Knowing English as Knowing the Computer : Knowledges and Language Skills

By

Obododimma Oha

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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 broomstick and droppings to compute and support their discourses. We also saw computing on walls and slates. Now we have portable devices for computation. 

The elders were computing in their verbal discourses were indicating that

(1) Computing supports verbal discourse and in some cases could even be seen as indispensable 

Think of the use of broomstick in settling bride price among the Igbo. 

(2) The computation is sometimes a summary of decisions in the verbal interaction. 

(3) They have to use it as a complementary skill in the interaction. We are all supposed to have that skill. 

(4) They could also use it to simplify things. 

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Computer Skills Relevant to Language Scholarship :

(1) Typing and word-processing of documents

(2) Checking of errors with relevant applications

(3) Searching for documents or locating documents

(4) Using templates to design presentations

(5) Using the Internet as a language library or getting some language works online or getting e-copies of relevant works.

(6) The computer teaching some  language skills and showing available opportunities. 

English studies and computer skills: areas of computer  skills that can help English:

(1) Blogging can help students in writing.

(2) Internet editing can be facilitated in blogging.

(3) Speaking skills, especially in phonetics and phonology can be facilitated. The symbols and patterns can be found online. 

(4) It should be possible for lecturers of English to create apps for courses they teach so as to meet international standards. 

(5) Statistical calculations for empirical claims. 

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Essentially, how can the computer help English? In what ways? It is for lecturers and students in English to identify and explain these ways, unless they think that the computer is not useful to them. 

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