1. The following two sentences are said to be ambiguous in meaning. How many interpretations would you give to either of them? What can you do to solve such ambiguity?　
　　 a. He turned in his grave.
　　 b. They gave preference to young men and women.
　　 2. Identify the units that have reference and the units that indicate structure: 　
　　 I saw Mary when I went to the library.
　　 3. How would you judge the following four sentences? Are they good or bad sentences?　
　　 a. The moon is made of brown eggs.
　　 b. Moon brown the is of made eggs.
　　 c. 慢走，您。
　　 d. 为了安全，给您。
　　 4. Some people say that humans and dogs can communicate with each other. Do you agree?　
　　 5. In what way do you think is a parrot talking?　
　　 6. You can tell your cat to lie down. What do you think has happened?　
　　 7. Please explain the primacy of human language over animal communication.
　　 8. Identify the functions of the following sentences.　
　　　 a. I like your house very much.
　　　 b. I now declare the meeting closed.
　　　 c. Nice to meet you.
　　　 d. I met Mary in the library this morning.
　　 9. Please explain why some people like poetry. 
　　 10. When you get hit by a desk in the classroom, what would you do?
　　 11. What is difference between the following two sentences? What factors should we take into account when we are decoding them?　
　　 (a) Open the window.
　　 (b) Would you open the window, please?2. How can we conduct a study of language scientifically?
　　 12. How can we conduct a study of language scientifically?　
　　 13. What is the real object of linguistics?
　　 14. What's your opinion of correctness in language use?　
　　 15. Is a standard language possible? Why?
　　 16. Please express the distinction between acoustic phonetics and articulatory phonetics.　
　　 17. How many stages does the speech chain consist of? What activities are involved in the speech chain?　
　　 18. Do you think spelling is the same as pronunciation in English? If not, give three examples and then make a comment.
　　 19. Write the symbols for the vowel in the following words:　
　　 a) cough 　b) rough 　c) friend 　d) bread 　e) eat 　f) call
　　 20. Transcribe the following words phonemically:　
　　 a) symbol 　b) nineteen 　c) square 　d) board 　e) sofa 　f) bought
　　 21. What are the major differences between vowels and consonants?
　　 22.What is the structure of a syllables?　
　　 23. How many syllables are there in the following words? Please break them into spoken syllables.　
　　 a) yesterday 　b) extra 　c) secretarial 　d) camera 　e) appreciation
　　 24. What are the onset restrictions in English syllables?
　　 25. Describe the intonation patterns of the following English questions:　
　　 a) Do you want coffee or tea?
　　 b) How much does it cost?
　　 c) Do you have any money?
　　 d) They came rather late, didn't they?
　　 26. What is the difference between pitch and intonation?　
　　 27. What is the role of intonation in daily conversations?
　　 28. Identify the word class of each word in the following paragraph.　
　　 In practice, writers on style have differed a great deal in their understanding of the subject, and one source of disagreement has been the question 'To what or whom do we attribute style?' In the broadest sense, STYLE can be applied to both spoken and written, both literary and non-literary varieties of language; but by tradition, it is particularly associated with written literary texts, and this is the sense of the term which will concern us.
　　 29. Do you the think the distribution of lexical words is the same as that of grammatical words in speech and writing? 　
　　 30. What is the difference between open-class words and closed-class words?
　　 31. Divide the following words into morphemes by placing a "+" between each morpheme and the next.　
　　　 1) unbearable 　2) watchful 　3) personification 　4) unexceptionally
　　　 5) uneducated 　6) inspiring 　7) soft-hearted 　8) horsemanship
　　 32. How many morphemes are there in each of the following words?　
　　　 1) geography 　2) internationally 　3) forgotten 　4) Washington
　　　 5) information 　6) industrialization 　7) predominant　 8) preconscious
　　 33. How many allomorphs does the plural form s have?
　　 1. What does the prefix in- mean in the following words?　
　　　 1) inspire 　2) intransigent 　3) insufficient 　4) insert 　5) insoluble
　　　 6) intact 　7) impenetrable 　8) immutable　9) illicit 　10) irretrievable2.
　　 34. Write the feminine form of each of the following words:　
　　　 1) prince 　2) emperor 　3) waiter 　4) Paul 　5) fiancé
　　　 6) hero 　7) king 　8) ox　9) wolf 　10) doctor
　　 35. Add an inflectional suffix to each of the following words, which end in derivational suffixes:　
　　　 1) operation 　2) responsibility　 3) proposal　 4) modernize
　　　 5) beautify　6) activate 　7) funny 　8) friendly
　　 36. What are the major features of word?　
　　 37. What is the relation between word and meaning?　
　　 38. How can you identify the meaning of a word?
　　 39. What role can English inflection play in the expression of meaning?　
　　 40. Do you think inflection is universal? Why?　
　　 41. Compare the differences of inflection between the English language and your second foreign language?
　　 42. What role can English inflection play in the expression of meaning?　
　　 43. Do you think inflection is universal? Why?　
　　 44. Compare the differences of inflection between the English language and your second foreign language?
　　 45. Draw the tree diagrams for the following sentences:　
　　 (1) She found a book on Madison Street.
　　 (2) Jack advised Henry to see the dentist.
　　 (3) Jack promised Henry to see the doctor.
　　 46. In each pair of the following sentences, indicate with N those that need not follow a particular order when they are joined by "and". Indicate with O those that need to be reordered. 　
　　 --- (1) Sam went to bed.
　　　　 He had a dream.
　　 --- (2) John came in.
　　　　 He closed the door.
　　 --- (3) The sea is blue.
　　　　 The grass is green.
　　 --- (4) She walked away.
　　　　 She got up from the bed.
　　 47. The formation of many sentences involves the operation of syntactic movement. Show the deep structures for each of following sentences.　
　　 (a) The boss of the bus company was severely criticized by the public.
　　 (b) The woman threw the rake away in the yard.
　　 (c) Will the new school master hire her?
　　 48. Please display the transformational rules involved in the following sentences.　
　　 (a) What can the computer program do for us?
　　 (b) The window was broken by Jack.
　　 (c) They gave the door a gentle push.
　　 49. Paraphrase each of the following sentences in two different ways to show how syntactic rules account for the ambiguity of sentences:　
　　 (a) Smoking cigars can be nauseating.
　　 (b) The woman is too heavy to move.
　　 (c) After a three-day debate, they finally decided on the plane.
　　 (d) The little boy saw the old man with the telescope.
　　 50. Please try to identify the meanings of the following words and sentence? Do you meet any difficulty in giving the meanings these words and sentences?　
　　 1) table 2) beautiful 3) man 4) I'm hungry. 5) There's a horse in the field.
　　 51. What are the associative meanings of the following words?　
　　 1) red 2) dragon 3) dog 4) cage
　　 52. How many factors do you think contribute to the formation of meaning?
　　 53. Please identify the types of predicate in each of the verbs in the following sentences.　
　　 a) He gave me the book.
　　 b) It was snowing hard.
　　 c) The computer is working properly.
　　 d) Someone invented the story.
　　 54. Try to correct the errors, if any, in the following sentences.
　　 a) We wish you to come back soon.
　　 b) He rose the heavy box easily.
　　 c) Mary laughed me before the students.
　　 55. Point out the substitutions in each of the following and try to explain how they are used to connect the sentences into a cohesive text.　
　　 1) The child doesn't like this book. Show him a more interesting one.
　　 2) A: He never really succeeded in his ambitions.
　　　 B: No. He might have done, if it had not been for the restlessness of his nature.
　　 3) A: The Chicago Bulls will win the game.
　　　 B: All my friends say so, but I don't think they will.
　　 4) A: Will you join in our excursion this weekend?
　　　 B: Possibly not.
　　 56. Identify the ellipses in each of the following and try to explain how they contribute to the cohesion of the texts:　
　　 1) A: How long will you be in here?
　　　 B: I don't know. You could ask matron.
　　 2) A: Did the children take the course?
　　　 B: George did, but Bob didn't care.
　　 57. Identify the thematic structure the following sentences.
　　 1) You can't go away with it.　
　　 2) There's no help for it.　
　　 3) Trees, forced by the damp heat, found too little soil for full growth.
　　 4) Whether they come or not doesn't matter very much.　
　　 5) Getting the car on the boat was rather complicated.
　　 6) It was rather difficult getting the car on the boat.　
　　 7) Is your country rich in materials?　
　　 8) Only once did his father discuss his future with him.
　　 58. What are the differences between dialect and register?　
　　 59. Do you think there are any differences between the vocabulary scientists use when talking about Information Technology among themselves and the vocabulary they use when talking to little children about the same topic?
　　 60. Think of three words that have entered the language in the last ten years and then describe briefly their sources.　
　　 i.
　　 ii.
　　 iii.
　　 61. Think of three words that are getting out of fashioned. (Hint: Words marked with "archaic" in dictionaries might be a help.)　
　　 i.
　　 ii.
　　 iii.
　　 62. The vocabulary of English consists of "native" words as well as thousands of loan words. Look up the following words in a dictionary that provides the etymologies (histories) of words. Speculate how each word came to be borrowed from the particular language.　
　　 a) size　　　　　　b) royal
　　 c) aquatic　　　　d) ranch
　　 e) blouse 　　　　 f) banana
　　 g) hoodlum 　　　　h) astronaut
　　 i) pagoda 　　　　 j) bulldoze
　　 63. What are the major differences between acquisition and language learning?　
　　 64. Can you find evidence for the claim that mother tongue acquisition does not require a child to memorize words and sentences?　
　　 65. What are the major difficulties most English learners in China face?　
　　 66. What do you think are the effects of formal instruction on second language acquisition?
　　 67. The following utterances are given by some Chinese students. Decide (a) what type of error each of them belongs to and (b) what might be the causes of the error(s).　
　　 (1) She didn't went back.
　　 (2) Do she works in factory?
　　 (3) Works she in the factory?
　　 (4) These flower need badly watering now.
　　 (5) He is one of the greatest alive novelists.
　　 (6) I spotted the two aircrafts from a distance.
　　 68. When a Chinese student met his American teacher before the class, he greeted the teacher by saying "Have you eaten, Teacher?". Do you think the student's utterance is an error? Why?