Knowing English as Knowing the Computer : Knowledges and Language Skills
By Obododimma Oha **'* It is interesting to have language and the computer interact. For one thing, both involve knowledge and skills. How do these knowledges and skills relate? Or don't they relate? To be able to use language, we have to have a capacity for it. There is a language center on the brain. Our speech and writing can be impaired in certain conditions of aphasia. Once the circuit is affected, language runs into trouble. Chomsky calls the language ability in us Language Acquisition Device (LAD). We are language-using agents or homo loquens, as Fries argues. And we demonstrate our language skills in interactions. With the invention and involvement of theh computers in human interactions, there is a greater enhancement. We also need to possess computer skills to boost our language skills. What computere skills are relevant? A Little Historical Excursion: Inquiring how the Computer might be useful in language scholarship is interesting. Some of us while some elders used