Chapter 2   The Development of the English Vocabulary 

李洪老师录制的视频

第二章 英语词汇的发展

学时（课堂讲授学时+慕课学时）：3

主要内容：1.印欧语系介绍

                  2.英语发展的三大阶段及其特点

                  3.英式英语和美式英语异同

  教学要求：学生掌握英语词汇的变化和发展

重点、难点：词汇三大发展阶段，英语词汇的国别特征

第一课时：印欧语系介绍及英语发展三大阶段

Contents: the Indo-European language family; three phases of the historical development; general characteristics of English language; foreign elements in the English vocabulary; modes of vocabulary development

Objectives: 

1.Help students to know the Indo-European language family; 

2.Students should remember the three phases of the historical development; 

3.Introduce the three most important foreign elements, Latin, Greek and French and their characteristics 

Difficult points: the Eastern set and the Western set in Indo-European language family; the characteristics of Old English, Middle English and Modern English; three most important foreign elements, Latin, Greek and French and their characteristics

Procedures: 

Step I  Brief review of the last lecture 

Step II  Presentation 

1.Explain the relationship between English vocabulary and other languages of the Indo-European Language Family, the origin and growth of the English vocabulary.

2.Give a general survey of the three phases of the English vocabulary: Old English, Middle English and Modern English.

3.Focus the discussion on the general characteristics of modern English vocabulary, its main reasons and modes of growth.

4.Talk about the three most important foreign elements, Latin, Greek and French and their characteristics. Ask students who are learning French as the second foreign language why in French there are lots of words same or similar in written form with English ones and whether it is good or bad for them to learn it and why.

5.Ask students to guess the meanings of English words of Chinese element and then tell them the Chinese meaning which they cannot find in dictionary. 

TheIndo-European language family

Which canbe grouped into roughly 300 language families on the basis of similarities intheir basic word stock and grammar ,the Indo-Europe is one of them .it isthought to be a highly inflected language

Theyaccordingly fall into eight principle groups,which can be grouped into an Eastern set :Balto-slavic, Indo-Iranian, American and Albanian; a Westernset; Celtic , Italic, Hellenic,Germanic

 A  historical overview of theenglish vocabulary

The firstpeople known to inhabit the land were Celts

The secondmajor language known in England was the Latin of theRoman Legions

450- < old > -1150-（ Middle）-1500- <modern>-NOW