Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia

Academic and Research Vice-Rector

Activity Guide and Evaluation Rubric
Step 4 - Speech sounds and Semantics

1. General Description of the Course

Faculty or School of Education

Academic Unit
Academic Level Professional
Academic Field Disciplinary Formation
Course Name Introduction to Linguistics
Course Code 518017
Course Type Theoretical Retake Yes ☒ No ☐
Exam
Number of Credits 2

2. Description of the Activity

Type of Number of
Individual ☒ Collaborative ☒ 4
Activity: Weeks
Evaluation Intermediate
Initial ☐ ☒ Final ☐
Moment: Unit 2. Step 4
Environment to Submit the
Total Score of the Activity:
Activity: Monitoring and Evaluation
110 points.
Environment
Starting Date of the
Deadline of the Activity:
Activity:
November 28, 2019
October 29, 2019
Competences to Develop:
Critical thinking

It’s the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully

conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating
information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience,
reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and
action.
It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought
implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue;
assumptions; concepts; empirical grounding; reasoning leading to
conclusions; implications and consequences; objections from
alternative viewpoints; and frame of reference.

Information management

It is defined as "the ability to locate information, filter it and organize

it in order to select the required information, to present it in a suitable
way for its use and to evaluate both the information itself and the
sources and methods used to obtain it.
Performance that the student must demonstrate:
• Critically analyzes and evaluates information and its sources;
• selects the required information and uses it efficiently to accomplish
a specific task;
• identifies missing information or unreliable information when
analyzing a situation or problem;
• identifies the economic, legal and social impact that implies the use
of information and manages it in an ethical and responsible manner

Topics to Develop:
Speech sounds and Semantics
Steps, Phase or Stage of the Learning Strategy to Develop
Unit 2, step 4. This stage will be developed individually and
collaboratively. Students will discuss and answer questions to identify
the sound systems in Language and the semantic level.
Activities to Develop

Task 1: individual activity

1. Read the following three documents “The phoneme: the same but
different” Chapter 2, ‘in McMahon, A. M. S. 2016. An Introduction
to English Phonology’. Also read the document: “Natural Language
Processing & Applications Phones and Phonemes and, finally read:
“Chapter 6. Semantics: The Study of Linguistic Meaning” pages
225-234, in Akmajian, A. and others. 2010. Linguistics: An
Introduction to Language and Communication, 6th edition.
Cambridge. All the material is found in UNIT 1, in the Knowledge
Environment.
2. Based on the first document “The phoneme: the same but
different” by McMahon, A, develop the three questions from pages
21, 22.
3. From the second document, “Natural Language Processing &
Applications Phones and Phonemes” please answer questions 1 and
2 from page 10.
4. From the reading “Semantics. The Study of Linguistic Meaning
Chapter” by Akmajian answer the two following questions:
4.1 What is exactly the concept ‘speaker meaning’? Explain and give
an example (in Spanish or English).
4.2 Explain, what is an important problem of the ‘Denotational Theory
of Meaning’?

5. Here is a scenario of a pronunciation lesson gone wrong. The

teacher repeatedly demonstrates a pair of similar sounds (e.g., “rrrr”
and “llll”). However, the students still fail to perceive the difference
between the two. The thing is that students have difficulty
distinguishing between pairs of sounds when these are taught in
isolation. Pronunciation lessons are infinitely more effective when
students are taught to distinguish between words (e.g., light/right),
instead of just individual sounds. Design a mini lesson that presents
the [l] and [ɹ] sounds within the context of minimal pairs. (Option, you
can select any other minimal pairs to design the mini lesson).
(Adapted from Gordon T. 2012).

6. Check your partners’ posts and make comments about them in

order to discuss and improve their ideas.

Task 2: Collaborative activity

5. Answer the questions on a pdf document.

Develop this task in the forum Unit 2. Step 4, found in

the Collaborative Environment. Remember to
Environmen
participate on time so that your mates could check
ts for the
your work to give feedback and improve.
Developme
Check your mates’ individual works and give relevant
nt of the
feedback in order to improve. You can provide some
Activity
recommendations in terms of contents, presentation,
organization, language, etc. Take in mind that your
 comments have to be really important. Comments like
“excellent work”, “congratulations”… are not considered
as relevant feedback, just the comments that allow
your partners improve. It is asked to check at least
once each one of your mates’ works. At the end, if you
didn’t give relevant feedback to any of your mates,
your score will be affected.
Individual:
The deliveries role is the only student to upload
the final work in the Evaluation Environment. The
compiler gathers all the individual contributions and the
deliveries hands it in.

Collaborative:

Products to Choose one of the roles to be performed by the student

be in the collaborative group and one the roles and duties
Submitted for the submission of products by students. Look at the
by Students description of the roles below.

When you finally have corrected your questions and

analysis according to the feedback given in the forum,
the student with the deliveries role uploads them
in a single document (pdf or word) the link Unit 2.
Step 4, found in the Evaluation Environment.

3. General Guidelines for the Collaborative Work

Collaborative learning is a strategy that allows

students to work together in order to achieve a
Planning of common goal. Accordingly, the collaborative
Activities for the work proposed for the course is based on a
Development of structured and planned process that includes
Collaborative individual and group activities, as well as
Work interaction and socialization in the virtual
classroom.
1. Explore the syllabus of the course.
 2. Make several readings of the activity guide
and the evaluation rubric for each of the units of
individual and collaborative work.
3. All the activities that are carried out for the
development of the activity should be reflected
within the course through the different media
and especially in the forum of each activity,
since the interaction; if they work by Skype or
other means they should evidence it in the
forum with screenshots.
4. Be in constant communication with the
colleagues and tutor during the development of
activities.
5. In case of any concern, ask the tutor or the
colleagues with time, using the various
communication channels arranged in the course.
6. Enter the contributions with time for the
Timely feedback from peers and tutor.
7. Establish a schedule of activities within each
forum and a table of roles and functions for
meet during the development of each activity.
Different roles are proposed within the
collaborative environment, which allow an
appropriate space for academic growth and
effective interaction that promotes learning and
interpersonal relationships. Every student will
take up one of these roles for the development
of the course assignments and can only be
Roles to Be changed if decided by the group members.
Performed by the
Facilitator: Makes sure that every voice is
Student in the
heard and focuses work around the learning
Collaborative
task. Provides leadership and direction for the
Group
group and suggests solutions to team problems.
Recorder: Keeps a public record of the team's
ideas and progress. Checks to be sure that ideas
are clear and accurate.
Time keeper: Encourages the group to stay on
task. Announces when time is halfway through
and when time is nearly up.
 Planner: States an action for the completion of
the task at hand according to the instructions
and course agenda.
Task monitor: Looks for supplies or requests
help from the teacher when group members
agree that they do not have the resources to
solve the problem.
Compiler: Puts together the final product and
includes the work done only by those who
participated on time. Informs the student in
charge of alerts about people who did not
participate and will not be included in the final
product.
Reviser/Editor: Makes sure the written work
follows all the criteria established in the activity
guide.
Roles and Duties
Evaluator: Evaluates the final document to
for the
ensure it follows the evaluation criteria of the
Submission of
rubric and informs the student in charge of
Products by
alerts about any changes that need to be made
Students
before delivering the product.
Deliveries: Student in charge of informing
about the dates set for presenting each task and
delivering the final product according to the
course agenda. Also informs other students that
the final product has been sent.
Alerts: Informs group participants about any
news in the work being done and reports the
delivery of the final product to the course tutor.
All references considered for this activity have to
References
be cited using APA Style
Students must be aware of the risks and
penalties in case of plagiarism.

Under the Academic Code of Conduct, the

Plagiarism Policy
actions that infringe the academic order, among
others, are the following: paragraph e)
"Plagiarism is to present as your own work all or
part of a written report, task or document of
invention carried out by another person. It also
 implies the use of citations or lack of references,
or it includes citations where there is no match
between these and the reference" and
paragraph f) " To reproduce, or copy for profit,
educational resources or results of research
products, which have rights reserved for the
University ". (Acuerdo 029 - 13 De Diciembre de
2013, Artículo 99)

The academic penalties that the student will

face are:

a) In case of academic fraud demonstrated in

the academic work or evaluation, the score
obtained will be zero (0.0) without any
disciplinary measures being derived.
b) In case of proven plagiarism in academic
work of any nature, the score obtained will be
zero (0.0), without any disciplinary measures
being derived.

To learn how to properly cite all your tasks, see

the following:
BibMe. (n.d.). APA Citation Guide. Retrieved
from http://www.bibme.org/citation-guide/apa/

4. Evaluation Rubric

Evaluation Rubric
Step 4 - Speech sounds and Semantics
Activity Collaborative
Individual Activity ☒ ☒
Type: Activity
Evaluation Intermediate
Initial ☐ ☒ Final ☐
Moment Unit 2
Evaluated Performance Levels of the Individual Activity
Score
Items High Score Average Score Low Score
Individual The student The student The student did
and timely presented at least partially not present any
25 points
participation three answers or presented at least answers or
in the forum analysis in the three answers or analysis in the
 forum, on time, analysis in the forum and, did
and gave forum, on time, not give
meaningful and partially gave meaningful
feedback about meaningful feedback about
their partners’ feedback about their partners’
work. their partners’ work.
work.
(Up to 25 (Up to 15
(Up to 0 points)
points) points)
The students The students did
worked with one The students not work with one
of the roles and partially worked of the roles and
Roles and only a student with one of the not only one
15 points
guidelines uploads the final roles. student uploads
task. the final task.
(Up to 15
(Up to 7 points) (Up to 0 points)
points)
The information The information
The information
partially shows does not show
shows that the
that the student that the student
students explored
explored and explored and
and analyzed the
analyzed the analyzed the
references for unit
reference for unit reference for unit
2, step 4. It is
2, step 4. It is 2, step 4. It is
Checking evident that the
partially evident not evident that 20 points
references student
that student student
understood the
understood the understood the
concepts and
concepts and concepts and
masters the
masters the masters the
topics.
topics. topics.
(Up to 20 (Up to 10
(Up to 0 points)
points) points)
Evaluated Performance Levels of the Collaborative Activity
Score
Items High Score Average Score Low Score
The group created The group created The group did not
a well-organized a partially well- create a well-
Writing writing organized writing organized writing
50 points
Assignment assignment that assignment that assignment that
includes the includes partially includes correct
correct answers correct answers answers and
and analysis to and analysis to analysis to the
the eight the eight eight questions.
questions. questions.
(up to 50 (up to 25
(up to x points)
points) points)
Final Score 110