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Accent
This can mean word stress - control has the accent on the second
syllable but we use it to mean the pronunciation used by some speakers – a
regional or class accent.
Acquisition
A term used to describe language being absorbed without
conscious effort; i.e. the way children pick up their mother tongue.
Language acquisition is often contrasted with language learning.
Active Vocabulary
The words and phrases which a learner is able to use in
speech and writing. Contrasted with
Passive Vocabulary.
Advanced
A level of attainment where the learner has mastered most
of the structures and functions of the language and is able to move freely
through several registers - there may be a working vocabulary of in excess of
3000 words.
Aids to Teaching
(a) Visual:
Blackboard, whiteboard, overhead projector, realia, posters, wallcharts,
flipcharts, maps, plans, flashcards, wordcards, puppets.
(b) Electronic:Tape
recorder, TV or video player, computer, CD Rom,
language laboratory.
Applied Linguistics
The study of the relationship between theory and practice. The main
emphasis is usually on language teaching, but can also be applied
to
translation, lexicology etc.
Audio-Lingual Method
Listen and speak: this
method considers listening and speaking the first tasks in language learning, followed by reading and writing.
There is considerable emphasis on learning sentence patterns, memorization of dialogues
and
extensive use of drills.
Authentic Materials
Unscripted materials or those which have not been specially
written for
classroom use, though they may have been edited.
Examples include
newspaper texts and TV broadcasts.
Auxiliary Verbs
Forms of the verbs be, do and have which are used to create the different
tenses in English: am/is/are/was/were eating/ being eaten; do/does/did
eat;
has/have/had eaten/ been eaten.
Behaviourism
A psychological theory developed by B F Skinner; became the basis for
the
audio-lingual approach, which viewed language learning in terms of
habit
formation.
Bilingualism
Being able to communicate effectively in two or more languages, with
more or less the same
degree of proficiency.
CALL
Computer Assisted Language Learning.
Cloze Procedure
An exercise where every fifth word (or sixth or seventh etc) is deleted
rom a
text. The interval between the deleted words should remain the same
throughout the text. The
student then supplies the missing words, often
relying on contextualization for help.
Cognate
Cognates are words from different languages which are related
historically, eg
English bath - German bad or English yoke - Hindi yoga.
Beware False Friends
however.
Cognitive Code
An approach in which a conscious effort is made to understand the
Learning rules when learning a new item. There
is little concern with the formation of
habits as in the audio-lingual and direct methods; can be seen as
deductive
learning, cf inductive learning.
Collocation
The tendency for words to occur regularly with others: sit/chair,
house/garage.
Common Core
The central part of the course or syllabus; or the elements of a language
vital
to any teaching programme.
Communicative Language Teaching
An approach concerned with the needs of students to
communicate outside the classroom; teaching
techniques reflect this in the choice of language content and materials, with emphasis on role play, pair and
group work etc.
Content Words
Words with a full meaning of their own; nouns, main verbs (ie not
auxiliary
or modal verbs), adjectives and many adverbs.
Contrasted with structure words.
Contextualization
Placing the target language in a realistic setting, so as to be
meaningful to the
student.
Cue Cards
Cards with words or pictures on them which are used to encourage
student
response, or pair and group work.
Dialect
The regional variety of a language, differing from the standard language,
in
grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation or idiomatic usage.
Direct Method
The most common approach in TEFL, where language is taught through
listening and speaking. There
may be little or no explicit explanation of
grammatical rules, nor translation into the mother tongue of the student
-
inductive learning rather than deductive.
Discourse
A unit of language greater than a sentence.
Drilling
The intensive and repetitive practice of the target language, which may
be
choral or individual.
Elementary
Students at this level may have a vocabulary of up to 1000 words and
will
probably be learning or practising present simple and continuous tenses,
past simple and present perfect, will/shall, 'going to' futures. They should be able
to hold simple conversations and survive in everyday situations.
ESL/E2L
English as a Second Language.
ESOL
English to/for Speakers of Other Languages.
ESP
English for Special Purposes; eg for business, science and
technology, medicine etc.
Extensive Reading
Reading for general or global understanding, often of
longer texts.
False Friends
Cognate words, or words acidentally similar in form, whose meaning is
rather
different in the two languages, eg English gentle - French gentil.
Finely-tuned Language
Language which
is equivalent to the students' knowledge, which they should
readily understand.
First Certificate
Cambridge First Certificate: an examination which may be taken by
students
of a good intermediate level.
Function Words
See Structure Words
Functional Approach
A course based on a functional approach would take as its starting point
for
language development, what the learner wants to do through language.
Common functions include identifying oneself and giving personal facts
about
oneself; expressing moods and emotions.
General Service List
A standard list of 2000 frequently used words as compiled by Michael
West. Regarded as a language core by many syllabus designers.
Grading
The order in which language items are taught.
Systematic grading may
reduce the difficulties of language learning by introducing the language
in
steps or stages.
Grammar-Translation
A method based upon memorizing the rules and logic of a
language and the practice of translation. Traditionally
the means by which Latin and Greek have been taught.
Grapheme
The written symbols for sounds in language; ie letters of the alphabet or
a
character in picture writing (as in Japanese kange).
IATEFL
International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language.
Immersion Method
This simulates the way in which children acquire their mother tongue.
The
learner is surrounded by the foreign language, with no deliberate or
organized teaching
programme. The learner absorbs the
target language naturally
without conscious effort.
Inductive Learning
Learning to apply the rules of a language by experiencing the language
in
use, rather than by having the rules explained or by consciously deducing
the rules.
Inflection
The change in form of a word, which indicates a grammatical change:eg. behave - behaved - behaviour - misbehave.
Intermediate
At this level a student will have a working vocabulary of between 1500
and 2000
words and should be able to cope easily in most everyday situations.
There should be an ability to express needs, thoughts and feelings in
a
reasonably clear way.
Intensive Reading
Reading for specific understanding of information, usually of shorter
texts.
Intonation
The ways in which the voice pitch rises and falls in speech.
L1
The mother tongue.
L2
A language other than the mother tongue.
LAD
Language Acquisition Device; a term coined by Noam Chomsky to explain an
innate psychological capacity for language acquisition.
Language Laboratory
A room equipped with headphones and booths to enable students to listen
to a language teaching programme, while being monitored from a central
console. Labs may be
Audio-Active (AA), where students listen and respond
to a tape, or Audio-Active-Comparative (AAC), where they may record
their
own responses and compare these with a model on the master tape.
Lexical item
An item of vocabulary which has a single element of meaning. It may be
a
compound or phrase: bookcase, post office, put up with.
Some single words may initiate several lexical items; eg letter: a letter
of the alphabet / posting a letter.
Lexical Set
A group or family of words related to one another by some semantic
principle:
eg lamb, pork, chicken, beef are all different types of meat and form a
lexical set.
Micro-teaching
A technique used on teacher training courses: a part of a lesson is
taught to
a small number of students. A
variation of this is 'peer teaching', where the
'students' are often peers of the trainee teacher attending the same
course.
Minimal Pair
A pair of items differing by one phonological feature; eg sit/set,
ship/sheep,
pen/pan, fan/pan, pan/pat etc.
Modal Verb
Verbs which express the mood of another verb: will/would;
shall/should;
may/might; can/could; must, ought, need, dare, used to.
Monitor
The device by which learners check their spoken or written language
against their knowledge of the rules that operate in the particular situation
they are facing.
Morpheme
The smallest unit of language that is grammatically significant.
Morphemes
may be bound, ie they cannot exist on their own; eg -er,un-, -ed, mis- ; or
they can be free, as is ball in football.
Morphology
The branch of linguistics which studies how words change their forms
when they change
grammatical function, ie their inflections
swim -swam - swum - swimming - swimmer; cat - cats; mouse - mice; happy - happier - happily etc.
See also Syntax.
Natural Approach
Pioneered by Krashen, this approach combines acquisition and learning as
a means of facilitating language development in adults.
Pair Work
A process in which students work in pairs for practice or discussion.
Passive Vocabulary
The vocabulary that students are able to understand compared to that
which
they are able to use. Contrasted
with Active Vocabulary.
Peer Group
Usually refers to people working or studying at the same level or in the
same
grouping; one's colleagues or fellow students.
Phatic Communion
Phrases used to convey sociability rather than meaning.
Phoneme
The smallest unit of sound which causes a change of meaning:
cattle - kettle /kætl/ - /ketl/; sleep
- sleeve, /sli:p/ - /sli:v/.
Phonemic sounds are written in sloping brackets / /. There are
usually
considered to be 24 consonant and 20 vowel phonemes in RP.
Phonetics
The study of sounds by the manner or place of articulation.
Phonetic Transcription
The recording of speech sounds in writing, using a special alphabet; eg
book [buk], bath [ba:q]. Phonetic transcription (using square brackets
[ ] ) makes finer distinctions than Phonemic transcription, with a narrow
transcription being more accurate than a broad one.
A standard sometimes applied is the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet).
Phonology
The study of the sound system of a language - its phonemes, stress
and
intonation.
Polar Questions
See YES/NO Questions.
Practice Stage
This follows the Presentation Stage and is the time when students begin
to
master the target items themselves.
Presentation Stage
Usually the beginning of a lesson when new language is introduced by
the teacher,
generally followed by a practice stage.
Realia
Using real objects or things in the classroom as teaching aids; eg
travel
brochures, train tickets, food items etc.
Redundancy
Using more utterances than necessary; includes talking around the
subject,
unnecessary addition and saying the same thing twice in different ways.
In
grammar it refers to a grammatical feature which has no functional use,
such as the -s
inflection for present tense third person singular.
Register
A variation in language due to circumstances: these may include age,
sex, status,
topic or setting. The language of
medicine, business and science all
differ in their register, which may be spoken or written.
Reinforcement
The means by which language which has been presented and practised
is
fully internalized by the learner. This
usually involves plenty of repetition and
extra language use.
Rhotic Accents
Accents which pronounce R after a vowel, as in mother, part, and
which include American, Scottish, Irish and Western British accents.
Rhythm
The pattern of sound length and stress in speech.
English has stress-timed rhythm,
while Spanish is said to have syllable-timed rhythm, because the
syllables tend to be uniform in time.
Role Play
A practice activity which involves students acting out a given role; eg
playing
an angry customer returning an item to a shop or being a patient in a
doctor's waiting room. It may be
controlled and structured, or more or less improvised.
R.P.
Received Pronunciation - a term coined by Daniel Jones.
RP was, until
recently, widely regarded as being the yardstick for correct
pronunciation;
corresponds loosely to a public school or BBC accent.
Roughly-tuned Language
Language which is somewhat beyond the students' knowledge, which
they should eventually absorb through exposure.
RSA
Royal
Society of Arts.An examining
board which offers exams in both EFL and TEFL.
It is now merged with UCLES.
Scanning
Going quickly over a text to find a particular piece of information.
Scheme of Work
An outline plan for a sequence of lessons, usually within a
syllabus,perhaps for a period of hours or for a number of weeks.
Schwa
The weak English vowel, represented /
/, which is found in English
unstressed syllables. The
only other unstressed vowel is /I/.
Semantics
The study of the meaning of words and the study of context, - how meaning
is expressed through language and in individual languages.
Silent Way
An approach to language teaching, developed in the States by Caleb
Gattegno, involving a highly structured system of specialized techniques
and
apparatus. The teacher is encouraged to restrict his own speech to
a
minimum, in order that students become involved in establishing
meaningful
language behaviour themselves.
Simulation
Refers to students acting out language situations, where they may have
to
draw on their knowledge of the outside world; eg they have just survived
a
plane crash in the desert and must now plan a course of action.
Situational Approach
Uses selected situations as the basis of the teaching programme; eg at
a railway
station, in a restaurant, in a bank etc.
Skimming
Reading a text quickly to get the gist.
Stress
Normally refers to word stress: English
words have one syllable which is
invariably stressed, the others being weak or unstressed:
below, normally, photographer. Words
of three or more syllables may have secondary stress on one of the remaining syllables: photograph,
' responsibility.It may also refer to the greater emphasis of some syllables or words
over others in speech. This often
carries changes of meanings as in
He went to America (not she) or
He went to America (not Australia)
This is an aspect of sentence stress, or rhythm, and involves different
intonation patterns.
Structure
The complex set of rules underlying a language, generally the grammar of
a
language.
Structural Approach
An approach based on the teaching of the different areas of 'grammar'
in a
language; eg present simple tense, conditionals, adverbs and adjectives
etc. A structural syllabus will view the language in terms of linguistic
structures,
of which there will be grading and sequencing; cf a functional approach.
Structure Words
Words with no lexical content, with a grammatical role in the phrase
or
sentence; eg 'articles, pronouns, prepositions, modal and auxiliary
verbs'.
These are sometimes called function words.
Syllabus
A plan of what is to be taught. Most
syllabuses now attempt to combine
structural and functional approaches.
This is reflected in many modern
coursebooks.
Syntax
The branch of grammar concerned with word order as an element in a
clause or sentence and the
rules governing word order and sentence structure.
Target Language
The items to be learned in a particular lesson or sequence of lessons.
TESL
Teaching English as a Second Language.
See Introduction to Modulet 1.
TESOL
Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages. This includes
both TEFL and TESL.
TOEFL
Test of English as a Foreign Language.
An American examination to test
language proficiency; usually necessary in order to gain entry to
university in
the United States. A related exam is TOEIC, Test of English for
International
Communication.
TPR
Total Physical Response: an approach developed by J Asher, in which
learners are not required to speak until they are ready.
This may take days, weeks
or even months. During this period
learners listen and acquire
language; understanding and comprehension are demonstrated through non- verbal, physical responses.
Transfer
The influence of a mother tongue habit on the language being learned; can
be
in pronunciation, word order or use of tenses etc.
Utterance
A stretch of speech or written language, which may be a single word or
a
string of sentences. This is
generally marked in speech by silence before and
after. Also refers to a word
or expression that conveys meaning.
WH Questions
Questions starting with one of the question words: Who, What, When,
Where, Why, Whose & How.
YES/NO Questions
Questions starting with a modal or auxiliary verb, Does/Are/Will/Could
etc.as opposed to open or WH questions starting with a WH word.Sometimes called Polar Questions.
For a full Dictionary of terms, look at:
TRASK R L
A Student's Dictionary of Language and Linguistics Arnold
1997
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