GST 111 - COMMUNICATION IN ENGLISH & USE OF LIBRARY

 CHAPTER 1 – COMMUNICATION IN ENGLISH

COMMUNICATION simply put is ‘sharing’ and what we share is dependent on a lot of factors e.g. the context or situation in view, and as such we can share a variety of items both concrete and abstract.

What you Must Know About Communication?

·         The whole essence or aim of communication is to achieve ‘oneness’ or ‘unity’ and for communication to occur there must be ‘mutual understanding’ between or among parties (i.e. persons involved in the communication) as the case may be.

·         Communication must be carried out by means of ‘language’. We call this, the driving medium of any communication and in this study, the language in view is The English Language.

·         During communication, series of speech sounds or languages are produced (made) and we call them Sentences.

·         The Sentences employed during communication may be defined in two ways. When these sentences are perceived as speech sounds, we say a sentence is a combination of phonemesbut if we consider them to be written, we say a sentence is a combination of graphemes.

·         The kind of sentence we use during communication is predicated on the following factors:

-          The Audience

-          The Context or Situation in view

-          Our Personal Disposition (i.e. your mood)

-          The kind of response we envisage (want) etc.

·         All sentences must possess something called ‘elements’ and these elements are simply words. But you must know that every good sentence must have 3 parts viz The Subject, The Predicate and The Complement. 

·         The position occupied by a given element (word) in a sentence is known as ‘the function slot’. While the network of interaction or relationship existing between or among elements in a sentence is termed ‘the constituent structure’.

·         Sentences are of three types: The Simple, The Complex and The Compound Sentencerespectively. 

 

SENTENCE PATTERNS

The sentences made during communication can possess various patterns (structures) and these patterns range from 4 – 13, however, only 7 of them are considered stable. We will briefly discuss them below but firstly you must apprehend the following information:

§  The complement is simply a ‘remark’ (whether good or bad) that is made either of the subject or the object. And the complement position can be occupied, usually, by a noun or adjective.

§  The subject is regarded as the ‘topic of the sentence’ or ‘the performer of the action’ while the object is considered to be the ‘receiver of the action’.

§  The predicate of a sentence can exist in the following forms:

-          As a copular verb (copular verbs are used to join or link a subject to its complement, little wonder they are also called ‘linking verbs’) e.g. is, seems, looks etc.

-          As a transitive verb [transitive verbs show a transfer of action hence they usually possess a direct object [i.e. a direct receiver]) e.g. hit, bite, give etc.

-          As an intransitive verb [intransitive verbs denote action but they lack a direct object]. NOTE:Perhaps you encounter the questions ‘which of the following verbs is a SELF-SUFFICIENT VERB’, the answer is INTRANSITIVE VERBS. This is true because only intransitive verbs can stand alone with their subject.

§  The subject of a sentence can exist in the following forms:

-          As a noun e.g. Peter, The School, Nigeria etc.

-          As a pronoun e.g. He, It, She etc.

-          As a long construct e.g. The Central Bank of Nigeria etc.

§  NOTE: Perhaps you encounter the question ‘which of the following pairs is regarded as the CONSTANTS of any good sentence?’, the answer is ‘subject & predicate’ or ‘subject & verb’. Verb is simply another word for Predicate.