Linguistics Activity

What is Linguistics?

Linguistics is the study of the structure and function of language. It's an excellent class for encouraging problem solving as well as social awareness. The Linguistics Society of America is currently working on creating a new AP Linguistics class, and I'm helping making it a reality.

Lesson: Japanese Demonstratives

This lesson is from the morphosyntax section of the course. I designed this lesson to be an eye opener for students. Where English has, functionally, two demonstratives that are speaker-focused, Japanese has three that take into account the proximity to the listener.

(Note to Japanese speakers: I am aware that the initial teacher response isn't grammatically complete--but to do so would ruin the discovery).

You can view the activity below, or you can contact me for a digital copy.

Japanese Demonstrative pronouns.pdf