/whole or hyponymic relationships for the above
words?
Additionally…
Our brains store the following word relationships:
Synonomy: words with similar meanings
Antonymy: words with opposite meanings
Polysemy: words with multiple meanings
Homonymy: words with the same written or spoken forms but
different meanings (dove/dove, steak/stake)
Converseness: words that share a relationship regardless of their
order in a sentence (grandparent/grandchild, brother/sister)
As if it weren’t difficult enough…
We do the following with words:
Use them as metaphors – “She’s a sharp kid”
We create new meanings for old words – “That car is
bad” (meaning GREAT!)
We use idioms – “Raining cats and dogs” (we do this
more than any other language)
How much more?
** The average American encounters 7,000 – 10,000
idioms in a week!!
Putting it all together…
When we hear a sentence/utterance, we begin deciphering the meaning
by first accessing each word in the lexical storage in our brains.
We check each word for its semantic field and look for relationships:
hyponymy, part/whole, synonymy, homonymy, converse-ness – looking
for double meanings/spellings, etc.
Next, we consider the social context of the utterance and the emotional
context (if any) of the words.
Then, we decide whether there is a metaphor, idiom, or “new” word being
used.
Once we have made our decisions regarding all of the above, we choose
the meaning of the utterance…unfortunately, after all of that, we
can still choose the wrong meaning!!
And finally…#5
Hint #5: How can you say something in a way to make it
mean the opposite of what the words mean? And how
do we know you mean the opposite??
We call that coming thing #5 PRAGMATICS.
Pragmatics refers to the social (or cultural) context
surrounding a language…the facial expressions, tone,
stresses, gestures, etc.
Example: a “thumbs up” is a good thing in America…but
not in Asia (most Asians will also point with their middle
finger – we giggle when someone in America does that!)
Now, some questions:
1. A group of elementary beginning- level English Learners has
difficulty pronouncing a particular English phoneme. Which of
the following strategies is likely to be the most effective first step
in addressing the students' difficulty?
A. using meaningful minimal pair activities, such as rhyming words
in poems and songs, to develop the students' ability to identify
and produce the phoneme in the context of whole words
B. using an illustration or model of a human mouth to point out to
the students the specific parts of the mouth and point of
articulation involved in producing the phoneme
C. reading aloud meaningful connected discourse, such as dialogues
and stories that contain instances of the phoneme, to expose the
students implicitly to the phoneme in the context of whole
paragraphs
D. repeating the phoneme several times while pointing to its
corresponding letter(s) on an alphabet chart to prompt the
students to associate the phoneme with its most common graphic
representation(s)
Read the sentences below and answer the question that
follows.
We worked hard on the bake sale. To raise money for the
class trip.
Students in an early-advanced ELD class frequently make mistakes in
their writing similar to the one underlined above. The first step the
teacher should take in addressing this problem is to help the students
learn how to do which of the following?
A. distinguish between phrase fragments and complete sentences
B. distinguish between coordinating conjunctions and correlative
conjunctions
C. distinguish between prepositional phrases and infinitive phrases
D. distinguish between gerund phrases acting as subjects and those
acting as direct objects
Which of the following activities is likely to be most effective
in helping high school English Learners develop familiarity
with standard discourse structures and conventions used in
academic essays?
A. helping students analyze sample essays and construct
graphic organizers illustrating the structure of different
types of essays, which they can refer to when drafting
their own essays
B. asking students to review samples of different types of
essays and to identify the vocabulary and grammatical
structures the samples have in common
C. providing students with copies of essays that have key
content-related vocabulary words omitted and asking the
students to try to fill in the missing words
D. having a small group of students brainstorm a topic for an
essay, after which each student writes a short draft of an
essay that is analyzed by the rest of the group