A taxonomy of distractor kinds for EFL multiple-choice reading comprehension tests, proposed by Sun, Yang and Liu in Higher Education Studies (2026). The typology identifies five distinct distractor types — plausible, peripheral, polyconceptual, prejudicial, and pragmatic — each targeting a differen
The 95% coverage threshold is Laufer's (1989) claim that a reader needs to know roughly 95% of running tokens for adequate reading comprehension. The figure predates Hu and Nation's 98% threshold by more than a decade and remains the working target for much graded reader publishing because the 98% f
The 98% coverage threshold is the claim, originating with Hu and Nation (2000), that an L2 reader needs to know roughly 98% of the running word tokens in a text for adequate unassisted comprehension, meaning comprehension without a dictionary, glossary, or teacher mediation.
The Academic Word List (AWL), compiled by Averil Coxhead (2000) at Victoria University of Wellington, is a list of 570 word families that occur frequently and uniformly across a wide range of academic disciplines but are not among the most general high-frequency words. It remains one of the most inf
Accommodation is the natural tendency to adjust one's speech (accent, pace, vocabulary, complexity) to match or diverge from an interlocutor's speech patterns. Communication Accommodation Theory (Giles, 1973) identifies two main strategies: convergence (shifting toward the other speaker's style to s
The Acculturation Model (Schumann, 1978) proposes that second language acquisition is determined by the degree of social and psychological distance between the learner and the target language community. The closer a learner is to the TL group, socially and psychologically, the more input, interactio
Accuracy in language learning refers to the degree to which a learner's output conforms to the norms of the target language in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. It is one of three dimensions in the CAF triad (Complexity, Accuracy, Fluency) used in SLA research to measure L2 performance and pro
Accuracy activities are practice tasks that prioritise correct production of specific target language: grammar structures, vocabulary, pronunciation features, or functional exponents. They occupy the controlled end of the practice continuum and are essential for proceduralising new language before l
An achievement test measures how much a learner has learned from a specific course or program of instruction. It is tied directly to the syllabus, materials, and learning outcomes of a defined teaching context. The question it answers is: Has this learner mastered what was taught?
Acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of the speech signal as it propagates through air between speaker and listener. It treats speech as sound waves and measures their frequency, amplitude, and duration, providing an objective record that complements the articulatory and auditory branc
Krashen's Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis (1982) draws a sharp line between two ways of developing knowledge of a second language. This distinction is the foundation of the Monitor Model and one of the most debated claims in SLA.
An acronym is an abbreviation formed from the initial letters (or syllables) of a multi-word name and pronounced as a single word rather than letter by letter. Standard examples include NASA /ˈnæsə/, NATO /ˈneɪtoʊ/, UNESCO /juːˈnɛskoʊ/, radar, laser, and scuba. The term itself is recent: acronym is
A cyclical, systematic form of practitioner inquiry in which teachers investigate their own classrooms, implement changes, observe the effects, and reflect on the outcomes, then repeat. Unlike traditional academic research conducted on teachers, action research is conducted by teachers for the purpo
Active recall is the deliberate retrieval of information from memory without looking at the source material, essentially testing oneself. It contrasts with passive review (re-reading, highlighting), which creates an illusion of familiarity without strengthening retrieval pathways.
Activity Theory (AT) is a framework for understanding human behaviour as purposeful, tool-mediated activity embedded in social and cultural contexts. It traces from Vygotsky's concept of mediated action through Leont'ev's activity/action/operation hierarchy to Engeström's (1987) expanded model, whic
The craft, faced by coursebook editors and exam item writers, of taking a real-world source text (a newspaper feature, a podcast transcript, a novel excerpt, a popular-science article) and reshaping it into pedagogic or assessment input. Adaptation here is text-level work on a source someone else wr
Adaptive testing (most commonly Computerised Adaptive Testing, or CAT) is a form of assessment in which item difficulty adjusts dynamically based on the test taker's responses. A correct answer triggers a harder item; an incorrect answer triggers an easier one. The algorithm converges on a precise e
A generic instructional design process organised in five phases: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. Not language-specific in origin, but widely adopted in ELT materials development, teacher training, and online course production.
Adjacency pairs are the fundamental structural unit of Conversation Analysis. They consist of two turns produced by different speakers, where the first turn (the first pair part) makes a particular type of second turn (the second pair part) conditionally relevant.
When multiple adjectives premodify a noun in English, they follow a conventional sequence. Native speakers apply this order intuitively; most cannot state the rule but immediately notice violations. For L2 learners, the pattern must be explicitly noticed and practised.
Adrian Underhill is a British teacher trainer, writer, and jazz musician, best known to the ELT profession for his work on pronunciation and, later, Demand-High Teaching. Long associated with International House and the Hastings-based International Teacher Training Institute, he has been a regular p
Adult Learners in ELT denotes post-secondary L2 learners whose course of study sits inside the rest of an adult life — a job, a family, a visa status, a degree programme, a migration. The label is functional rather than chronological: an "adult learner" in this sense is someone who arrives in the la
The Affective Filter Hypothesis (Krashen 1982) proposes that emotional and attitudinal variables act as a mental barrier between input and the language acquisition device. Even when input is comprehensible and at the right level, a high affective filter prevents it from being processed for acquisiti
Affixation is the morphological process of forming new words by attaching a bound morpheme (an affix) to a root or stem. It is the most productive word-formation process in English and the central mechanism behind both derivational and inflectional morphology (Plag 2003; Bauer 1983).
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a plosive (complete closure) and releases into a fricative (narrow constriction) at the same place of articulation. The two phases are so tightly coarticulated that affricates function as single phonemes, not consonant sequences.
Age of acquisition (AoA), also called age of onset (AoO), is the age at which a learner begins to receive substantial input in a second language. It is one of the most studied and most misunderstood variables in SLA: easy to measure, strongly correlated with outcomes in naturalistic settings, far le
Artificial intelligence in ELT covers the cluster of computational technologies that produce, evaluate, or interact with natural language: large language models (GPT, Claude, Gemini), automated speech recognition, automated writing evaluation, neural machine translation, and adaptive learning platfo
Artificial intelligence is transforming English language teaching through automated writing feedback, conversational chatbots, adaptive learning platforms, AI-generated materials, and machine translation as a learning tool. The field is evolving rapidly. Applications that were experimental in 2020 b
The ALACT model is a five-phase reflection cycle developed by Fred Korthagen for use in teacher education. The acronym stands for Action, Looking back, Awareness of essential aspects, Creating alternative methods of action, and Trial — the start of a new cycle.
Alexander Arguelles is an American polyglot, scholar, and independent language-learning methodologist known for turning extreme personal study into a public pedagogy. Trained in academic languages and comparative philology, he became well known online and at conferences as a serious, almost monastic
Aline Godfroid is Professor in Second Language Studies and TESOL at Michigan State University, where she co-directs the Second Language Studies Eye-Tracking Lab. Her work does what a lot of SLA promises and comparatively little delivers: it takes the implicit/explicit distinction out of the lab armc
Alison Mackey is an applied linguist and Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University, with a long-standing affiliate post at Lancaster University. Her work has carried the interactionist tradition forward by turning it into an empirical programme with a disciplined methodological toolkit.
An allomorph is a phonological variant of a single morpheme, conditioned by the surrounding phonological or morphological environment. The morpheme is the abstract unit; the allomorphs are its surface realisations (Aronoff & Fudeman 2011; Haspelmath & Sims 2010).
An allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme, a different physical realization of the same abstract sound unit that does not change word meaning. The /p/ in "pin" is produced with a burst of aspiration [pʰ], while the /p/ in "spin" is unaspirated [p]. Native English speakers perceive both as "the
Alternative assessment is an umbrella term for non-traditional methods of evaluating language proficiency that emphasise process, authentic performance, and learner involvement over standardised test scores. The term gained traction in the 1990s as part of a broader critique of the limitations of di
The substantive claim a researcher hopes to support, written H₁ or Hₐ. It states that an effect, difference, or relationship exists in the population — for example, that a vocabulary intervention produces higher post-test scores than a control condition, or that two proficiency groups differ on a co
Amelioration, also called semantic elevation or melioration, is the process by which a word acquires a more positive evaluative meaning over time. The term derives from Latin melior "better." Amelioration is the affective counterpart of pejoration and the rarer of the two directions in the documente
The term was introduced by D.A. Wilkins in 1972, as the counterpart to the Synthetic Syllabus. An analytic syllabus presents the target language in whole chunks (tasks, texts, projects, topics) without breaking it down into discrete linguistic units. Learners are expected to analyse the language the
Two fundamental approaches to rating language performance, each with distinct trade-offs for validity, reliability, and practical use.
Anaphora and cataphora are directional reference devices that create connections within a text. They are subtypes of reference, one of the five cohesive ties identified by Halliday and Hasan (1976, Cohesion in English).
A two-dimensional revision of Bloom's 1956 taxonomy of educational objectives in the cognitive domain, edited by Lorin W. Anderson and David R. Krathwohl in A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (Longman, 2001). Krathwohl was one o
Andrea Révész is Professor of Second Language Acquisition at the UCL Institute of Education, and one of the most active empirical researchers inside the Cognition Hypothesis programme. Her work sits at the interface of SLA, instruction, and assessment, and asks a question that task-based literature
An Anglicism is a word, phrase, or construction borrowed from English into another language, or an English-influenced usage in a non-English variety. Görlach's Dictionary of European Anglicisms (2001) defines an Anglicism as "a word or idiom that is recognizably English in its form (spelling, pronun
Anne Burns is an Australian applied linguist and Professor Emerita of TESOL at the University of New South Wales, with ongoing honorary posts at Aston University in the UK. Her career has been anchored in action research as a genre of teacher inquiry, and she has done more than almost anyone to make
Predicted difficulties that learners (and sometimes the teacher) are likely to encounter during a lesson, together with planned solutions. Anticipating problems is a core lesson planning skill that distinguishes effective from reactive teaching. It turns potential derailments into smooth, managed tr
AntWordProfiler is Laurence Anthony's free desktop vocabulary profiler, distributed at <https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antwordprofiler/>. It analyses any text or batch of texts against one or more frequency lists, reports coverage at each level, flags off-list items, and produces colour-co
Applied linguistics is the academic field that uses linguistic knowledge to investigate and address real-world problems in which language is centrally implicated. Brumfit's (1995) widely cited definition frames it as "the theoretical and empirical investigation of real-world problems in which langua
An approximant is a consonant produced with the articulators approaching each other but not close enough to create turbulence (as in fricatives) or complete closure (as in plosives). They are the most vowel-like consonants, with very little obstruction to the airflow.
Arthur Hughes is a British applied linguist long associated with the University of Reading, where he worked in the Department of Linguistic Science. His career has centred on language testing, and his Testing for Language Teachers remains the most widely assigned introduction to the subject in teach
The English article system comprises three choices: the definite article (the), the indefinite article (a/an), and the zero article (∅). This three-way system encodes distinctions of definiteness, specificity, countability, and generic reference, making it one of the most difficult areas of English
Articulatory phonetics studies how speech sounds are produced by the Vocal Tract — the mechanical and aerodynamic events by which a speaker shapes an airstream into intelligible sound. It is the oldest of the three branches of Phonetics and provides the descriptive vocabulary most familiar to teache
Aspiration is a burst of voiceless airflow (a brief [h]-like puff) that follows the release of a voiceless plosive consonant. In English, the voiceless plosives /p t k/ are aspirated [pʰ tʰ kʰ] when they occur at the beginning of a stressed syllable.
Assessment is the systematic process of gathering information about learner performance to make informed decisions about teaching and learning. In language education, a key distinction separates assessment of learning (summative: certifying what has been achieved) from assessment for learning (forma
Assimilation is a connected speech process in which a sound changes to become more similar to a neighboring sound. It is driven by articulatory efficiency: the speech organs anticipate the next sound and begin adjusting early, or carry over a feature from the previous sound. The result is smoother,
The distinction between synchronous and asynchronous learning describes when interaction occurs relative to real time. Most effective online and blended language courses combine both modes strategically.
Tomlin and Villa (1994) proposed a fine-grained framework decomposing "attention" into three separable but interrelated functions. Their model offers a more precise alternative to Schmidt's Noticing Hypothesis, which treats attention as a relatively unitary construct (conscious noticing). Understand
The Audiolingual Method (ALM) is an oral-based method that dominated language teaching from the late 1940s through the 1960s, particularly in the United States. Unlike the Direct Method, which it superficially resembles, ALM has an explicit theoretical base in structural linguistics (Bloomfield, Fri
Auditory phonetics studies how listeners receive and interpret the speech signal — from the mechanics of the ear to the neural and cognitive processes that turn an acoustic stream into recognisable linguistic units. It is the least developed of the three branches of Phonetics, because perception is
Authentic assessment requires learners to perform real-world tasks that mirror actual language use, rather than answering decontextualised, discrete-point test items. Instead of circling the correct verb form, the learner writes an email, gives a presentation, or participates in a discussion, tasks
Authentic listening materials are audio or video recordings produced for real-world communicative purposes rather than for language teaching: news broadcasts, podcasts, radio interviews, TED talks, film clips, YouTube videos, recorded conversations, announcements, voicemails, and songs. They contras
Texts and recordings produced by speakers or writers for real-world communicative purposes (not designed for language teaching) and brought into the classroom for pedagogic use. News broadcasts, podcasts, magazine articles, websites, advertisements, public signage, workplace emails, academic lecture
In language assessment, authenticity refers to the degree of correspondence between the characteristics of a test task and the features of real-world language use tasks. Defined formally by Bachman & Palmer (1996) as a test quality alongside validity, reliability, and practicality.
Automaticity refers to the ability to perform linguistic processing rapidly, effortlessly, and without conscious attention. In SLA, the controlled-to-automatic processing continuum, drawn from cognitive psychology (Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977) and applied to L2 by McLaughlin (1987) and DeKeyser (1997
Autonomous Induction Theory (AIT) is Susanne Carroll's modular, generative-leaning account of how second-language learners convert raw acoustic input into grammatical knowledge. Developed in Input and Evidence: The Raw Material of Second Language Acquisition (Carroll, 2001) and elaborated in Input a
Avoidance is a learner strategy in which difficult L2 structures are systematically underproduced or replaced with simpler alternatives. Unlike most interlanguage phenomena, the diagnostic evidence is the absence of a form rather than its incorrect production, making avoidance invisible to tradition
Backchaining (also called "backward buildup" or "backward chaining") is a pronunciation drilling technique in which a word, phrase, or sentence is built up from the end, adding one unit at a time from right to left. Instead of starting from the beginning, where learners often stumble and lose natura
Backchannelling is the listener's production of short verbal or non-verbal signals ("mm-hmm", "yeah", "right", "really?", nods, raised eyebrows) that show engagement during another speaker's turn without claiming the floor. The term was coined by Victor Yngve (1970), who observed that "both the pers
Backformation is the word-formation process by which a new word is created by removing what looks like an affix from an existing word. The result reverses the usual direction of derivation: instead of suffix added to base, a perceived suffix is stripped from a complex word to yield a simpler one (Ma
Background knowledge activation refers to pre-reading or pre-listening activities that trigger relevant schemata, the existing mental frameworks learners bring to a text. It is a core component of the pre-stage in both Pre-reading While-reading Post-reading and Pre-listening While-listening Post-lis
Backsliding is the reappearance of interlanguage errors that appeared to have been eradicated. Selinker (1972) identified it as one of the defining characteristics of interlanguage: a learner demonstrates correct usage of a form, then reverts to a previous incorrect form, typically under communicati
Backward design is a curriculum planning approach that begins by defining desired learning outcomes, then determines how those outcomes will be assessed, and only then plans the instructional activities that will lead learners to those outcomes. It reverses the traditional sequence of starting with
Band descriptors are the written descriptions that define what performance looks like at each level of a rating scale. They are the operational heart of any subjective assessment; without clear descriptors, a number on a scale is meaningless.
A reading-specific taxonomy of comprehension levels developed by Thomas C. Barrett and first published by Theodore Clymer (1968) in Innovations and Change in Reading Instruction, the 67th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Where Bloom's Taxonomy covers cognition in general,
Basil Bernstein (1924–2000) was a British sociologist of education at the Institute of Education, University of London, where he held the Karl Mannheim Chair until his death. Born into a Jewish immigrant family in the East End of London, he came to academia late, completed his PhD in linguistics at
Batia Laufer is an Israeli applied linguist and Professor Emerita at the University of Haifa, where she has spent her career researching second-language vocabulary acquisition, lexicography, cross-linguistic influence, reading, and testing. Her work sits at the centre of nearly every consequential d
Behaviorist theory is the account of language acquisition that dominated mid-twentieth-century psychology and language pedagogy and treated language as learned behaviour rather than mental computation. Its principal exposition for language is B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior (1957), which extended th
The set of practices a teacher uses to establish, maintain, and restore productive conduct in a classroom so learning can take place. It covers preventive structures (clear expectations, predictable routines, engaging tasks), in-the-moment responses to disruption, and the relational work that lets c
Statements of intended learning expressed as observable learner behaviour, formulated to make teaching targets verifiable and assessment criteria explicit. The standard formulation comes from Mager (1962, Preparing Instructional Objectives, Fearon Publishers, Palo Alto), which became the template fo
Benchmarking in language education is the process of comparing student performance, assessment standards, or programme outcomes against an external reference framework, most commonly the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). It calibrates local expectations against wider, inte
Bernard Mohan is Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, and the figure most often credited with inventing the integrated language-and-content approach to teaching English learners. Language and Content (Addison-Wesley, 1986) set the terms: instead of teaching language first and us
A between-group study (also called between-subjects design) compares two or more groups that receive different treatments. In SLA research, this typically means a treatment group (e.g., receiving TBLT instruction) compared to a control or comparison group (e.g., receiving traditional instruction or
BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) are a distinction introduced by Jim Cummins (1979, refined 1984) to describe two fundamentally different dimensions of language proficiency. The distinction was originally motivated by a practical prob
Bilingualism is the use of two languages by an individual or within a community. It is the most common human linguistic condition; monolingualism is the exception globally, not the norm.
Bill VanPatten is an American SLA scholar, teacher educator, and novelist whose professional life has moved between university research, public explanation, and creative writing. He taught Spanish and second language studies for many years, most prominently at Michigan State University, and became o
Bimodal input is the simultaneous presentation of matching L2 spoken and L2 written text: the same verbal content delivered through two sensory channels at once. Typical instantiations are listening-while-reading with a graded reader and its audio, same-language captioned video, and read-along audio
A structured combination of face-to-face classroom instruction and online or digital learning, designed so that the two modes complement each other and are integrated into a coherent course. Not simply "using technology in class"; blended learning is a principled design approach where online and off
Blending is a non-concatenative word-formation process that fuses parts of two source words into a single new lexeme. The output, a blend or portmanteau, typically retains the beginning of one word and the end of another: smog from smoke + fog, brunch from breakfast + lunch (Plag 2003; Bauer 1983).
Bloom's Taxonomy is a hierarchical classification of cognitive processes used to write learning objectives, design tasks, and ensure instruction operates at appropriate levels of thinking. The original taxonomy was developed by Benjamin Bloom and colleagues (1956). The widely used revised version by
Paul Nation's BNC/COCA word family lists — headwords from the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th thousand frequency bands. Based on frequency and range data from the British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English.
The planned, purposeful use of the whiteboard (or blackboard) as a teaching tool. Effective boardwork provides a visual record of the lesson, supports comprehension, and models written conventions.
A lesson shape from Jeremy Harmer's `ESA` framework in which the teacher places an Activate stage early, before the Study stage, so that learners attempt the target task first, expose what they cannot yet do, and then receive language input pitched at the gaps the attempt revealed. The shape returns
Borrowing is the incorporation of linguistic material from one language into another. The term covers any element that crosses a language boundary and becomes established, however partially, in a recipient system: words, phrases, morphemes, sounds, syntactic patterns, even idiomatic templates. The s
Bottom-up processing is the construction of meaning from the smallest units of language upward: individual sounds become words, words combine into phrases, phrases build into sentences, and sentences accumulate into overall meaning. The listener or reader decodes the raw linguistic signal piece by p
A bound morpheme is a morpheme that cannot stand on its own as a complete word and must attach to another morpheme to surface in speech or writing. Un-, re-, -tion, -ness, -ed, -s are all bound: each carries meaning, but none can occur as an independent word (Aronoff & Fudeman 2011; Haspelmath & Sim
The rapid generation of ideas without evaluation or judgement, used in ELT as a pre-task, pre-writing, or pre-speaking stage. Brainstorming activates schemata (background knowledge) and lexis, priming learners for the main activity by bringing relevant knowledge and language to the surface.
Brand Name Methods are commercially packaged language learning systems sold directly to consumers, each built around a distinctive pedagogical approach and marketed under a recognisable brand. The most influential include:
Brian Tomlinson is a British applied linguist and the founder of MATSDA, the international Materials Development Association. He has taught in Indonesia, Japan, Nigeria, Oman, Singapore, Vanuatu, Vietnam, and Zambia, and has held university posts at Leeds Metropolitan, Leeds Beckett, and Anaheim Uni
Burnout is a syndrome of physical and emotional exhaustion resulting from prolonged workplace stress. Christina Maslach's foundational research (Maslach & Jackson 1981; Maslach, Schaufeli & Leiter 2001) established burnout as a three-dimensional construct, measured by the Maslach Burnout Inventory (
A buzz group is a brief (2–3 minute) pair or small group discussion of a specific question, followed by whole-class feedback. The name comes from the "buzz" of simultaneous conversation that fills the room. It is one of the quickest and lowest-preparation techniques for activating all learners.
CAF — Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency — is the dominant analytic frame for measuring L2 production in task-based research, oral testing, and writing assessment. The three dimensions partition learner output into how elaborate the language is (complexity), how target-like (accuracy), and how smooth
Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) encompasses any use of computer technology to support language learning and teaching. The field has evolved through distinct phases, each reflecting the dominant language teaching methodology and available technology of its era.
A calque is a word or phrase formed by translating the parts of a foreign expression into the recipient language. The English compound skyscraper has been calqued into dozens of languages by combining each language's words for sky and scrape: Dutch wolkenkrabber, German Wolkenkratzer, French gratte-
The Cambridge Main Suite is the family of five level-aligned English qualifications produced by Cambridge University Press & Assessment: A2 Key, B1 Preliminary, B2 First, C1 Advanced, and C2 Proficiency. Each exam is calibrated to a single CEFR level rather than to a continuous score range, making t
Cambridge English publishes a continuous qualification ladder from Pre-A1 to C2, each exam calibrated to CEFR via the English Profile research programme and standard-setting panels. Recognised by 18,000+ universities, employers, and governments worldwide.
Can-do statements are positive, action-oriented descriptors specifying what a learner can do at a given proficiency level. They form the backbone of the CEFR (Council of Europe 2001, expanded in the 2020 Companion Volume), replacing deficit-based descriptions ("cannot yet…") with competence-based on
The Cardinal Vowels are a set of reference vowels established by the British phonetician Daniel Jones to provide a consistent calibration system for describing and transcribing the vowels of any language. They are not vowels of any particular language but a measuring grid — phonetic anchors against
Carmen Muñoz is Professor of English Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at the University of Barcelona, and the researcher most closely identified with serious empirical work on age effects in instructed, foreign-language settings. She trained at Reading (MA, Applied Linguistics) and Barcelona (PhD
A carousel activity (also called station rotation) is a technique in which groups of students rotate between different stations around the classroom, each station presenting a different task, question, or piece of content. Groups spend a set time at each station before moving to the next, ensuring a
A case study is an in-depth investigation of a single unit: a learner, a classroom, a teacher, a programme, or an institution. It aims for rich, contextualised understanding rather than generalisable findings. In SLA and applied linguistics, case studies have produced some of the field's most influe
Catenation is the connected-speech process by which a word-final consonant is joined to a following word-initial vowel and pronounced as the onset of the next syllable. The term, from Latin catena "chain", emphasises that fluent English chains words together at their boundaries rather than producing
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages is a Council of Europe framework that describes foreign-language proficiency through can-do descriptors across six reference levels (A1 to C2) and four modes of communication. Published in 2001 after roughly a decade of piloting, it is now the
The task of mapping a piece of running text to a single CEFR band (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2). Distinct from vocabulary profiling, which tags individual lexical items by level. A lexical profile tells you what proportion of a text's vocabulary sits at each CEFR band; a CEFR text-level classifier tells
CELTA is a Level 5 pre-service initial teacher training qualification awarded by Cambridge University Press & Assessment, comprising a minimum 120 taught hours with six assessed hours of teaching practice and four written assignments. It is the most widely held entry-level qualification in ELT and t
Central design is a curriculum planning approach in which classroom methodology and learning processes are the starting point. Content and outcomes emerge during implementation rather than being pre-specified. Richards (2013) positions it as one of three fundamental curriculum approaches, alongside
Charlene "Charlie" Junko Sato (1951–1996) was Associate Professor in the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa until her early death in 1996. Her work sat at a seam that the field has never really closed: the same speakers who appear in SLA as "learners of Engli
Chatbots are conversational AI systems that simulate human dialogue through natural language input. In ELT, they serve as interactive CALL tools, providing speaking practice, writing feedback, vocabulary drilling, and grammar correction on demand, with the key advantage of being available 24/7 witho
Christine Chuen Meng Goh is a Singaporean applied linguist and President's Chair Professor of Education (Linguistics & Language Education) at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University. Her research sits at the centre of L2 listening pedagogy, and together with Vande
Chunking is the cognitive process of organising individual items into larger, meaningful units (chunks) to overcome working memory limitations. In SLA, chunking explains how learners acquire and store multi-word sequences as single processing units, and how fluency develops as the grain size of proc
Circumlocution is a communication strategy in which a speaker describes or explains a concept when they cannot access the exact word or phrase they need. Rather than abandoning the message or switching to the L1 (see Code-Switching), the speaker uses known language to talk around the gap, for exampl
Claire Kramsch is a French-born applied linguist and Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, whose career has been devoted to the knotty relationship between language, culture, subjectivity, and meaning. Before Berkeley, she taught and worked at institutions including MIT and Co
Classical Test Theory (CTT) is the traditional framework for understanding measurement in testing. Its central equation is deceptively simple:
A negotiated set of rules and mutual expectations co-created with learners, usually in the first lesson of a course, and referred back to whenever conduct or commitment slips. Unlike a list imposed by the teacher, a contract is drafted with learner input, agreed publicly, and often signed or initial
Classroom language is the language teachers use for routine classroom functions: giving instructions, managing activities, praising, correcting, checking understanding, and handling transitions. It is the linguistic environment in which all learning takes place, and its quality directly affects both
Classroom layout, meaning how desks, chairs, and the teacher's position are arranged, is not a neutral administrative decision. It shapes Interaction Patterns, affects energy and attention, communicates expectations about who talks to whom, and either enables or obstructs the activities teachers pla
The systematic watching and recording of teaching and learning. Wajnryb (1992) opens her practitioner manual by calling observation "a multi-faceted tool for learning"; Allwright (1988) treats it as the empirical foundation of language teaching as a profession. Across the literature, observation ser
Classroom rules and routines are established expectations and procedures that create a predictable, safe, and efficient learning environment. Rules define behavioural expectations (what learners should and should not do); routines define procedural habits (how things are done). Together, they reduce
Classroom-based research (CBR) refers to any systematic investigation conducted in actual classrooms rather than in laboratory settings. It encompasses a wide range of designs, including experimental, quasi-experimental, qualitative, and mixed methods, united by the principle that research on langua
A clause is a syntactic unit built around a verb (or verb group) that expresses a proposition. It is the fundamental unit of grammar in most linguistic traditions and the primary unit of analysis in Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics.
A cleft sentence restructures a simple sentence to place focus on one particular element, dividing (cleaving) the message into two clauses. Clefts are a key tool for managing information structure, emphasis, and contrast in English.
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used for both the learning and teaching of content and language. The term was coined by David Marsh in 1994 and gained traction primarily in European education policy, becoming a
Clipping is the word-formation process by which a polysyllabic word is shortened by deleting one or more segments without otherwise changing its category or core meaning (Marchand 1969; Plag 2003). The clipped form lab is still a noun and still refers to a laboratory; only its phonological shape has
A cloze test is a reading passage with words systematically deleted at regular intervals (typically every 5th, 6th, or 7th word), which the test-taker must restore. Developed by Wilson Taylor (1953) as a readability measure, it was adopted into language testing as a measure of integrative language p
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is an approach to language teaching that takes communicative competence as its goal and meaningful interaction as its primary means. It emerged in the 1970s as a reaction against audiolingual and grammar-translation methods, which prioritised structural accuracy
Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) refers to human communication conducted through digital channels: email, text chat, instant messaging, discussion forums, video conferencing, and social media. In SLA research, CMC has been investigated as an environment for language learning that shares feature
In teacher development, coaching is a sustained one-to-one or small-group professional learning relationship in which a coach helps a teacher improve specific aspects of practice through goal-setting, observation, feedback, and structured iteration. It differs from mentoring in framing — coaching is
Coarticulation is the overlapping of articulatory movements for adjacent speech sounds. When we speak, the tongue, lips, jaw, and velum do not move in discrete steps from one sound to the next; instead, movements for upcoming sounds begin before the current sound is complete, and traces of preceding
Code-mixing is the use of elements from two languages within a single sentence or constituent. Where code-switching is sometimes restricted to inter-sentential alternation, code-mixing typically refers to intra-sentential combination: a Vietnamese speaker producing Em đang làm cái presentation cho m
Code-switching (CS) is the practice of alternating between two or more languages or language varieties within a single conversation, sentence, or utterance. In ELT, it refers most commonly to teachers or learners shifting between the L1 and the target language in the classroom. The term was introduc
In historical linguistics, cognates are words in different languages that descend from the same ancestor in a common parent language. English night, German Nacht, Latin nox, Greek nýx, Sanskrit nákt-, and Lithuanian naktis are cognates inherited from Proto-Indo-European \nókʷts. The English term com
Peter Robinson's Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson 2001, 2003, 2005) is a theory of how task design influences second language production and development. Its central claim is that increasing the cognitive demands of pedagogic tasks along certain dimensions does not overload learners, as competing mode
Cognitive strategies are mental operations that directly manipulate incoming information or language material to enhance learning and performance. Unlike metacognitive strategies, which manage the learning process, cognitive strategies operate on the content itself: transforming, practising, analysi
A computational text-analysis tool developed by Arthur Graesser, Danielle McNamara, and colleagues at the University of Memphis (now hosted at Arizona State University). Coh-Metrix produces over 200 measures of cohesion, language, and readability, grounded in multilevel theories of comprehension tha
A standardised effect size for the difference between two means, expressed in pooled standard-deviation units: d = (M₁ − M₂) / SD_pooled. A d of 0.50 means the group means differ by half a standard deviation. Because the metric is scale-free, d values can be compared across studies and aggregated in
Coherence is the quality that makes a text make sense as a unified whole. It is a property of the reader's or listener's interpretation, the ability to follow the argument, track topic development, and construct a mental model of what the text is about. Unlike Cohesion, which can be identified in su
Coherence devices are the full range of techniques that make a text logically connected and easy to follow. While Cohesive Devices operate at the surface level through linguistic ties (reference, conjunction, lexical cohesion), coherence devices encompass both linguistic and structural mechanisms th
Cohesion refers to the linguistic devices that create connections between parts of a text, making it hang together as a unified whole rather than a sequence of unrelated sentences. The foundational taxonomy comes from Halliday and Hasan (1976), Cohesion in English.
Cohesive devices are the linguistic mechanisms that create Cohesion, the explicit textual ties that connect sentences and clauses into a unified text. The foundational taxonomy was established by Halliday and Hasan (1976) in Cohesion in English.
A whole-class questioning technique where the teacher selects respondents without waiting for volunteers. The question is posed first, a deliberate pause follows, and a named learner is then called to answer. Codified in Doug Lemov's Teach Like a Champion 2.0 as one of its core techniques, adapted f
Collaborative dialogue is the term Merrill Swain introduced (Swain 2000; Swain & Lapkin 1998) for the talk learners produce when they work together on a language problem and use language itself as a cognitive tool to solve it. It marks Swain's move from the cognitive Output Hypothesis toward a socio
Collaborative writing involves two or more learners jointly composing a single text. Unlike individual writing followed by peer feedback, the collaboration occurs during the writing process itself: learners plan, draft, and revise together, negotiating content, organisation, and language choices in
Colligation is the tendency of a word to co-occur with particular grammatical categories or patterns, just as Collocation describes its tendency to co-occur with particular words. Where collocation is a lexical phenomenon (word + word), colligation is a lexico-grammatical one (word + grammar).
Collocation is the tendency of words to co-occur in natural language with a frequency greater than chance. Native speakers say "make a decision" not "do a decision," "heavy rain" not "strong rain," "deeply concerned" not "very concerned." These combinations are not governed by grammar rules; they ar
Collocational range refers to the number and variety of collocates a word typically combines with. Words with wide collocational range are versatile and combine freely; words with narrow range are restricted to a small set of partners.
Techniques that language users deploy to overcome breakdowns, gaps, or difficulties in communication. In ELT, communication strategies (CSs) are a component of strategic competence within models of communicative competence and a key factor in developing fluency.
Communicative competence is the ability to use language effectively and appropriately in social contexts. The term was coined by Hymes (1972) as a direct challenge to Chomsky's notion of linguistic competence, which dealt only with an idealised speaker's knowledge of grammatical rules. Hymes argued
The concept of communicative competence has been operationalised through a series of increasingly sophisticated models, each reshaping how language teaching and assessment define "knowing a language."
A community of practice is a group of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better through regular interaction. The term originates with Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (1991), which reframed learning
Community Language Learning (CLL) is a language teaching method developed by Charles A. Curran, a professor of psychology at Loyola University Chicago, in the 1970s. It applies Rogerian counselling principles to language education and is sometimes referred to as Counseling-Learning.
The Comparative Method is a language teaching approach that uses systematic comparison between the learner's L1 and the target language as a deliberate pedagogical tool. Unlike the Grammar-Translation Method, which uses translation as an end in itself, the Comparative Method uses cross-linguistic co
Competency-based Teaching (CBT) is an approach that defines learning objectives in terms of measurable, real-world competencies, specific things learners must be able to do with language rather than things they must know about it. It emerged in the 1970s in vocational education and was widely adopte
Complementation refers to what follows a verb (or adjective/noun) to complete its meaning. In English, verb complementation patterns are largely lexically determined. Each verb selects specific complement types, and these patterns must be learned verb by verb.
Complexity is both a construct describing the structural elaboration and variety of L2 output and one of three vertices of the CAF triad (accuracy, fluency, complexity) used to characterise second-language performance and proficiency. Housen and Kuiken (2009: 461–463) frame CAF as the dominant multi
Compounding is the morphological process of combining two or more free morphemes (or, less commonly, bound roots) into a single lexical unit. English is highly productive in compounding, especially noun-noun combinations: bookstore, bus stop, climate change, time management (Bauer 1983; Plag 2003).
Comprehensible input (CI) is language input that a learner can understand despite containing structures slightly beyond their current competence. The term comes from Stephen Krashen's Input Hypothesis, first articulated in the late 1970s and formalized in The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implication
Short, targeted questions a teacher asks after presenting new language to verify that learners have understood the meaning, not just that they can repeat the form. They replace the unreliable "Do you understand?" with evidence of actual comprehension.
Concordance lines are displays of multiple instances of a word or phrase extracted from a corpus, each shown within its surrounding context. The standard format is KWIC (Key Word in Context), where the target item is centred and aligned vertically so that patterns in its left and right co-text becom
Concurrent validity is the degree to which scores on a test correlate with scores on an established criterion measure when both are obtained at roughly the same time. It is one of two subtypes of criterion-related validity, the other being Predictive Validity, distinguished from it solely by the tem
Conditional sentences express relationships between a condition and its consequence. They are typically built from an if-clause (protasis) and a result clause (apodosis), though other markers (unless, provided that, as long as, supposing) also introduce conditions.
A range of values, computed from sample data, that would contain the true population parameter in a stated proportion of repeated samples drawn from the same population. A 95% confidence interval — the conventional default in applied-linguistics reporting — is constructed so that, across many hypoth
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) tests how well a hypothesised factor structure reproduces an observed covariance matrix. Unlike exploratory factor analysis, which lets the data suggest a structure, CFA specifies in advance which observed variables load on which latent factors and constrains all o
Connected speech refers to the way pronunciation changes when words are produced in natural, fluent sequences rather than spoken in isolation. A word's dictionary pronunciation, its citation form, is often dramatically different from how it sounds inside a phrase. "Want to" becomes /wɒnə/, "him" bec
Connected speech processes are the systematic phonological modifications that occur when words are produced in continuous, natural speech rather than in isolation. These processes work together to maintain English stress-timed rhythm by compressing unstressed material and smoothing transitions betwe
A pedagogical approach in which learners analyse language data to develop explicit knowledge of linguistic features. Crucially, consciousness-raising (CR) is not practice; the goal is understanding a rule, not producing the target structure in communicative output. The distinction matters: CR target
Consequential validity concerns the social consequences of test use, both intended and unintended. It asks not just "Does this test measure what it claims to measure?" but "What happens as a result of using this test? Who benefits? Who is harmed?"
A consonant cluster is a sequence of two or more consonant sounds occurring together without an intervening vowel. English permits complex clusters in both onset and coda positions, making it typologically unusual and a major source of difficulty for L2 learners.
The core analytic procedure of Grounded Theory. Each new datum is compared with previous data, with codes already assigned, and with the developing categories — moving from incident-to-incident comparison early on toward comparison of incidents with concepts and concepts with concepts as analysis ma
In language testing, a construct is the specific ability, knowledge, or competence that a test claims to measure. It is an abstract theoretical entity, not directly observable, that must be operationalised through test tasks and scoring criteria. Construct definition is the foundation of all validit
Construct validity is the extent to which a test actually measures the theoretical ability (construct) it claims to measure. It is the central, unifying concept in modern validity theory; Messick (1989) argued that all validity is ultimately construct validity, with other "types" (content, criterion
Construct-irrelevant variance (CIV) is the portion of test-score variance attributable to factors that are not part of the construct the test claims to measure. The term was formalised by Samuel Messick in his unified theory of validity (Messick 1989) and stands as one of the two primary threats to
Content validity is the extent to which a test's items and tasks adequately sample the content domain the test claims to cover. It asks: Does this test represent the full range of knowledge, skills, and abilities that define the domain?
Content-based Instruction (CBI) is an approach that integrates the learning of language with the learning of subject-matter content. Rather than teaching language as an isolated system, CBI uses academic subjects, themes, or topics as the vehicle for language development. The European variant is kno
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is the ongoing, career-long process through which teachers systematically maintain, develop, and broaden their knowledge, skills, and professional practice beyond initial training. CPD is distinct from pre-service qualifications like CELTA or a PGCE; it begi
Continuous assessment (CA) evaluates learner performance throughout a course rather than relying on a single end-of-course examination. It draws on multiple data points, including classroom tasks, portfolios, projects, presentations, quizzes, and participation, to build a cumulative picture of achie
Contrastive Analysis (CA) is the systematic comparison of two languages, typically the learner's L1 and the target L2, to identify structural similarities and differences. The approach is most associated with Robert Lado's Linguistics across Cultures (1957), which proposed that by comparing the soun
Contrastive stress is the placement of prominence on a particular word to contrast it with an alternative, either explicit or implied. It overrides the default sentence stress pattern and shifts the tonic syllable to signal the speaker's intended focus.
Controlled practice refers to activities in which learners use target language with significant restrictions on what they can say or write. The teacher controls the linguistic output by limiting the range of possible responses, ensuring learners produce the target form accurately and repeatedly. Gap
Controlled writing is writing with heavy structural guidance, where the language and content are largely predetermined. The learner's creative choices are deliberately constrained so that attention can focus on accuracy of form. It sits at the most supported end of the guided-to-freer continuum: con
A non-probability sampling technique in which participants are selected because they are easily accessible to the researcher — students in the researcher's own classes, learners at a single institution, members of an existing programme. Also called opportunity or accidental sampling. It is the domin
Convergent validity is the extent to which a measure correlates with other measures of the same or theoretically related constructs. With discriminant validity it forms the conceptual core of construct validation introduced by Campbell and Fiske through the multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) matrix.
Conversation Analysis (CA) is a method for studying talk-in-interaction, focusing on the sequential organisation of naturally occurring conversation. It was developed by Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson in the 1960s–70s, emerging from ethnomethodology (Harold Garfinkel) and the mi
Conversation management encompasses the pragmatic skills needed to navigate real-time spoken interaction: opening and closing conversations, introducing and shifting topics, taking and yielding turns, backchannelling, repairing breakdowns, and managing face. These skills are fundamental to communica
Conversion is the word-formation process by which a word changes word class without any change in form. It is also called zero derivation, null derivation, or functional shift (Marchand 1969; Plag 2003; Bauer 1983).
The cooperating teacher is the experienced classroom teacher who hosts and supervises a trainee during the Practicum component of an initial teacher education programme. The role is sometimes labelled mentor teacher, host teacher, or school-based teacher educator, and is paired institutionally with
Structured group work in which positive interdependence ensures all members contribute meaningfully. Not simply "group work"; cooperative learning requires deliberate design so that individual success depends on group success, and no learner can opt out or dominate.
The Cooperative Principle (CP) was proposed by H.P. Grice (1975) as a fundamental assumption underlying conversation: speakers are expected to make their contributions appropriate to the purpose and direction of the talk exchange. Grice formalised this through four maxims.
Two accounts compete over what a syllabus should be built from. The core-language account holds that a stable inventory of high-frequency words and chunks (Nation's 3000-word threshold, Lewis's chunks, Coxhead's academic formulas) must be explicitly covered because it is the precondition for everyth
Corpus linguistics is the study of language through the systematic analysis of large, electronically stored collections of authentic text (corpora). It is fundamentally a methodology rather than a theory, an empirical approach that has transformed how we describe English and design language teaching
Corrective feedback (CF) refers to responses to a learner's non-targetlike L2 production. It is a form of form-focused instruction; specifically, it falls under Type 3 (incidental focus-on-form) or sometimes Type 2 (planned) in Rod Ellis's taxonomy. Crucially, CF is a form of explicit instruction th
The systematic process of planning, developing, and organising a language course. The most influential framework is Graves (2000), which treats course design as iterative and interconnected rather than strictly linear.
A coursebook (also textbook) is a published teaching resource designed to serve as the primary material for a language course, typically organised into units that sequence grammar, vocabulary, skills, and topics across a defined proficiency range. Coursebooks embody a particular approach to syllabus
A systematic review of what a coursebook actually delivers against an external reference — a syllabus, an examination specification, a competence framework like the CEFR, or a learner-needs profile. An audit moves beyond the qualitative impressions of standard evaluation and produces a coverage map:
A lesson taught by someone other than the regular teacher, usually at short notice when the timetabled teacher is absent. The cover teacher inherits a class they may not know, materials they may not have prepared, and a syllabus position they cannot easily verify, so cover planning prioritises porta
Craig Chaudron (1946–2006) spent his career at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, where he joined the ESL (later Second Language Studies) department in 1983 and became full professor in 1994. Born in St. Louis, educated at Wabash (BA, philosophy and French), he took an MEd in educational theory and
Craig Lambert is an applied linguist whose work has concentrated on task-based language teaching, task design, and, more recently, learner engagement. Based at Curtin University in Australia, he came to task-based language teaching after long classroom experience in Japan, and his writing carries th
Crazy English is the name for two distinct but related high-energy, performance-based approaches to language learning:
CRELLA (Centre for Research in English Language Learning and Assessment) is a research centre at the University of Bedfordshire, Luton. It was established in 2005 when Cyril Weir took up the Powdrill Chair in English Language Acquisition, and has since become one of the largest concentrations of lan
Criterion-referenced tests (CRTs) measure performance against fixed, predetermined criteria, specific descriptions of what a learner can or cannot do. The question is not "How does this learner compare to others?" but "Can this learner do X?"
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) examines how language reproduces, reinforces, and challenges power relations, ideology, and social inequality. It treats discourse not as a neutral medium but as a site of social struggle.
A critical incident is a classroom moment, often unplanned and apparently ordinary, that, upon reflection, reveals something significant about teaching, learning, or the teacher's own beliefs and assumptions. The term was introduced to teacher education by David Tripp (1993), who emphasised that inc
Critical Language Pedagogy (CLP) is the application of critical pedagogy, in the Freirean and post-Freirean tradition, to second-language teaching. The field has Graham Crookes as its clearest English-language advocate and its 2022 Language Teaching research timeline, but it sits inside a longer and
The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) claims that there is a maturationally constrained window during which language can be acquired with native-like outcomes; outside this window, acquisition is slower, less complete, and rarely reaches native attainment. The claim originated in first-language resea
The Critical Period Hypothesis (Lenneberg 1967) claims that there is a biologically determined window, roughly from birth to puberty, during which language acquisition occurs naturally and effortlessly. After this window closes, native-like attainment becomes extremely difficult or impossible due to
Critical reading goes beyond comprehension to evaluation: questioning the text rather than simply understanding it. The critical reader asks not just "What does this text say?" but "Why does it say it? Who benefits? What is left out? How does the language shape the message?"
Critical reflection in teaching is the deliberate examination of the assumptions — about learners, knowledge, power, and one's own competence — that shape a teacher's practice. It is distinguished from descriptive reflection (recounting what happened) and from evaluative reflection (judging what wor
Cronbach's alpha (α) is the most widely reported estimator of internal consistency reliability. Introduced by Lee Cronbach in his 1951 Psychometrika paper as a generalisation of the Kuder–Richardson 20 formula, it extends KR-20 from dichotomous to polytomously scored items and has since become the d
A cross-sectional study collects data from different groups of participants at a single point in time. In SLA research, this typically means comparing learners at different proficiency levels simultaneously to infer developmental patterns, rather than following the same learners over time as in a Lo
Crosslinguistic influence (CLI) is the umbrella term introduced by Kellerman and Sharwood Smith (1986) for all ways in which a speaker's knowledge of one language affects their production, comprehension, or development in another. It replaced "transfer" as the preferred technical term because it cap
The fit between the cultural content of ELT materials and the values, expectations, and lived realities of the learners using them. Appropriateness is not a single property — it spans what gets represented, how, and what learners are asked to do with it.
A widely cited checklist framework for assessing ELT coursebooks, set out by Alan Cunningsworth in Choosing Your Coursebook (Heinemann, 1995). The framework gives teachers and course designers a structured way to compare candidate books against learner needs and programme aims rather than relying on
Richards (2013) identifies three fundamental approaches to language curriculum design, distinguished by their starting point:
The systematic appraisal of a curriculum's quality, internal alignment, and effectiveness in achieving its stated aims. Distinct from student assessment: the object of judgement is the curriculum itself (its goals, syllabus, materials, methodology, and outcomes) rather than learner attainment.
A cut score (also cut-off score or pass mark) is the point on a score scale that separates one classification from another: pass from fail, one proficiency level from the next, admission from rejection. It is one of the most consequential decisions in assessment: a single point can determine whether
D.A. Wilkins (David Arthur Wilkins) was a British applied linguist whose career is closely tied to the University of Reading, early applied linguistics in Britain, and the Council of Europe's modern languages work. He belongs to that important generation of scholars who helped move language teaching
A readability index that combines sentence length with a frequency-list operationalisation of word difficulty. Where Flesch, Fog, and SMOG approximate word difficulty by syllable count, Dale-Chall measures it directly: any word not on a list of high-frequency familiar words is difficult. Originally
Dave Willis (d. October 2013) was a British applied linguist and materials developer whose career linked classroom teaching, corpus work, and practical pedagogy unusually well. From 1990 to 2000 he was Senior Lecturer at the Centre for English Language Studies at the University of Birmingham, teachi
David Nunan is an Australian applied linguist, curriculum specialist, and teacher educator whose career has taken him through Australia, Asia, and the United States. Associated especially with Macquarie University and the University of Hong Kong, he became one of the field's most readable and intern
The canonical statement of what an extensive reading programme requires to function. Day and Bamford published the ten principles in Reading in a Foreign Language in 2002, distilling and revising the framework from their 1998 Cambridge volume. The principles have since served as the field's referenc
A standing procedure for how a learner who arrives after the lesson has started enters the room, joins the current activity, and catches up on what they missed. The point of having a procedure is that the disruption costs the rest of the class as little as possible. Without it, every late entry forc
A debate is a structured argumentative speaking activity where participants defend assigned positions (typically for/against a proposition). Unlike Discussion, where participants explore ideas openly and may change their minds, debate requires learners to construct and sustain an argument regardless
Decoding is the bottom-up process by which listeners convert the acoustic speech signal into meaningful linguistic units, from sound waves to phonemes, phonemes to words, and words to propositions. In L2 listening, decoding is widely recognised as the primary bottleneck: learners exhaust cognitive r
Deixis (from Greek deiktikos, "pointing") refers to words and expressions whose interpretation depends entirely on the context of utterance: who is speaking, to whom, when, and where. The sentence I'll meet you here tomorrow is meaningful only if you know who "I" is, who "you" is, where "here" is, a
Dell Hathaway Hymes (1927–2009) was an American sociolinguist, linguistic anthropologist, and folklorist who founded the ethnography of communication and gave language education the term that most powerfully reshaped it: communicative competence. He taught at Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania
DELTA is Cambridge English's advanced teaching diploma for experienced English language teachers, positioned one rung above CELTA on the Cambridge ladder. Cambridge markets it as "an advanced blend of theory and practice" for teachers with at least one year's post-certificate experience who are movi
A challenge to complacency in communicative language classrooms, launched by Jim Scrivener and Adrian Underhill at IATEFL Glasgow in 2012. The core provocation: much contemporary ELT has settled into comfortable but undemanding routines: teachers facilitate activities fluently but fail to push learn
Every word carries two layers of meaning. Denotation is the literal, dictionary definition: the core referential meaning. Connotation is the web of associations, attitudes, and emotional overtones that accompany the word. The distinction is fundamental to precise vocabulary use and a key dimension o
The Levels of Processing framework (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) proposes that memory retention depends not on where information is stored but on how deeply it is processed during encoding. Deeper cognitive engagement, including semantic analysis, personal connection, and elaboration, produces more durab
Derivation is the morphological process by which a new lexeme is created from an existing base, typically through affixation but also through conversion, compounding, and other operations. The output is a distinct word with its own dictionary entry, syntactic behaviour, and (often) word class (Plag
Determiners are function words that specify or quantify a noun, occurring at the beginning of a Noun Phrase. They form a functional class distinct from traditional Parts of Speech: they are not adjectives, though traditional grammar often mislabels them as such.
Developmental sequences are the predictable orders in which L2 learners acquire specific grammatical structures, regardless of L1 background, age, or instructional context. This is one of the most robust findings in SLA research, with evidence from morpheme studies, negation, question formation, and
Diagnostic testing identifies specific strengths and weaknesses in a learner's language ability to inform targeted teaching. Unlike Placement Testing (which assigns a level) or Summative Assessment (which certifies achievement), diagnostic testing asks: Exactly which areas does this learner need to
Dialect and accent are often confused in everyday usage. In linguistics, they are distinct concepts.
Diane Larsen-Freeman is an American applied linguist and teacher educator whose career has combined influential scholarship with unusually durable methodology writing. She is associated especially with the University of Michigan and SIT Graduate Institute, and for decades has been one of the field's
A diaspora is a population dispersed from an ancestral or symbolic homeland that maintains a collective identity, a sustained orientation to that homeland, and recognisable boundaries against full assimilation into host societies. The term comes from the Greek diaspeirein, "to scatter," and was orig
Dick Allwright (b. 1938) is former Chair in Applied Linguistics at Lancaster University and the originator of Exploratory Practice, the teacher-research tradition that took classroom research out of the hands of visiting academics and put it back with the people in the room. He retired formally in 2
A technique in which the teacher reads a text aloud and learners write down what they hear. Despite its reputation as old-fashioned, dictation simultaneously tests and develops listening, spelling, punctuation, and grammar. It has experienced a revival as research confirms its effectiveness for deve
A text reconstruction task developed by Wajnryb (1990) in Grammar Dictation (OUP). Learners listen to a short text read at normal speed, take fragmentary notes, then collaboratively reconstruct it. Integrates listening, writing, grammar awareness, and speaking in a single activity.
Differential item functioning (DIF) occurs when an item behaves differently for examinees of equal ability who belong to different subgroups — typically defined by sex, first language, age, or instructional background. DIF analysis controls for ability so that simple group differences in difficulty
The deliberate adaptation of teaching to address the different levels, needs, interests, and learning profiles within a single class. Rather than delivering the same content in the same way to every learner, the teacher modifies what is taught, how it is taught, or what learners produce so that each
Digital literacy is the ability to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information using digital technologies. In ELT, it functions as both a pedagogical tool (technology used to teach language) and a learning objective (the digital skills learners need to function in contemporary society). Both
Diglossia is a sociolinguistic situation in which two varieties of the same language (or two closely related languages) coexist in a community, each serving distinct social functions. The term was formalised by Charles Ferguson (1959) in his foundational paper "Diglossia" in Word.
A diphthong is a vowel sound that involves a glide from one vowel quality to another within a single syllable. The tongue starts in one position and moves toward another, producing a perceptible change in quality. The word comes from Greek di- (two) + phthongos (sound). Diphthongs contrast with mono
The Direct Method emerged in the 1880s as a reaction against the Grammar-Translation Method, driven by the Reform Movement in language teaching (Viëtor, Sweet, Jespersen). Its defining principle is simple: meaning should be conveyed directly in the target language through demonstration, pictures, an
Discourse analysis is the study of language beyond the sentence: how texts (spoken and written) are structured, how meaning is constructed through context, and how speakers and writers achieve their communicative purposes. It asks not "Is this sentence grammatically correct?" but "How does this text
Discourse competence is the ability to produce and interpret connected, coherent stretches of language, whether spoken or written, that function as unified texts rather than collections of unrelated sentences.
A discourse completion task (DCT) is a written data elicitation instrument in which participants read a description of a social situation and write what they would say in that context. It is the standard tool for studying speech act production and pragmatic competence across languages and cultures.
Discourse markers are words and phrases that organize discourse, signal relationships between ideas, and manage the flow of communication. They operate above the sentence; their meaning is procedural (guiding interpretation) rather than propositional (adding content). "However" doesn't describe anyt
Course materials that target a single language skill — listening only, reading only, writing only, speaking only — rather than integrating the four skills inside each unit. The format suits programmes where one skill needs disproportionate attention or where learners arrive with a profile uneven eno
Discriminant validity is the extent to which a measure does not correlate with measures of theoretically distinct constructs. It is the necessary complement to convergent validity within Campbell and Fiske's multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) framework: a test may converge with related measures yet fail
Discussion is a speaking activity in which learners exchange views, ideas, or information on a topic. It is a staple of the communicative classroom and a primary vehicle for developing Fluency. However, unstructured discussion often fails: confident speakers dominate, quieter learners stay silent, t
Questions where the teacher already knows the answer. The purpose is not to seek information but to get the learner to display their knowledge of the language, hence the name. Long and Sato (1983) introduced the term in their study of ESL classroom discourse, contrasting display questions with refer
Dissimilation is the phonological process by which two similar sounds in a word become less alike, typically because producing two near-identical segments in close succession is articulatorily and perceptually awkward. It is the mirror image of assimilation and is usually attributed to the horror ae
A distractor is an incorrect option in a multiple-choice item. In a standard four-option MC item, there is one correct answer (the key) and three distractors. The quality of a multiple-choice test depends as much on the quality of its distractors as on the quality of its correct answers.
Dogme ELT is a communicative approach to language teaching developed by Thornbury and Luke Meddings, first articulated in Thornbury's 2000 IATEFL Issues article "A Dogma for EFL" (issue 153) and codified with Meddings in Teaching Unplugged (2009). The name borrows from the Dogme 95 film movement's m
Douglas Barnes (1927–2010) was a British educational researcher at the University of Leeds, and the figure most associated with the "language across the curriculum" movement of the 1970s. From Communication to Curriculum (1976) reframed what a classroom lesson is for: not the delivery of pre-made co
A controlled repetition technique in which learners repeat target language (words, phrases, sentences, or sounds) after a model, with the goal of developing accurate production and building automaticity. Drilling is one of the oldest and most widely used classroom techniques, associated historically
Allan Paivio's dual coding theory (1971, 1986) proposes that cognition operates through two independent but interconnected systems: a verbal system processing language and a nonverbal (imaginal) system processing visual and spatial information. Information encoded through both channels simultaneousl
Dynamic Assessment (DA) is a Vygotskian approach to assessment in which the assessor provides mediation, including prompts, hints, leading questions, and explicit instruction, during the test itself. The goal is not to measure what the learner can do alone (their actual developmental level) but to r
Dynamic Systems Theory (DST), more recently rebranded as Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST), is the application of complexity science to second language development. Introduced into SLA by Diane Larsen-Freeman in her 1997 Applied Linguistics article Chaos/Complexity Science and Second Language Ac
English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is the largest single branch of ESP. It refers, in Hamp-Lyons and Hyland's definition, to "the linguistic, sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic description of English as it occurs in the contexts of academic study and scholarly exchange itself", and to the teachin
The EAQUALS Teacher Development Framework — formally the Eaquals Framework for Language Teacher Training and Development — is a competence-descriptor framework for language teachers, published by EAQUALS, an international non-profit association for quality assurance in language education. It maps ke
Earl Wilson Stevick (1923–2013) was an American applied linguist whose work gave humanistic language teaching its most thoughtful English-language advocate. He studied government at Harvard, took an MA in TEFL at Columbia, and earned a PhD in linguistics at Cornell before spending the bulk of his ca
Ecological validity is the extent to which research conditions, materials, and tasks reflect the real-world contexts to which findings are intended to apply. In SLA and language teaching research, it asks: Does this study resemble what actually happens in classrooms?
Editing and revising are distinct stages of the writing process, often confused by learners (and teachers). Understanding the difference, and teaching them in the right order, significantly improves writing quality.
An effect size quantifies the magnitude of a difference between groups or the strength of a relationship. In SLA research, it answers: how much did the treatment help, not just whether it helped (which is what p-values do).
A foundational distinction within EAP. English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP) teaches the language and skills shared across academic disciplines: cohesion, hedging, citation conventions, lecture listening, essay structure, library skills. English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) teaches t
An eggcorn is the substitution of a familiar word or phrase for a less familiar one of similar sound, where the substitution is internally coherent: the new form makes its own kind of sense to the speaker who produces it.
Elaborated and restricted codes are Basil Bernstein's distinction between two orientations to meaning, introduced through a series of papers in the 1960s and consolidated in Class, Codes and Control. The distinction is frequently misread as being about vocabulary size or grammatical complexity; Bern
English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) refers to the use of English as a shared means of communication between speakers who do not share a first language. In the majority of English interactions worldwide, no native speaker is present. ELF is the default mode of global English use in business, academia, d
Elicited imitation (EI) is a data collection technique in which participants hear a sentence and must repeat it as accurately as possible. Errors in repetition are not random: they reveal the structure of the learner's Interlanguage grammar, because learners can only accurately repeat structures the
Eliciting is the technique of drawing language, ideas, or knowledge from learners rather than simply telling them. Instead of saying "The past tense of 'go' is 'went'," the teacher creates a context and prompts students to produce the form themselves. It's a cornerstone of learner-centred teaching:
Elision is the omission of a sound, whether a phoneme or an entire syllable, in connected speech. Where Assimilation changes a sound, elision removes it entirely. It is one of the primary mechanisms by which English compresses unstressed material to maintain its stress-timed Rhythm.
Ellipsis is the omission of elements from a clause or sentence that are recoverable from the linguistic or situational context. It is a major cohesive device identified by Halliday and Hasan (1976) and plays a central role in making English sound natural rather than repetitive.
English Language Teaching (ELT) is the professional and academic field concerned with teaching English to speakers of other languages. It comprises the methodology, materials, assessment, teacher education, and institutional infrastructure surrounding non-native English instruction across primary, s
Emanuel "Manne" Bylund is Professor of General Linguistics at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, with a continuing affiliation at Stockholm University where he did his doctoral and postdoctoral work. His research keeps circling one question: how age of acquisition and bilingualism jointly shap
Embedding is the syntactic process of placing one clause or phrase inside another, creating hierarchical structure. It is the mechanism that gives human language its recursive, potentially infinite generative capacity.
Emergentism is a family of theories holding that linguistic knowledge, including grammar, is not innate but emerges from the learner's cumulative experience with language use. Nick Ellis (2002, 2006) and Brian MacWhinney (2001) are the principal SLA proponents. The approach stands in direct oppositi
English-Medium Instruction: the use of English as the language of instruction for academic subjects in contexts where English is not the first language of the majority of the population. Macaro (2018) defines it as teaching academic subjects (other than English itself) through English in such settin
Emphatic stress is extra Prominence given to a word or syllable for emphasis, intensity, or emotional force. It involves a combination of raised Pitch, increased loudness, and lengthened duration on the stressed syllable, making it stand out beyond the normal Sentence Stress pattern.
A family of distinctions for tracing the gap between curriculum-as-planned, curriculum-as-taught, and curriculum-as-experienced. The most cited version is John I. Goodlad's five-level scheme in Curriculum Inquiry: The Study of Curriculum Practice (McGraw-Hill, 1979), refined by Larry Cuban's three-l
An endangered language is one whose intergenerational transmission is breaking down: fewer children are acquiring it as a first language, and without intervention it will move toward language death. Endangerment is a continuum, not a binary state; the central diagnostic is whether the language is be
A long-running research programme that produces reference-level descriptions (RLDs) of English for the CEFR, specifying which words, phrases, and grammatical features learners typically control at each of the six levels. Founding partners are the University of Cambridge (Cambridge University Press,
English for Occupational Purposes: the branch of ESP that prepares learners for English-medium tasks in a specific workplace or profession. Sits alongside EAP in Hutchinson and Waters' (1987) tree diagram of ESP, with EAP serving study contexts and EOP serving job contexts.
Epenthesis is the insertion of a sound into a word, either historically as part of a sound change or synchronically as a repair strategy when a speaker meets a sequence the language disprefers. Vowel epenthesis is sometimes called anaptyxis; consonant epenthesis is sometimes called excrescence. The
An eponym is a word formed from the name of a real or fictional person, place, or character. The category covers nouns (sandwich, boycott, guillotine, leotard), verbs (to mesmerise, to bowdlerise, to galvanise), and adjectives (draconian, machiavellian, kafkaesque, platonic). The term derives from G
Error Analysis (EA) is the systematic study of errors made by second language learners, with the aim of understanding the processes underlying L2 acquisition. The field was established by Pit Corder's seminal 1967 paper "The Significance of Learners' Errors" (published in International Review of App
Error correction techniques are the range of methods teachers use to address errors in learner production. The choice of technique depends on the type of error, the activity stage, the learning aim, and the individual learner. Effective error correction is selective, well-timed, and varied: not a on
In ELT and SLA, not all non-target forms are the same. The three-way distinction between errors, mistakes, and slips, rooted in Corder (1967) and refined by Edge (1989), has practical consequences for how teachers respond to learner language.
ESA (Engage–Study–Activate) is a lesson framework proposed by Jeremy Harmer in How to Teach English (1998) and refined in The Practice of English Language Teaching (2001, subsequent editions). It was designed as a more flexible alternative to PPP, retaining the idea of distinct lesson phases but all
English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is an approach to English language teaching in which every decision about content and method is driven by the learner's reason for learning. Unlike general English, where aims are broad and learner populations heterogeneous, ESP assumes that a well-defined target
Estuary English is an accent of south-east England intermediate between Received Pronunciation and the traditional London (Cockney) accent. The label was coined by David Rosewarne in an article in the Times Educational Supplement on 19 October 1984, and described an emerging variety associated with
A variance-explained effect size for ANOVA designs. Eta-squared (η²) is the proportion of total variance in the dependent variable accounted for by an independent variable, computed as SS_effect / SS_total. Values range from 0 to 1, where 0 indicates no variance explained by the factor and 1 indicat
Ethnography is a qualitative research approach involving prolonged, immersive engagement with a social group to understand its cultural practices, beliefs, and behaviours from the inside. Rooted in anthropology, ethnography has been adapted for applied linguistics as classroom ethnography and lingui
Etymology is the study of the origin and historical development of words: how a lexical item came into a language, what earlier forms it descends from, and how its phonological, morphological, and semantic shape has changed over time. The term itself entered English in the late 14th century from Gre
A learner-owned document developed by the Council of Europe's Modern Languages Division to record, reflect on, and demonstrate language learning across a lifetime. The ELP was launched in 2001 during the European Year of Languages, after a pilot phase that ran in fifteen member states between 1998 a
Evelyn Hatch is Professor Emerita in the UCLA Department of TESL/Applied Linguistics, where she did most of her career. She trained across fields — BA political science, MA linguistics, PhD education — and that breadth shows in the way her work reframed SLA in the 1970s.
The existential there construction (There is/are + NP) introduces new entities into discourse. It is an information-structure device, not a locative; the there is a dummy (expletive) subject with no referential meaning.
A brief end-of-lesson task in which students write short responses to a prompt, providing the teacher with immediate formative data on what was learned. The "ticket" is handed in as students leave, hence the name. A simple, low-preparation form of Formative Assessment that directly informs planning
A true experiment is the gold standard for establishing causal relationships. It requires three elements: (1) random assignment of participants to conditions, (2) manipulation of an independent variable (the treatment), and (3) a control or comparison group. When these conditions hold, differences o
Explication de texte is a method of close textual analysis originating in French education, where it has been a staple of literature and language instruction since the 19th century. In language teaching, it involves the systematic, line-by-line analysis of a literary or expository text: examining vo
Explicit learning is the conscious, intentional acquisition of language rules and forms. The learner is aware that they are learning, can typically verbalise what they have learned, and the resulting knowledge is accessible to conscious reflection. It contrasts with implicit learning, where knowledg
Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) identifies the latent factor structure that underlies a set of observed variables when no prior structure is imposed. It is used to reduce many indicators to a smaller number of underlying dimensions and to generate hypotheses for subsequent testing with confirmator
Exploratory Practice (EP) is a form of classroom inquiry developed by Dick Allwright from the mid-1990s onward. It rejects the two standard models of research on teaching (research done to teachers by outside academics, and action research that asks teachers to add a research project to their teachi
Exploratory talk is tentative, thinking-in-progress talk in which learners try out ideas, revise them, and build understanding together. The term comes from Douglas Barnes's From Communication to Curriculum (1976), where it is contrasted with presentational talk: finished, rehearsed, fit for assessm
Large-quantity, self-selected listening at a comfortable comprehension level, undertaken primarily for enjoyment and general understanding. The listening counterpart of Sustained Silent Reading, grounded in the same principle: acquisition accelerates when learners process large volumes of comprehens
Extensive reading is sustained, broadly enjoyable reading of large quantities of text at or below the learner's current level, with comprehension rather than study as the primary goal. It stands in deliberate contrast to intensive reading, where short passages are dissected for language and comprehe
External validity is the degree to which research findings can be generalised beyond the specific participants, settings, and conditions of the study. A study with high external validity produces results that hold across different populations, contexts, and times.
Deliberate management of the teacher's gaze to nominate respondents, monitor engagement, signal acknowledgement, and hold attention. A trained skill rather than a natural reflex; novice teachers tend to look mostly at the front rows or the strongest learners, leaving large portions of the room unsca
Eye-tracking is a research method that records where on a screen or page a reader's eyes land, for how long, and in what order. In second-language research it has become the default tool for asking questions about attention, processing, and the implicit-explicit interface that earlier self-report an
Face is the public self-image that every individual claims in social interaction. The concept originates in Goffman (1967), who defined it as "the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact." Brown and Levinson (19
Face validity is whether a test looks like it measures what it claims to measure, from the perspective of the people who encounter it, including test-takers, teachers, administrators, parents, and other stakeholders. It is not a technical measurement property but a perception-based judgment about te
Falling and rising tones are the two basic pitch movements in English intonation. They operate on the Tonic Syllable, the most prominent syllable in a Tone Unit, and carry core communicative meaning. While the full system includes fall-rise, rise-fall, and level tones, these two are the essential st
A false friend is a word that looks or sounds similar across two languages but differs in meaning, leading bilinguals or learners to assume a correspondence that is not there. The term is a calque of French faux ami, coined by Koessler and Derocquigny in Les Faux Amis ou les Trahisons du Vocabulaire
A falsifiable distractor is an incorrect option in a multiple-choice item that a candidate with partial understanding can plausibly select. The term names the operational target of distractor design: an option must be wrong, but wrong in a way that requires the target sub-skill to detect. Distractor
Unplanned spoken discourse is the language of real-time talk: conversation, interview, vox-pop, service encounter, casual narrative. Speakers compose under online cognitive load, monitor uptake, and revise mid-utterance. The resulting surface differs systematically from written prose and from the Sc
The distinction between finite and non-finite clauses is fundamental to English Syntax. It determines how clauses combine, what grammatical roles they can fill, and where learners encounter persistent difficulty.
The fishbowl is a discussion technique in which a small inner circle of students discusses a topic while an outer circle observes silently, then roles switch or the outer circle provides feedback. It combines active speaking practice with structured observation, making it effective for modelling dis
Fixed expressions are multi-word sequences that permit no or virtually no variation in their form. They are stored and retrieved as unanalysed wholes rather than generated from grammatical rules. They sit at the most frozen end of the Formulaic Language continuum.
A materials-design technique in which selected linguistic features are made perceptually or positionally prominent so that learners are more likely to notice them and process them for acquisition. Tomlinson developed the term as part of his text-driven, awareness-raising approach to coursebook writi
A readability index that maps a text to a 0–100 ease scale using two surface predictors: average sentence length and average syllables per word. Higher scores mean easier text. Published by Rudolph Flesch in 1948 in the Journal of Applied Psychology paper A New Readability Yardstick, and the parent
A readability index that maps a text to a U.S. school grade level using two surface features: average sentence length and average word length in syllables. Developed by J. Peter Kincaid and colleagues for the U.S. Navy in 1975, originally to assess the readability of technical training manuals. It i
An instructional model in which the traditional sequence is inverted: input and presentation happen outside class (typically through video, reading, or online materials), while class time is devoted to practice, interaction, and application. The teacher shifts from lecturer to facilitator, and conta
Florence "Flo" Davies was a British applied linguist and reading specialist associated with the University of Birmingham and, later, the Open University. Her work sits at the junction of ESP/EAP and the teaching of reading in both L1 and L2 contexts. She is best known in ELT as co-author (with Tim J
Florencia G. Henshaw is an Argentinian-born language educator and researcher based in the United States, best known for work at the intersection of Spanish pedagogy, SLA theory, and teacher-facing communication. Associated with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she has built a profile tha
Fluency is the ability to produce language smoothly, naturally, and with appropriate speed, without excessive hesitation or breakdown in communication. It is one of the two fundamental dimensions of language production (alongside Accuracy) and is central to how listeners perceive a speaker's profici
Fluency activities are speaking tasks that prioritise smooth, meaningful communication over linguistic accuracy. Their purpose is to develop the ability to convey messages in real time, drawing on all available language resources. They form the "freer practice" end of most lesson frameworks and are
A moderated small-group discussion designed to elicit qualitative data through participant interaction. Typically six to ten participants meet for sixty to ninety minutes around a structured set of questions, with a moderator guiding the conversation and an assistant taking field notes. The defining
Focus on Form (FonF) is a concept introduced by Michael Long (1991) to describe a particular way of attending to language form during meaning-focused communication. Long's contribution was not just terminological: it drew a principled distinction between three fundamentally different orientations to
Focus on FormS (FonFs) is one pole of Michael Long's (1991) three-way distinction between orientations to grammar in language teaching. It refers to the deliberate, pre-planned teaching of discrete linguistic forms as the primary organising principle of instruction. The capitalised "S" is not a typo
Folk etymology is the historical process by which speakers reshape an unfamiliar word into a more familiar form, replacing opaque elements with recognisable morphemes. The result is a new spelling, pronunciation, or morphological structure that fits the speakers' lexicon better than the original did
Form-focused instruction (FFI) is any planned or incidental instructional activity intended to induce language learners to pay attention to linguistic form (Rod Ellis, 2001). It is a cover term for what has variously been called "analytic teaching" (Stern, 1990), "focus-on-form," "focus-on-forms" (M
Formative assessment is assessment carried out during the teaching and learning process, with the primary purpose of improving learning rather than measuring it. It answers the question: Where are learners now, and what do they need next?
Formulaic language refers to multi-word sequences that are stored and retrieved from memory as unanalysed wholes rather than generated word by word from grammar rules. Alison Wray (2002, Formulaic Language and the Lexicon) provided the definitive account: a formulaic sequence is "a sequence, continu
Fortis and lenis are terms describing the degree of articulatory effort in consonant production, offering an alternative to the traditional "voiceless/voiced" distinction for English obstruents. Many phoneticians argue this classification better captures the actual phonetic reality of English.
Fortition (Latin fortis "strong") is the opposite of lenition: a sound change or process by which a consonant becomes phonetically stronger — longer, more constricted, more obstruent. Typical fortition trajectories run glide → fricative → affricate → stop, or move a sound from a sonorant class towar
A curriculum-development logic that begins with selection and sequencing of input (the language content learners will encounter), then determines methodology, and only at the end specifies assessment. Named and contrasted with central and backward design by Richards (2013, "Curriculum approaches in
Fossilization (Selinker 1972) refers to the permanent cessation of Interlanguage development in specific linguistic features, despite continued exposure, motivation, and opportunity. The learner's interlanguage stabilizes prematurely; certain errors become fixed and resistant to correction.
A curriculum design principle proposed by Paul Nation (2007) stating that a well-balanced language programme should include roughly equal time across four strands: meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning, and fluency development. The framework provides a simple but p
Frances Christie is an Australian applied linguist and educationist, Emeritus Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Melbourne and Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney. She is a central figure in the Sydney School of genre pedagogy, applying Halliday's systemic f
A free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand on its own as a complete word, without needing to attach to anything else. Book, run, happy, the, and, if are all free morphemes: each is a minimal meaning-bearing unit and each can occur as an independent word in a sentence (Aronoff & Fudeman 2011; Haspe
Free writing is the practice of writing continuously for a set period without stopping to edit, correct, or worry about form. The writer keeps the pen moving (or keys typing) regardless of quality, coherence, or correctness. Quantity and flow take priority over accuracy.
Freer practice refers to activities in which learners use language with minimal constraints to communicate genuine or simulated meaning. The focus shifts from accuracy of a specific form to fluency, communicative effectiveness, and the integration of multiple language systems. Role plays, discussion
Frequency lists are ranked inventories of words derived from corpora, ordered by how often they occur. They are foundational tools for vocabulary selection, materials grading, and measuring text difficulty in ELT.
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing the airstream through a narrow constriction in the vocal tract, creating audible turbulence (friction). Unlike plosives, there is no complete closure; the airflow is continuous.
Functional Grammar, more precisely Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), is a theory of language developed by M.A.K. Halliday (1985/1994, An Introduction to Functional Grammar). Unlike Chomskyan generative grammar, which treats language as an abstract cognitive system, SFL starts from the premise t
The Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (FDH), proposed by Robert Bley-Vroman (1989, sharpened 1990), claims that child first-language acquisition and adult second-language acquisition are driven by qualitatively different mechanisms. Children acquire their L1 through a domain-specific language facult
An activity in which students' work is displayed around the classroom and learners circulate to read, evaluate, and respond to each other's output. The name derives from the parallel with visiting an art gallery: learners move at their own pace, examining "exhibits" (posters, texts, projects) and en
Gamification is the application of game design elements, such as points, levels, badges, leaderboards, competition, narrative, and reward systems, to non-game contexts, including language learning. It aims to increase motivation, engagement, and persistence by leveraging the psychological mechanisms
Gary Buck is an American applied linguist and the field's central figure in second-language listening assessment. His 2001 monograph Assessing Listening (Cambridge University Press) supplied the framework that operational listening tests, research reviews, and subsequent test-design textbooks have b
Gemination is the lengthening of a consonant, typically occurring at a word or morpheme boundary where the same consonant ends one word and begins the next. The result is not two separate articulations but a single prolonged closure or friction.
General American (GA, also GenAm) is the cover term for the non-regional, non-stigmatised accent of American English used as the reference variety in US ELT publishing, network broadcasting, and most learner dictionaries. It is an idealisation rather than a single uniform accent; Wells (1982) descri
A frequency-based inventory of approximately 2,000 high-utility English word families, published as Michael West's A General Service List of English Words (Longman, Green & Co., 1953). For decades the GSL was the default core-vocabulary reference for ELT syllabus design, vocabulary control in graded
Generalizability theory (G-theory) is a framework for analysing measurement error in which multiple sources — raters, tasks, occasions, criteria — are estimated jointly through analysis-of-variance procedures rather than collapsed into a single reliability coefficient. The framework was set out by C
A genre is a category of text defined by its social purpose, conventional structure, and characteristic linguistic features. Reports, narratives, recounts, instructions, arguments, explanations, letters of complaint, academic essays, and news articles are all genres with predictable patterns that bo
The Genre-Based Approach (GBA) to language and literacy teaching was developed primarily by the "Sydney School" in Australia during the 1980s-90s, led by J.R. Martin, Joan Rothery, and Frances Christie, drawing on M.A.K. Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Genre is defined as a "staged
Course materials built around socially recognised text types — recounts, reports, expositions, procedures, narratives — rather than around grammatical structures or topics. The approach treats genres as the primary unit of teaching and learning, and shapes activities around the staged purposes that
Geoff Jordan is a prominent figure in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) and Applied Linguistics. He holds a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition and has worked at ESADE, Barcelona, for 28 years, initially as a language teacher and later as Director of Studies[^1][^2]. Currently, he is an
The Gibbs Reflective Cycle is a six-stage model for structured reflection on experience, developed by Graham Gibbs in Learning by Doing: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods, published in 1988 by the Further Education Unit at Oxford Polytechnic. Originally written for higher-education teaching s
Gisela Granena is an SLA researcher based at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona, and one of the researchers who pushed the language-aptitude literature past the 1960s MLAT framework into a serious cognitive account. Her work argues that aptitude is not a single construct but at least t
Gist listening is listening for the overall message or main point of a spoken text, understanding what it is about rather than catching every word. It is the listening equivalent of gist reading/skimming and should always be the first while-listening task in a receptive skills lesson.
Gist reading is reading quickly to understand the overall meaning or main idea of a text, without attending to every word or detail. It is essentially synonymous with Skimming and represents one of the most important Reading Subskills: the ability to grasp what a text is about before engaging with i
The given-new principle states that speakers and writers tend to place known (given) information before unknown (new) information within a clause. This ordering principle, also called information structure, drives word order choices, determines where stress falls in speech, and motivates the use of
Giving instructions is the skill of communicating task requirements to learners clearly, concisely, and in a way they can act on. It looks simple. It isn't. Unclear instructions are probably the most frequent cause of failed activities: the task itself may be excellent, but if students don't underst
The provision of brief meaning supports for selected words inside or alongside a reading text — typically as marginal notes, footnotes, inline parentheses, or hover tooltips in digital materials. Glosses lower the lexical threshold of a text without rewriting it, letting learners process unfamiliar
The glottal stop, IPA [ʔ], is a voiceless plosive produced by complete closure of the vocal folds, which interrupts the airstream entirely before being released. Because the closure is at the glottis itself, no supralaryngeal articulator is involved.
Two levels of intent in course design. Goals state the broad, long-range outcomes a course aspires to; objectives break those goals into specific, observable, short-range targets that classroom work can deliver and assessment can verify.
Graded language is language that a teacher (or material) adjusts to match the learner's proficiency level. It is one of the most fundamental classroom skills in ELT: the ability to speak at a level that learners can understand without oversimplifying to the point where the input becomes unnatural or
A book written or adapted specifically for language learners, with vocabulary and grammar controlled to match a particular proficiency level. Graded readers are the primary resource for extensive reading programmes and a key vehicle for comprehensible input and incidental vocabulary acquisition.
How publishers build graded readers: the craft decisions behind vocabulary control, grammar grading, readability measurement, and the treatment of unknown words.
How content items are ordered within a syllabus. Grading = grouping items by difficulty level. Sequencing = deciding the order of presentation.
Graham V. Crookes is Professor in the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, and the clearest English-language advocate for critical language pedagogy in mainstream ELT journals. His career tracks a recognisable shape: conventional high-school teaching in London
A polemical term coined by Scott Thornbury at IATEFL Dublin (2000) for the artificially packaged, decontextualised grammar items that dominate the published EFL syllabus. The "McNuggets" image points at two faults at once: the discrete-item form (bite-sized, easily consumed) and the simulacral subst
The Grammar-Translation Method (GTM) is the oldest formalized approach to language teaching, originating in the teaching of Latin and Greek and dominant throughout the 19th century. It treats language as a system of rules to be memorised and applied through translation exercises. Its goal is not ora
Grammatical competence is knowledge of the formal properties of a language: its phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical systems. In Canale and Swain's (1980) model of communicative competence, it is the foundational component, necessary for communication but not sufficient on its own.
A grammaticality judgement test (GJT) presents participants with sentences and asks them to judge whether each is grammatically acceptable or unacceptable. It is one of the most widely used data collection instruments in SLA research, providing a window into learners' underlying linguistic knowledge
Grammaticalization is the historical process by which lexical items (content words with independent meaning) gradually become grammatical markers (function words or affixes with structural meaning). It is one of the primary mechanisms of language change, and it reveals language as a living, evolving
A visual tool for organising information and ideas, such as Venn diagrams, mind maps, flowcharts, T-charts, timelines, and similar frameworks. In ELT, graphic organisers serve as Scaffolding for thinking, reading, writing, and speaking, making abstract relationships visible and reducing the cognitiv
A qualitative methodology for generating theory inductively from systematically collected and analysed data, rather than verifying theory deduced from prior frameworks. Theory is "grounded" in the sense that categories, concepts, and their relationships emerge through close engagement with the datas
The study of how individuals behave in groups and how groups develop, function, and influence their members. In ELT, group dynamics determine whether pair/group work succeeds or collapses.
A learner interaction format where three or more learners cooperate on a task, typically with assigned or emergent roles. Distinct from pair work in that group dynamics — turn distribution, role allocation, dominant voices — become a managed variable rather than incidental.
Guided discovery is an inductive teaching technique in which learners work out language rules, patterns, or meanings from carefully selected examples, guided by the teacher's questions rather than told explicitly. The teacher provides the data and the pathway; the learners do the cognitive work.
Guided writing occupies the middle ground between Controlled Writing and independent composition. Learners produce their own text, but with support structures such as model texts, frameworks, sentence starters, vocabulary banks, graphic organisers, or writing frames. The teacher provides enough scaf
A readability index that maps a text to a US-grade scale using sentence length and the percentage of complex words, defined as words of three or more syllables. Developed by Robert Gunning, a corporate writing consultant, and published in his 1952 book The Technique of Clear Writing. The name refers
The Hawthorne effect refers to the phenomenon whereby participants alter their behaviour because they know they are being studied, not because of the experimental treatment itself. Any observed improvement may reflect the novelty of participation, increased attention, or awareness of being observed
A direct, deterministic measure of Lexical Diversity introduced by McCarthy and Jarvis (2007) and validated in McCarthy and Jarvis (2010). HD-D — hypergeometric distribution of diversity — computes analytically what vocd-D approximates by random sampling, so it returns the same score on every run of
The controlled-vocabulary specification a graded-reader author writes to. Each band names a maximum number of headwords permitted in the text (typically 250, 400, 600, 800, 1200, 1800, 2500, 3000 in the major series), where a headword is a word family covering inflections and common derivations. The
A standardised mean-difference effect size that adjusts Cohen's d for small-sample upward bias. Hedges (1981) showed that the standard d-style estimator is biased upward in small samples and derived a correction factor, often written J(df), that approaches 1 as sample size grows. Hedges' g is comput
Hedging is the use of linguistic devices to indicate uncertainty, qualification, or caution about a claim. In academic discourse, hedges signal that a proposition is presented as opinion, interpretation, or probability rather than established fact. Ken Hyland (1998, Hedging in Scientific Research Ar
Helen de Silva Joyce is an Australian applied linguist and TESOL researcher who spent the bulk of her career translating Sydney School genre theory into practical curriculum for adult migrant English. Much of that work happened through the National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research (
Henry Widdowson is a British applied linguist whose career helped define what applied linguistics could look like when it took pedagogy seriously without becoming merely practical. Associated with the University of London, the University of Vienna, and major developments in English for Specific Purp
A heritage language is a minority or immigrant language acquired by a speaker as a first language in the home but later overtaken by the dominant societal language, producing a bilingual whose competence in the home language diverges from monolingual baselines. The heritage speaker is neither a typi
A heritage language learner (HLL) is "a student who is raised in a home where a non-English language is spoken, who speaks or merely understands the heritage language and who is, to some degree, bilingual in English and the heritage language" (Valdés, 2000, p. 1). The term captures learners with a f
The implicit values, norms, behaviours, and worldviews that schooling transmits alongside its official content. Term coined by Philip W. Jackson in Life in Classrooms (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968) on the basis of ethnographic observation in U.S. elementary classrooms.
Nation (2001, 2013) divides vocabulary into frequency bands based on how often Word Families occur in large corpora. This classification has profound implications for curriculum design: the most frequent 2,000–3,000 word families deserve intensive teaching; beyond that, learners need strategies rath
High-stakes testing refers to any assessment whose results carry significant consequences for test takers, institutions, or programmes. University admission, immigration decisions, professional certification, and scholarship awards: when a test score opens or closes a door, the stakes are high.
Hitomi Masuhara is a Japanese applied linguist based in the UK at the University of Liverpool, where she directs the MA in Applied Linguistics and the MA in TESOL. A founding member and Secretary of MATSDA, she is the long-running collaborator with Brian Tomlinson at the centre of the materials-deve
Homonymy describes words that are identical in form (spelling, pronunciation, or both) but unrelated in meaning. Unlike Polysemy, where multiple meanings share a historical or semantic connection, homonyms are etymologically distinct words that happen to have converged in form.
Hyponymy is a hierarchical sense relation in which the meaning of one word (the hyponym) is included within the meaning of another, more general word (the hypernym or superordinate). It is the "is a kind of" relationship: a rose is a kind of flower; a hammer is a kind of tool.
The International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language is a UK-registered professional charity for teachers and teacher educators in English Language Teaching. Founded in 1967, it operates as a global membership association linking, developing, and supporting ELT professionals th
An idiolect is an individual's unique variety of language: their personal combination of pronunciation habits, vocabulary preferences, grammatical patterns, discourse style, and pragmatic tendencies. No two speakers are linguistically identical, even within the same dialect, sociolect, and family.
An idiom is a multi-word expression whose meaning cannot be fully predicted from the meanings of its individual words. Kick the bucket means "die," not literally kicking a bucket. Idioms are a subset of Formulaic Language: fixed or semi-fixed sequences stored and retrieved as wholes.
IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is a score-based English proficiency test, not a pass/fail qualification. Launched in 1989 as a joint venture between three co-owners, British Council, Cambridge Assessment English (then UCLES), and IDP: IELTS Australia, it replaced the earlier B
Illocutionary force is the communicative intention behind an utterance: what the speaker means to accomplish by saying something. The concept originates in J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words (1962) and was systematised by John Searle (1969, 1976).
Implicature is meaning that is conveyed by an utterance but not explicitly stated. The concept was formalised by H.P. Grice (1975) in his William James Lectures, published as "Logic and Conversation." Understanding implicature is central to Pragmatics and a key component of Pragmatic Competence.
Implicit learning is the acquisition of knowledge about the structure of a complex stimulus environment without intention to learn and without awareness of what has been learned (Reber, 1967). In SLA, it refers to the gradual, unconscious extraction of patterns and regularities from input through ex
The distinction between implicit and explicit L2 knowledge, and whether one can become the other, is arguably the most consequential theoretical question in SLA. Rod Ellis (2004, 2009) systematised this distinction and developed psychometric instruments to measure each type independently.
Imposter syndrome names the persistent internal experience of believing oneself less competent than others perceive one to be, despite evidence to the contrary, accompanied by a fear of being "found out" as a fraud. Among teachers it is unusually common, sustained by the asymmetry between the public
Incidental learning refers to the acquisition of linguistic knowledge, most commonly vocabulary, without the conscious intention to learn it. The learner's primary focus is on meaning (reading a text, following a conversation), and new language is picked up as a by-product. Hulstijn (2001, 2003) is
Incidental vocabulary learning is the acquisition of words as a by-product of another activity, typically reading or listening for meaning, rather than through deliberate study. The learner's primary attention is on the message, not on the vocabulary itself.
Individual differences (IDs) in SLA refer to the range of cognitive, affective, and personality variables that cause learners exposed to the same input and instruction to achieve different outcomes. Understanding IDs explains why a single classroom can produce such varied levels of attainment and wh
These are two fundamental directions for presenting language in the classroom. Deductive teaching moves from rule to examples; inductive teaching moves from examples to rule. The distinction applies to grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and discourse: any area where patterns can be made explicit.
Inflection is the morphological process by which a single lexeme takes different grammatical forms according to syntactic context. Unlike derivation, inflection does not create a new lexeme; walk, walks, walked, walking are four forms of one verb, not four separate words (Plag 2003; Haspelmath & Sim
A task type in which one participant holds information that another needs, creating a genuine communicative purpose. Classified by Prabhu (1987) as one of three gap-based task types, alongside Opinion Gap and Reasoning Gap.
An activity requiring learners to convert information from one form to another: text to diagram, graph to written description, listening to note-taking, table to paragraph, or any combination. The transformation process demands genuine comprehension: learners cannot transfer information they do not
Informed consent is the ethical principle that research participants must understand the nature, purpose, and procedures of a study and voluntarily agree to take part. It is a non-negotiable requirement in modern research, enforced by institutional review boards (IRBs) or ethics committees.
An initialism is an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of a multi-word name and pronounced letter by letter rather than as a single word. Standard examples include FBI /ˌɛfˌbiːˈaɪ/, CEO /ˌsiːˌiːˈoʊ/, HTML /ˌeɪtʃˌtiːˌɛmˈɛl/, BBC, USA, DVD, and ATM. The word itself is first attested in 1899
Braj Kachru's (1985) Three Circles model is the most influential framework for describing the global spread of English. It classifies countries according to how English functions in each society.
Input is the language data that learners are exposed to: everything they hear, read, or otherwise encounter in the target language. It is the raw material of acquisition and arguably the single most important factor in SLA. No theory of second language acquisition denies the necessity of input; the
Input enhancement (IE) is the deliberate manipulation of input to increase the perceptual salience of target linguistic features, making them more likely to be noticed and processed by learners. The term was introduced by Sharwood Smith (1991, 1993), who argued that the gap between input and intake
Krashen's Input Hypothesis (1977, formalized in The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications, 1985) is the engine of the Monitor Model. It claims that acquisition occurs when learners receive comprehensible input containing structures slightly beyond their current competence, expressed as i+1. Spea
Input Processing (IP) is a theory developed by Bill VanPatten (1993, 1996, 2004) that explains how second language learners derive intake from input. While Krashen's Input Hypothesis claims that comprehensible input drives acquisition, it says nothing about how learners actually process that input.
Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) is a learner-centred approach in which learning is driven by questions and investigation rather than by teacher presentation of content. Students formulate questions, gather and analyse data, construct explanations, and communicate findings. The emphasis falls on the pro
In-Service Education and Training is the standard UK term for ongoing, employer-organised professional development of teachers already in post. The acronym names both the activity (training delivered during employment) and the most familiar institutional unit, the INSET day, on which pupils are abse
A standing committee that reviews and oversees research involving human participants to ensure that risks are minimised, consent is genuine, and participants' rights and welfare are protected. Institutional Review Board (IRB) is the United States designation; the United Kingdom and much of Europe us
Instruction Checking Questions (ICQs) are short, closed questions a teacher asks after giving instructions to verify that learners understand what they need to do, not what the language means. They target procedure: who works with whom, how long they have, what the expected output is. If Concept Che
Instrumental motivation is the desire to learn a language for practical, utilitarian purposes: career advancement, academic requirements, higher salary, passing an exam, or gaining access to information. It was first distinguished from integrative motivation by Gardner and Lambert (1959, 1972) withi
Teaching that combines two or more language skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) within a single lesson or activity, reflecting how language is used in real-world communication. The opposite of discrete-skill or segregated-skill instruction, where each skill is practised in isolation.
Integrative motivation is the desire to learn a language because of a genuine interest in the target language community: its people, culture, and way of life. The learner wants to interact with and potentially become part of the community. The concept was introduced by Gardner and Lambert (1959, 197
Intelligibility refers to how successfully a speaker's message is received and understood by a listener. Smith and Nelson (1985) proposed a three-level distinction that has become the standard framework in ELF and World Englishes research.
Intensive listening involves focused listening to short audio extracts for detailed comprehension and language analysis. It is the listening counterpart of Intensive Reading: teacher-guided, task-driven, and aimed at developing specific Listening Subskills rather than building general fluency.
Intensive reading is the close, careful reading of short texts for detailed comprehension and language study. Where Sustained Silent Reading prioritises quantity, speed, and pleasure, intensive reading prioritises depth, accuracy, and analysis. It is the dominant mode of reading work in most ELT cla
Intentional vocabulary learning is deliberate, focused study of vocabulary where the learner's explicit goal is to commit words to memory. It includes activities such as word card study, word list learning, dictionary use, and explicit classroom teaching of target items.
Inter-rater reliability is the degree of agreement between different raters scoring the same performance. When two examiners read the same essay or listen to the same speaking performance, do they arrive at the same score? If not, the scores reflect rater differences rather than test-taker ability,
Michael Long's Interaction Hypothesis (1981, revised 1996) accepts Krashen's claim that comprehensible input is necessary but rejects the claim that bare input is enough. Acquisition is best supported when input becomes comprehensible through interaction, specifically through the negotiation of mean
Interaction patterns describe who talks to whom during a classroom activity. They are the social architecture of a lesson: changing the pattern changes the dynamics, the amount of language produced, and the cognitive demands on learners. Skilled teachers vary patterns throughout a lesson to maintain
Interactional authenticity is the second of two complementary qualities in Bachman and Palmer's authenticity framework (Language Testing in Practice, 1996), paired with Situational Authenticity. Where situational authenticity asks whether the test task looks like a real-world task, interactional aut
The Interdependence Hypothesis is Cummins's claim that academic and conceptual proficiency in a bilingual's two languages is not stored separately but draws on a single, shared cognitive base. First formulated in the late 1970s and elaborated across his subsequent career, the hypothesis underlies th
Interlanguage (IL) is the term coined by Selinker (1972) for the evolving linguistic system that L2 learners construct on their way toward the target language. It is neither the L1 nor the L2 but a system in its own right, with its own internal logic.
In speaking assessment, the interlocutor is the examiner who conducts the face-to-face interaction with the candidate. Because spoken language is co-constructed, the interlocutor's behaviour directly shapes the language the candidate produces, making the role central to test validity and reliability
An interlocutor frame is the scripted set of questions, prompts, instructions, and rubrics that an examiner follows during a speaking test. It ensures that every candidate, regardless of when, where, or by whom they are tested, participates in essentially the same assessment event.
Internal consistency reliability is the degree to which the items of a test measure the same underlying construct, estimated from a single administration rather than from repeated testing. It is the most widely reported reliability index in language testing because it requires no second occasion and
Internal validity is the degree to which a study's results can be attributed to the treatment or independent variable rather than to confounding factors. A study with high internal validity allows the researcher to claim that the treatment caused the observed outcome. It is the fundamental requireme
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation devised by the International Phonetic Association as a standard written representation for the sounds of speech across all human languages. Its symbols draw mostly from the Latin and Greek scripts, supplemented by
Intertextuality is the way texts reference, incorporate, transform, and build upon other texts. No text exists in isolation; every text is shaped by the texts that preceded it and shapes those that follow.
Intonation is the melody of speech: the way pitch rises, falls, and moves across an utterance. It is not about individual sounds (phonemes) or the stress of individual words, but about the pitch contour that stretches over phrases and sentences. Intonation carries meaning that words alone cannot: th
Intra-rater reliability is the consistency of judgements made by a single rater across time, items, or comparable performances. Where inter-rater reliability asks whether different raters agree, intra-rater reliability asks whether the same rater agrees with herself. Both are facets of measurement e
Intrusion is the insertion of a sound between two words to ease the transition from one vowel to the next. It is a natural feature of connected speech, functioning alongside linking, elision, and assimilation. The inserted sound is not represented in spelling and is not deliberate; it arises from th
Intuitive simplification is the dominant industry practice of writing or rewriting texts for second-language readers based on the author's judgement of what learners at a given level can handle, rather than by applying a numerical readability formula. Graded readers, ELT coursebook passages, and lev
Inversion is the reversal of normal subject-verb word order in English (SVO). Several types exist, each serving different grammatical or discourse functions.
Investment is Bonny Norton's sociologically informed alternative to motivation in second-language acquisition research. Where motivation theory asks how strongly a learner wants to learn, investment asks what the learner stands to gain, in symbolic and material terms, from acquiring the target langu
Item analysis is the statistical examination of test items after administration to evaluate their quality. It answers three questions about each item: How difficult was it? Did it distinguish between stronger and weaker students? Were the wrong answer options (distractors) effective? The results gui
An item bank is a structured store of test items along with the metadata required to assemble valid test forms from them: item statistics, calibration parameters, content tags, format type, exposure history, and provenance. A bank is not just a list of questions; it is a managed asset whose value co
Item difficulty (also called the facility value or p-value) is the proportion of test takers who answer an item correctly. Despite its name, a higher value means an easier item.
Item discrimination measures how effectively a test item differentiates between high-ability and low-ability test takers. A good item is one that strong candidates tend to get right and weak candidates tend to get wrong. An item that everyone gets right, everyone gets wrong, or that strong and weak
Item response theory (IRT) is a family of psychometric models in which the probability of a particular response to an item is expressed as a function of the examinee's latent ability and the item's parameters. Where classical test theory works at the level of total scores and assumes a single error
James Robert Martin (born 1950) is a Canadian-born linguist based at the University of Sydney, where Michael Halliday recruited him to the newly founded Linguistics Department in 1977. He holds a Personal Chair as Professor of Linguistics and is the principal theorist behind the so-called Sydney Sch
Jack Croft Richards is a New Zealand-born applied linguist whose career has spanned teaching, teacher education, curriculum design, and an extraordinarily prolific publishing life. Born in 1943, he studied at Victoria University of Wellington and Laval University (PhD, 1972), and has since held posi
James P. Lantolf is an American applied linguist and Professor Emeritus at Pennsylvania State University whose career is closely identified with the sociocultural turn in SLA. He is the scholar most strongly associated with bringing Vygotskian thinking into sustained conversation with second-languag
Jan H. Hulstijn is a Dutch applied linguist and Professor Emeritus of Second Language Acquisition at the University of Amsterdam. He has spent his career on the cognitive mechanics of L2 vocabulary learning, implicit and explicit knowledge, and, more recently, a broader theory of "basic" and "higher
Jane Willis is a British ELT author and teacher educator whose career has combined school teaching, international work, teacher training, and a long publishing life. She taught in several countries, worked extensively in teacher education, and became one of the names most closely associated with pra
Jason Anderson is a figure in English Language Teaching (ELT) known for championing coursebook-driven, synthetic-syllabus approaches and for proposing a series of lesson frameworks. He holds a doctorate and has published in ELT Journal, Modern English Teacher, and various IATEFL SIG newsletters.
Jennifer (Jenny) Hammond is an Australian applied linguist whose work has done more than almost anyone's to turn scaffolding from a metaphor into a usable classroom theory for EAL learners. She was Associate Professor in Language and Literacy at the University of Technology Sydney from 1995 to 2008
Jeremy Harmer is a British ELT writer, trainer, and speaker whose career has been unusually visible across teacher training, methodology publishing, and coursebook writing. He trained and first taught through International House, worked in Mexico and the UK, completed an MA in applied linguistics at
Jerome Bruner (1915-2016) was an American psychologist and educational thinker whose career stretched across the cognitive revolution, developmental psychology, and educational reform. Though not an ELT specialist, he became indispensable to language education through ideas that teachers absorbed so
A cooperative learning technique in which each learner holds a unique piece of information that others need, creating genuine information gaps and positive interdependence. Developed by Elliot Aronson in 1971 at the University of Texas, Austin, originally to reduce racial conflict in newly desegrega
Jim Cummins is an Irish-Canadian applied linguist and Professor Emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. For half a century he has been the most prominent voice in North American bilingual education, anchoring both its theoretical core and much of its
Jim Scrivener is a British ELT teacher trainer and writer whose books have trained a very large portion of the global CELTA- and DELTA-taking population. He has worked extensively with Bell Educational Services and has taught and trained in the UK, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere.
Joan Rothery is an Australian educational linguist who worked in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Sydney and became, alongside J.R. Martin, one of the founding figures of the Sydney School of genre pedagogy. Her reputation rests less on solo-authored monographs than on long, conseq
John Fanselow took his PhD at Teachers College, Columbia University in 1971 and joined the faculty there, where classroom observation and the analysis of interaction became the spine of his career. He founded the off-campus Teachers College MA programme in Tokyo, which ran for decades and trained a
John Field is a British applied linguist whose research has reshaped how L2 listening is taught and tested. He holds a PhD from Cambridge on lexical segmentation in L1 and L2 listening, teaches psycholinguistics and child language at the University of Reading, is attached to the Faculty of Education
John M. Norris is a language-assessment and SLA researcher whose career has moved between the University of Hawai'i, Georgetown University, Northern Arizona University, and Educational Testing Service, where he managed TOEFL research. At Georgetown he was founding director of the Assessment and Eval
John H. Schumann is an American applied linguist and Professor Emeritus of Applied Linguistics at UCLA. His career moved from a classic SLA starting point — the acquisition data of a single learner — to neurobiology, affect, and the biological substrates of language learning.
Journal writing is the regular practice of informal, sustained writing on personal, academic, or reflective topics. In ELT, it serves primarily as a Fluency development tool, building writing speed, confidence, and the habit of expressing ideas in the target language without the pressure of grading
Julian Bamford is a British-born EFL teacher and researcher long based in Japan, best known as the co-architect (with Richard Day) of the modern case for extensive reading in second language education. He taught for many years at Bunkyo University in Japan and has been a driving figure in the Extens
Jürgen M. Meisel is emeritus Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Hamburg, with a later affiliation at the University of Calgary, and one of the chief editors of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. He sits at the hinge between two traditions that do not always meet: the German SLA p
Kenneth Hyltenstam (b. 1945) is Professor Emeritus of Bilingualism at Stockholm University, where he founded and long directed the Centre for Research on Bilingualism. He took his PhD in linguistics at Lund in 1978, moved to Stockholm in 1981 to build up the newly created bilingualism division, and
Kevin R. Gregg is Professor Emeritus at Momoyama Gakuin (St. Andrew's) University in Japan, and the most consistent philosophical voice inside SLA for treating theory construction as a serious obligation rather than a rhetorical choice. He trained as a linguist, read widely in philosophy of science,
Keyword analysis is a Corpus Linguistics technique that identifies words occurring with unusual frequency in a target corpus compared to a reference corpus. These statistically significant items, "keywords," reveal what a text or collection of texts is distinctively about, beyond what general Englis
The Knowledge Framework is Bernard Mohan's system for planning content-based and language-across-the-curriculum instruction. First set out in Language and Content (1986) and developed through decades of collaborative research with teachers, it treats an educational activity as a social practice — ac
The Krashen-Long debate is the theoretical disagreement that shapes how second-language materials are written. Stephen Krashen and Michael Long agreed comprehensible input is necessary for acquisition; they disagreed sharply on what makes it sufficient. That disagreement maps onto whether a material
A three-column graphic organiser, Know, Want to know, Learned, that activates prior knowledge, sets reading/listening purposes, and tracks learning. Developed by Donna Ogle (1986) in "K-W-L: A Teaching Model That Develops Active Reading of Expository Text," the strategy transforms passive reception
The question of whether and when to use learners' first language (L1) in the L2 classroom has been one of the most persistent debates in language teaching. The historical pendulum has swung from translation-heavy grammar-translation, through the strict L2-only policies of the Direct Method and CLT,
Dörnyei's L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS) reframes second-language motivation as a function of the learner's future self-image rather than affiliation with a target-language community. Proposed in The Psychology of the Language Learner (Dörnyei 2005, Routledge) and elaborated in Dörnyei & Ushiod
The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is the hypothetical innate mental faculty proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s to explain how children acquire a first language with such speed, uniformity, and apparent ease. The LAD is not a brain region but a theoretical construct: an inborn endowment that p
Language anxiety is a distinct form of anxiety specific to foreign/second language use. Horwitz, Horwitz, and Cope (1986) defined it as "a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviours related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learni
Language aptitude is the individual cognitive capacity for learning languages. It is the strongest and most consistent predictor of L2 learning rate and ultimate attainment among individual difference variables, accounting for substantial variance even when motivation, opportunity, and instruction a
Language attrition is the decline in proficiency in a language due to reduced use or contact. It can affect the L1 (in immigrants immersed in an L2 environment) or the L2 (when instruction or immersion ends). Crucially, attrition is not simply forgetting; it involves active restructuring of the ling
Explicit attention to how language works as a system, including its structures, functions, varieties, and social dimensions. Not grammar teaching per se, but the development of sensitivity to language as an object of inquiry. The concept encompasses awareness of phonology, morphology, syntax, semant
A language is dead when it has no living speakers. The death is rarely abrupt; it is the endpoint of a gradual process in which speakers shift to a more dominant language, transmission to children breaks down, and the original speech community contracts through demographic and political pressure. Cr
Language ego is a concept introduced by Alexander Guiora (Guiora et al., 1972) to describe the intimate relationship between language and identity. The core idea: a person's sense of self is deeply bound up with their language, and learning a new language requires developing a new mode of self-expre
A language function is what a speaker or writer does with language: the communicative purpose behind an utterance. Requesting, apologizing, suggesting, complaining, agreeing, disagreeing, inviting, refusing, giving advice, expressing obligation, narrating, persuading: these are all functions.
The published category of original or adapted texts written for second-language readers as engaging reading rather than as exercise material. The defining intent is literary: language learner literature aims to be read for pleasure, information, or absorption, not to be parsed for grammar work or co
Language planning and policy (LPP) refers to deliberate decisions made by governments, institutions, or other authorities about how languages are used, taught, standardised, and promoted. These decisions directly shape ELT contexts worldwide, determining who learns English, through what medium, and
Language rights are the rights of individuals and communities to use their own language, receive education in it, and not face discrimination based on their linguistic identity. They sit at the intersection of human rights, education policy, and sociolinguistics.
Language shift and language maintenance are opposing outcomes for minority or subordinate languages in contact situations.
Language transfer (also called cross-linguistic influence) is the effect of a learner's first language (or other previously acquired languages) on their production, comprehension, and development in the target language. It is one of the most consistently documented phenomena in SLA.
A language variety is any distinct form of a language, defined by a particular combination of linguistic features (phonological, grammatical, lexical). The term is deliberately neutral. It covers dialects, accents, sociolects, idiolects, registers, and styles without implying that any variety is sup
Languaging is Merrill Swain's reframing of language production as a tool for thinking, not just a product of it. Coined in Swain (2006) and developed across her later work, the term marks a deliberate shift from cognitive SLA (where output is data the system generates) to sociocultural SLA (where ta
Larry Selinker is an American applied linguist best known for coining the term interlanguage in his 1972 paper of the same name. He taught for many years at the University of Michigan and later at Birkbeck, University of London, and has worked across continents in a long career shaped by the single
Laurens "Larry" Vandergrift (1947–2015) was a Canadian applied linguist whose work made L2 listening a properly researchable skill instead of a testing artefact. He spent most of his career at the University of Ottawa's Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute, where he built a research program
A lateral is a consonant produced with the tongue tip making contact with the alveolar ridge (or other place of articulation) while air flows freely around one or both sides of the tongue. English has one lateral phoneme: /l/.
Learner autonomy is the capacity to take charge of one's own learning (Holec, 1981). It involves the ability to set goals, select materials and strategies, monitor progress, and evaluate outcomes. Autonomy is not a single behaviour but a capacity, a psychological orientation that enables self-direct
A learner corpus is a systematic, electronic collection of texts produced by second or foreign language learners. Unlike native-speaker corpora, learner corpora document Interlanguage, the developing language systems of L2 users, enabling large-scale analysis of error patterns, developmental feature
Learner training is the systematic instruction designed to help learners discover, practise, and refine effective strategies for learning a language. It aims to develop learners' awareness of themselves as learners, their understanding of the learning process, and their ability to select and deploy
Learner-centredness is a philosophical orientation that places the learner's needs, goals, preferences, and agency at the heart of curriculum design, lesson planning, and classroom interaction. It is not a method or technique but a principle that cuts across methodologies; a teacher using PPP, Task-
A Learning Management System (LMS) is software designed to create, deliver, manage, and track educational content and learner progress. Major platforms include Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas, Google Classroom, and Schoology.
Specific, measurable statements of what learners will be able to do as a result of instruction. Distinct from aims (broad course goals) and objectives (sometimes used interchangeably, sometimes distinguished as teacher-focused).
Learning strategies are the specific actions, behaviours, steps, or techniques learners use to enhance their own language learning (Oxford, 1990). They represent the learner's active contribution to the learning process: conscious or semi-conscious choices about how to approach, process, store, retr
Lenition (Latin lenis "weak") is a sound change or synchronic process by which a consonant becomes phonetically weaker — shorter, less constricted, more sonorous, or more vowel-like. Typical lenition trajectories run voiceless stop → voiced stop → fricative or approximant → glide → zero. Each step r
The main intended learning outcomes of a lesson: what learners will be able to do, know, or demonstrate by the end of the lesson that they could not do at the start. The lesson aim is the single most important element of lesson planning because everything else (staging, materials, timing, interactio
A reusable scaffold that fixes the categories a lesson plan must address — aims, learners, materials, procedure, anticipated problems — while leaving the content empty for the writer to fill. Templates standardise plans so colleagues, observers, and the teacher's future self can read them quickly, a
A written commentary, attached to a lesson plan, that explains why each major decision was made. Where the procedure says what the teacher and learners do, the rationale says why this aim, this material, this sequence, this interaction pattern, this length — and what alternatives were considered and
Lesson rehearsal is the practice of running through a lesson — or critical segments of it — before delivery, to test instructions, timings, board work, and likely learner responses. It is a routine feature of teacher preparation in pre-service training and a recognised technique in core-practices te
A discrete unit of lesson structure with a defined pedagogic function, a recognisable beginning and end, and an interaction pattern that distinguishes it from the stages around it. Stages are the building blocks of `Staging`, and most plan templates treat the stage as the row that gets named, timed,
Lesson Study (jugyou kenkyuu) is a collaborative professional development model originating in Japan, where it has been practised for over a century. A small group of teachers (typically 4–6) jointly plan a single "research lesson," one member teaches it while the others observe, and then the group
Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Soviet psychologist whose short life produced one of the longest afterlives in educational thought. He wrote on development, language, mediation, and culture in ways that later transformed psychology, pedagogy, and, by extension, language teaching.
The Lexical Approach was proposed by Michael Lewis in The Lexical Approach (1993) and further developed in Implementing the Lexical Approach (1997). Its central claim inverts the traditional grammar-vocabulary hierarchy: "Language consists of grammaticalised lexis, not lexicalised grammar."
A lexical chunk is any multi-word unit that is stored and retrieved from memory as a single prefabricated item rather than assembled from individual words through grammatical rules. The term functions as an umbrella covering Collocations, Fixed Expressions, Semi-fixed Expressions, sentence frames, a
Lexical cohesion is Cohesion achieved through vocabulary choices: the way words in a text relate to each other semantically to create texture and connectedness. Halliday and Hasan (1976) identified it as one of five cohesive categories, and subsequent research (particularly Hoey, 1991) demonstrated
Lexical coverage is the percentage of running word tokens in a text that a reader or listener already knows. If a learner knows 9,650 of the 10,000 running words in a chapter, the chapter offers 96.5% coverage for that learner. Coverage is a property of a text-learner pairing, not a property of the
Lexical density is the ratio of content words (nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs) to the total number of words in a text. It was first proposed by Ure (1971) and developed by Halliday (1985) as a key measure distinguishing written from spoken language.
The range of distinct words a writer or speaker uses in a stretch of language. Operationalised as the relationship between types (unique word forms) and tokens (total running words). High diversity indicates a wide active vocabulary; low diversity indicates lexical repetition. The construct sits ins
A lexical notebook is a personal vocabulary record organised by a principled system, such as topic, collocation pattern, word family, function, or situation, rather than simple word-and-translation lists. It is a cornerstone of autonomous vocabulary learning, encouraging learners to record not just
Lexical Priming is the theory, developed by Michael Hoey in Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language (2005), that every encounter with a word or sequence cumulatively loads it with the contexts and co-texts in which it has been met, and that this loading is what speakers draw on when they
Lexical profiling runs a text against one or more frequency lists and reports the proportion of tokens that fall into each band, plus the items that fall outside every band. It is the standard diagnostic for asking whether a text sits at the lexical level a target reader can handle, and the workhors
A lexical set is a group of words related by topic or by a shared semantic feature. "Kitchen vocabulary" (stove, fridge, sink, oven, counter) is a topical set. "Ways of walking" (stroll, march, trudge, limp, stride) is a set sharing the semantic feature of locomotion but differentiated by manner.
The proportion of relatively unusual or advanced words in a text. Where Lexical Diversity asks how varied the vocabulary is and Lexical Density asks how content-heavy it is, sophistication asks how rare it is. The construct rests on the assumption that producing low-frequency vocabulary requires dee
A syllabus organised around the most frequent words of a language and the patterns of usage and collocation in which they occur. The lexicon, not the grammatical paradigm, supplies the units of selection and grading.
A psychometric system developed by MetaMetrics in the late 1980s and 1990s for measuring both reader ability and text complexity on a single scale, so that learners can be matched to texts at appropriate difficulty. Texts and readers are reported as Lexile measures (e.g. 850L), and the framework und
Lexis refers to the total stock of words and word-like units in a language, or in a speaker's repertoire. In ELT, "lexis" is preferred over "vocabulary" because it captures a broader reality: language is not just single words but multi-word units, including collocations, formulaic sequences, phrasal
Lextutor, formally the Compleat Lexical Tutor, is Tom Cobb's web-based suite of vocabulary, corpus, and reading tools at <https://www.lextutor.ca>. It is the most widely cited free profiling and concordancing platform in ELT research and the default first stop for materials writers checking the lexi
Liaison is the pronunciation, at a word boundary, of a consonant that would be silent in the citation form of the preceding word. It links two words into a single phonological unit and is most strongly associated with French, though English non-rhotic varieties exhibit a structurally similar phenome
The linear coverage view is the position, advanced by Schmitt, Jiang, and Grabe (2011), that L2 reading comprehension scales as a roughly linear function of lexical coverage across the upper range, with no discontinuous jump at 95% or 98%. The result frames the much-cited 98% and 95% thresholds as c
A statistical procedure for estimating one variable from one or more others using a straight-line equation. The dominant data-analytic tool in mid-twentieth-century educational measurement, and the engine behind every classical readability formula.
A lingua franca is any language used regularly for communication between groups of speakers who do not share a native language. The category is functional rather than structural: any language can serve as a lingua franca in the right contact situation, regardless of its history, structure, or speake
The Lingua Franca Core (LFC) is a set of phonological features identified by Jennifer Jenkins (2000) as essential for mutual Intelligibility in English as a Lingua Franca communication. It provides a principled, empirically derived alternative to teaching full RP or General American pronunciation.
Linguistic imperialism, as theorised by Phillipson (1992), is the argument that the global dominance of English is not a natural, inevitable development but is actively maintained through structural and cultural inequalities that serve the interests of English-speaking nations.
Linguistic relativity is the proposal that the structure of a speaker's language influences how that speaker thinks and perceives the world. The strong form, linguistic determinism, claims that language fixes the categories of thought and that speakers of different languages cannot share concepts th
Linked skills is a curriculum and lesson-design technique in which the same content is processed through two or more language skills in sequence. Learners might listen to a story, then read a transcript or related text, then discuss it, then write about it. Each pass exploits the same vocabulary, gr
Linking is the process of connecting words smoothly in Connected Speech so that there is no gap or glottal stop between them. English strongly resists silence between words within a tone group; speakers bridge word boundaries using several systematic strategies. Linking is what gives fluent English
Jack C. Richards' 2005 argument that the dominant model of L2 listening instruction, which treats listening and listening comprehension as the same thing, leaves out a second role listening plays in language development. The comprehension model teaches learners to extract meaning; the acquisition mo
Listening comprehension test design is the principled construction of audio-and-question item sets that measure a defined listening construct. It shares the apparatus of reading comprehension testing — specifications, TLU domain, construct validity, distractor discipline, item analysis — but the inp
Listening for specific information is the subskill of extracting particular details from a spoken text, such as names, numbers, dates, places, prices, and times, while ignoring most of the surrounding content. It is the listening parallel of Scanning in reading and is typically the second while-list
Listening subskills are the cognitive strategies listeners use to process and interpret spoken language. Like Reading Subskills, they are purpose-driven; a listener processes a weather forecast differently from a lecture, a casual conversation differently from a set of instructions. The critical dif
Coursebook listening syllabuses recycle a small set of recurring text genres. The typology below combines Field (2008, ch. 5) on text classification with Rost (2011) on listening-text design and Buck (2001, ch. 2) on construct coverage in listening assessment. Each genre carries distinct discourse c
Littlejohn's three-level framework analyses language-teaching materials at progressively deeper layers: what is there on the page, what is required of teacher and learner to use it, and what is implied about language, learning, and roles by the design as a whole. The framework's distinctive contribu
The LLAMA battery is a free, language-neutral suite of language-aptitude tests developed by Paul Meara at Swansea University and distributed through the Swansea Lognostics group. It was designed as a practical aptitude instrument that researchers and teachers could actually get their hands on, in co
A loanword is a lexical item taken over from one language into another with its form largely intact. In Haugen's (1950) classification it is the prototypical case of borrowing: morphemic importation without substitution. English café (from French), kindergarten (from German), tsunami (from Japanese)
The process of adjusting globally produced ELT materials to fit a specific national, regional, or institutional context — by reworking cultural references, names, places, examples, exam alignments, and pedagogic conventions while keeping the core syllabus intact. Localisation occupies a middle groun
Annual or programme-level planning that sets the overall trajectory of a course before any individual lesson is written. Working at this scale, a teacher or curriculum team decides what learners will be able to do by the end of the year, which strands of language and skill the syllabus will cover, h
A longitudinal study follows the same participants over an extended period, collecting data at multiple time points. In SLA research, longitudinal designs track how learners' interlanguage develops over time, capturing acquisition trajectories, developmental sequences, U-shaped development, and foss
Lourdes Ortega is a Spanish-American applied linguist whose work sits at the centre of how contemporary SLA presents itself to its own students. Trained at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, she has held posts at Northern Arizona University and Georgetown University, where she is Professor in the D
Luke Plonsky is an American applied linguist and Professor of Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University. He has become one of the most visible voices of the methodological reform movement within SLA, pushing the field toward cumulative evidence, transparent reporting, replication, and hones
Lydia White is a James McGill Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at McGill University, where she built one of the most sustained research programmes in generative SLA. Trained at Cambridge (BA, Moral Sciences and Psychology, 1969) and McGill (PhD, Linguistics, 1980), she spent her career arguing, pat
The Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages is a postgraduate research-and-coursework degree that prepares teachers, teacher trainers, materials writers, and academic managers for senior roles in language education. It is the standard university-route qualification beyond a
A malapropism is the substitution of a word for a similar-sounding one that produces a nonsensical or unintentionally comic result, usually because the speaker has half-remembered a low-frequency item and slotted in the nearest phonological neighbour.
Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) is the use of mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets, and wearables, to support language learning. It emerged as a sub-field of CALL in the early 2000s as mobile technology became ubiquitous, and has grown rapidly with the smartphone era.
Managing large classes, typically 30 or more students, requires deliberate strategies to maximise learning opportunities, ensure participation, and maintain order. Hess (2001) argues that large classes are not inherently worse than small ones; they present different challenges that demand different
Manfred Pienemann is a German applied linguist at Paderborn University whose work defined the psycholinguistic wing of SLA. He came out of the ZISA project in the late 1970s, which documented staged development in the German word order of Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese migrant workers, and spent t
Manner of articulation describes how the airstream is modified as it passes through the vocal tract to produce a consonant. While place of articulation specifies where the obstruction occurs, manner specifies what kind of obstruction it is: complete closure, narrow constriction, or something in betw
The Many-Facet Rasch Model (MFRM) extends Rasch measurement to performance assessments where the score depends on more than examinees and items. Developed by John Michael Linacre in his 1989 University of Chicago dissertation under Benjamin Wright and published the same year by MESA Press, the model
Maris D. Hawkins is a US-based language teacher, teacher educator, and public-facing pedagogy writer best known for translating SLA research into classroom language that practicing teachers can actually use. Working in K-12 contexts as well as broader professional communities, she represents the new
Markedness is the asymmetric relation between two members of a linguistic opposition, where one member (the unmarked) is more basic, more frequent, and more widely distributed across languages, while the other (the marked) is more specific, less frequent, and structurally more complex. The concept o
Martin Bygate is a British applied linguist and Professor Emeritus at Lancaster University whose career has been strongly associated with speaking, task performance, and what learners actually do when they try to say something under pressure. He is one of the key figures in the serious study of oral
The process of modifying existing (usually published) materials to better suit a specific teaching context. A core professional skill for teachers, since no coursebook perfectly fits every classroom.
The set of operations teachers and course designers perform on existing materials to bring them closer to learner needs, syllabus targets, or local conditions. McDonough, Shaw and Masuhara give the canonical taxonomy in Materials and Methods in ELT (3rd edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), building on e
An institutional repository of in-house materials — worksheets, supplementary tasks, lesson plans, tests, audio, video — curated for reuse by teachers across a school, department, or programme. The bank turns one teacher's preparation into shared infrastructure, reducing duplication and lifting the
Materials development is the principled process of creating teaching and learning resources, including coursebooks, worksheets, digital content, audio/video, and task sequences, grounded in theory, research, and knowledge of learner needs. It is distinct from materials adaptation (adapting existing
Materials evaluation is the systematic assessment of teaching materials, typically coursebooks, against defined criteria to determine their suitability for a specific teaching context. Cunningsworth (1995) established the framework that most subsequent evaluation models build upon, emphasising that
The systematic trialling of draft materials with target learners before publication or wider release, to surface design faults that internal review cannot. Piloting sits between authoring and final production — close enough to the draft to allow rewrites, close enough to real classrooms to expose pr
Ian McGrath's framework for principled coursebook evaluation, developed in Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching (Edinburgh University Press, 2002; second edition 2016). McGrath built on earlier checklists, including Cunningsworth's, and embedded evaluation inside a wider design and
The strand of Needs Analysis that examines the pedagogical and institutional conditions under which a course will run: classroom culture, teacher expertise, contact hours, class size, materials, technology, assessment regimes, and the wider educational environment. Means analysis asks not what learn
The bridge between the year's overall trajectory and the individual lesson. Medium-term planning operates at the unit, term, or half-term level: long enough that recycling, progression, and skill integration become visible; short enough that learner data from the current cohort can shape it.
A procedure in qualitative research in which data, interpretations, or findings are returned to participants for review and comment. Also called respondent validation or participant validation. Member checking is invoked both as a credibility-enhancing technique and as an ethical move toward involvi
Mentoring in ELT is a sustained, developmental relationship in which a more experienced teacher (the mentor) guides, supports, and challenges a less experienced colleague (the mentee) to develop their professional knowledge, skills, and confidence. Unlike a one-off workshop or a formal observation,
Merrill Swain is a Canadian applied linguist and Professor Emerita at the University of Toronto whose career has been pivotal in reframing the role of learner production in SLA. She is especially associated with immersion education, Output Hypothesis, and the study of collaborative dialogue and lang
A meta-analysis statistically combines results from multiple studies on the same question to produce an aggregate effect size. Unlike a narrative literature review (which summarises qualitatively), a meta-analysis converts each study's findings into a common metric, then computes a weighted average,
Metacognitive strategies are higher-order executive processes that learners use to plan, monitor, and evaluate their own learning. They do not operate directly on language material (that is the role of cognitive strategies) but rather manage and regulate the learning process itself. The term draws o
Metalanguage is language used to talk about language. In ELT, it refers to the technical terminology and descriptive language that teachers and learners use to discuss how English works, including terms like noun, past tense, conditional, passive voice, syllable stress, and collocation. The British
Metathesis is the rearrangement of sounds within a word, typically swapping the order of two adjacent or nearby segments. The term comes from Greek meta- "across" and thesis "placing". Metathesis can be a one-off slip of the tongue, a stable feature of a dialect, or a completed historical sound chan
MFP stands for Meaning, Form, and Pronunciation: the three dimensions a teacher must analyse before presenting any new language item (a grammar structure, a lexical chunk, a functional exponent). The framework ensures that learners encounter language as a complete system rather than an isolated labe
Michael Canale was a Canadian applied linguist whose short career produced one of the most influential single frameworks in modern language education: the Canale & Swain (1980) model of communicative competence. Based at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), he worked on bilingualis
Michael H. Long (1945–2021) was an American applied linguist and one of the most influential figures in second language acquisition. After more than two decades at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, where he helped build one of the world's leading SLA programmes, he moved in 2005 to the University
Michael Halliday (1925-2018) was a British linguist whose career reshaped modern linguistics by insisting that language is best understood through meaning, function, and social context rather than through syntax alone. Though his work reaches far beyond ELT, he became one of the deepest background i
Michael Hoey (1948-2020) was a British linguist and Professor of English Language at the University of Liverpool whose work brought together corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, and lexical theory with unusual force. He is best known for lexical priming, but he also belongs to that generation of
Michael Lewis (1945-2019) was an ELT writer, trainer, and provocateur whose career was built around saying the impolite thing at exactly the moment the field needed to hear it. He taught, trained, published, and became the public face of the Lexical Approach, a label that in practice came to mean mu
Michael H. Long (1945-2021) was an American applied linguist whose career gave him unusual authority in both research-heavy SLA and the messier world of pedagogy. He taught at the University of Hawai'i and later at the University of Maryland, where he helped build one of the strongest SLA communitie
Michael Swan is a British ELT writer whose Practical English Usage has sold over two million copies and sits on more teachers' desks than any single reference in the field. Oxford-trained, twenty years inside classrooms in Britain and abroad, founder of the Swan School of English: the career is unus
Microteaching is a scaled-down teaching encounter, typically 5–15 minutes, in which a trainee teacher practises a specific skill or technique with a small group of peers, followed by immediate feedback. Developed by Dwight Allen and colleagues at Stanford University in the 1960s, it remains a core c
A mind map is a visual diagram with a central concept and branching associations, used for brainstorming, organising ideas, planning writing, recording vocabulary, and taking notes. Popularised by Tony Buzan in the 1970s (through his 1974 BBC series Use Your Head and subsequent books), mind maps exp
An activity in which students move around the classroom speaking to multiple partners in succession. Each interaction is typically brief (1–3 minutes), and learners speak to as many different people as possible. Mingle activities maximise Student Talking Time, increase interaction variety, and add p
Two words that differ by only one phoneme while all other sounds remain identical, resulting in a change of meaning. Classic examples: /ʃɪp/ ship vs /ʃiːp/ sheep, /bæt/ bat vs /pæt/ pat.
A set of criteria for designing language learning materials around authentic texts and tasks, articulated by Freda Mishan in Designing Authenticity into Language Learning Materials (Intellect, 2005). Mishan reframes authenticity from a binary property of a text — produced for native speakers, yes or
Mixed ability refers to any class where learners differ significantly in proficiency level, learning speed, background knowledge, motivation, or learning preferences. In practice, this means every class; no group of learners is truly homogeneous. The question is not whether a class is mixed ability,
Mixed methods research combines quantitative and qualitative approaches within a single study or programme of inquiry. Rather than treating the two paradigms as incompatible, mixed methods researchers argue that combining them yields a more complete understanding of the research problem than either
Modal verbs are auxiliary verbs that express modality: the speaker's attitude toward the likelihood, necessity, or desirability of a state of affairs. The core English modals are can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would. Semi-modals (have to, be able to, be going to, ought to, need t
Moderation is the quality assurance process of checking, adjusting, and calibrating marking across different raters, markers, sites, or institutions to ensure fairness and consistency. Where rater training prepares examiners before assessment, moderation monitors and corrects after or during the mar
Modified input refers to the systematic adjustments native or proficient speakers make when addressing less proficient interlocutors. Ferguson (1971) coined the term foreigner talk for this register; in classroom contexts it is called teacher talk. These modifications operate at every linguistic lev
Two complementary mechanisms: language learners receive shaped to be understood, and language they produce under pressure to be understood. Modified Input sits on the input side. Modified output, formulated by Merrill Swain (1985), sits on the production side and addresses what input alone cannot de
Course materials built from independent units that can be combined, omitted, or sequenced in any order without breaking the underlying syllabus. The defining feature is unit autonomy — each module stands on its own and assumes no specific prior module — which contrasts with the linear progression of
The Monitor Model is Stephen Krashen's unified theory of second language acquisition, developed across the late 1970s and 1980s. It comprises five interrelated hypotheses that together make a strong claim: acquisition is driven by comprehensible input, and conscious learning plays only a marginal ed
Monitoring is the teacher's practice of observing and listening to learners while they work on tasks. It's what happens between setting up an activity and running feedback, and it's where much of a teacher's real skill shows. Poor monitoring means missing errors, misjudging readiness, and flying bli
Monologue and dialogue are the two fundamental modes of spoken language, each placing distinct cognitive and linguistic demands on the speaker. Effective speaking instruction must address both, as they require different sub-skills.
A monophthong is a pure vowel, one in which the tongue position and lip shape remain relatively stable throughout the sound. This contrasts with diphthongs, where the tongue glides from one position to another, and triphthongs, which involve three positions.
A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries meaning. The word unhappiness contains three morphemes: un- (negation), happy (core meaning), -ness (converts adjective to noun). Morphology, the study of morphemes and their combinations, is foundational to understanding word formation and a
Morphology is the branch of linguistics concerned with the internal structure of words, specifically how morphemes combine to create meaningful units. It sits at the interface between Syntax (sentence structure) and Semantics (meaning), and is fundamental to understanding Word Formation processes in
Morphosyntax is the interface between morphology (word-internal structure) and syntax (sentence structure), or the study of how grammatical relationships are encoded through both word forms and word order. In English, you cannot separate the two: tense is marked both by inflection (walked) and by au
Move analysis is a method for describing the rhetorical structure of a genre by segmenting texts into communicative moves — functional units that perform recognisable work for the writer-reader relationship — and, within moves, into steps that realise the move in alternative ways. The approach was c
The Measure of Textual Lexical Diversity, developed by Philip McCarthy in his 2005 University of Memphis dissertation and validated against competing indices in McCarthy and Jarvis (2010). MTLD is the most length-stable single measure of Lexical Diversity in the field's standard validation study, an
Multi-competence is a construct introduced by Vivian Cook (1991) to describe "the knowledge of two or more languages in one mind." It reframes the study of L2 users by rejecting the monolingual native speaker as the default yardstick and instead treating the multilingual mind as a legitimate system
A syllabus that combines several organising principles in parallel — typically grammar, function, lexis, skills, and topic — so that each unit advances along multiple strands at once. The dominant design behind contemporary general-English coursebooks.
Multilingualism is the use of three or more languages by an individual or community. It is increasingly recognised as the global norm rather than the exception; more than half the world's population uses multiple languages in daily life. Monolingualism, far from being the default, is the historical
Multimodal learning in ELT refers to the use of multiple semiotic modes, including visual, auditory, linguistic, gestural, and spatial modes, to present, practise, and produce language. It is grounded in the principle that varied input channels reinforce learning, deepen comprehension, and better re
N.S. Prabhu is an Indian educator and applied linguist whose name is permanently linked to the Bangalore Project and the early history of task-based pedagogy. He worked in India and later at the National University of Singapore, and he remains one of the few figures in ELT whose professional legacy
A qualitative methodology that treats stories — told, written, or otherwise composed — as both phenomenon and method. Researchers study how people make sense of experience through narrative, using participants' stories as primary data and often constructing narrative accounts as the analytic product
A nasal is a consonant produced with complete closure in the oral cavity (like a plosive) but with the velum (soft palate) lowered, allowing airflow to escape through the nasal cavity. The result is a voiced, resonant sound.
Nasalisation is the addition of nasal resonance to a sound, typically a vowel, caused by the lowering of the velum (soft palate), allowing air to pass through the nasal cavity simultaneously with the oral cavity. In English, nasalisation is allophonic; in some other languages, it is phonemic.
The National Institute of Education is Singapore's sole teacher-education institution and an autonomous institute of Nanyang Technological University. It handles the full pipeline that feeds Singapore's public schools: pre-service preparation through the PGDE and undergraduate routes, in-service upg
The concept of the "native speaker" as the model and measure for second language learners has been challenged from multiple angles since the 1980s. What was once an unquestioned reference point in linguistics and language teaching is now recognised as ideologically loaded, empirically problematic, a
Native-speakerism is the ideology that idealises the "native-speaker", typically white, Western, monolingually English-using, as the legitimate model of language and the legitimate teacher of it, and disparages "non-native" professionals as inherently deficient. The term was coined by Adrian Hollida
The nativist theory of language acquisition holds that humans are born with a biologically specified capacity for language. In its strongest form, advanced by Noam Chomsky from the late 1950s, the claim is that significant grammatical knowledge is innate and that environmental input merely triggers
The Natural Approach is a language teaching method developed by Tracy Terrell and Stephen Krashen, published in The Natural Approach: Language Acquisition in the Classroom (1983). It represents the practical classroom application of Krashen's Monitor Model hypotheses, particularly the centrality of
The Natural Order Hypothesis (Krashen 1982, building on Dulay & Burt 1974) claims that grammatical structures are acquired in a predictable sequence, and this order is largely independent of the order in which structures are taught.
The naturalness–clarity tradeoff is the core design tension in writing and recording listening texts for the language classroom. A text high in naturalness retains the Features of Unplanned Spoken Discourse (false starts, fillers, ellipsis, vague language, reduced phonology, real speech rate) and re
The NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements are a set of learner-facing performance descriptors jointly developed by the National Council of State Supervisors for Languages and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. They translate the abstract bands of the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines int
The systematic process of gathering and interpreting information about learners to inform course design decisions. Foundational to ESP (and its largest branch, EAP), TBLT, and any learner-centred curriculum.
Negative transfer, also called interference or L1 interference, occurs when properties of the learner's first language produce errors in the second. A Vietnamese learner saying I have 25 years under the influence of Tôi có 25 tuổi, or a French speaker pronouncing English think with a fronted /s/-lik
A syllabus whose content, sequence, methods, and assessment are jointly decided by teacher and learners through explicit negotiation during the course. Learner agency is built into the curriculum rather than confined to within-task choices.
Negotiation of meaning refers to the interactional work conversational partners do to overcome communication breakdowns, namely the modifications and adjustments that occur when a message is not immediately understood. Long (1983, 1996) and Pica (1994) established it as a central mechanism in SLA, a
A neologism is a recently coined word, expression, or sense that has gained, or is in the process of gaining, recognition within a speech community. The term entered English around 1772, borrowed from French néologisme, from Greek neos "new" plus logos "word, speech."
A 963-headword inventory of academic English designed to supplement the New General Service List in the same way Coxhead's Academic Word List supplemented West's GSL. Compiled by Charles Browne, Brent Culligan, and Joseph Phillips and released in 2013, the NAWL is hosted at newgeneralservicelist.org
A modern corpus-derived replacement for West's General Service List, comprising approximately 2,800 high-frequency English headwords. Released in March 2013 — the sixtieth anniversary of West's 1953 list — by Charles Browne, Brent Culligan, and Joseph Phillips, with the canonical home at newgenerals
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Nick Bilbrough is a British ELT teacher, trainer, and author whose work has helped return memory, storytelling, and drama to mainstream methodology discussion. He is best known for Memory Activities for Language Learning (2011) in the Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers series, and for the Han
Nick C. Ellis is a Welsh psycholinguist, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics at the University of Michigan, and one of the architects of the usage-based turn in SLA. Oxford-trained (BA Psychology, Corpus Christi, 1974), he spent 1978 to 2004 at Bangor before moving to Michigan, where he
Niclas Abrahamsson is Professor of Swedish as a Second Language at Stockholm University and Director of the Centre for Research on Bilingualism since 2018, continuing the line of work associated with his long-time collaborator Kenneth Hyltenstam. He took his PhD on bilingualism at Stockholm in 2001
Avram Noam Chomsky (1928–) is an American linguist, philosopher, and cognitive scientist widely considered the founder of modern linguistics. His revolutionary theories transformed understanding of language acquisition and helped establish cognitive science as a field, fundamentally challenging the
Calibrating, signalling, and maintaining the level of sound appropriate to each stage of a lesson. A communicative classroom is not a silent one: productive noise during pair work and group work is a sign the task is functioning. The skill is matching volume to activity type and resetting cleanly wh
Nominating is how teachers select which learner answers a question or contributes to discussion. It appears simple but has significant effects on participation patterns, confidence, and classroom dynamics. Poor nominating habits create classrooms where the same three students answer every question w
Norbert Schmitt is an American-born applied linguist based in the UK and the most prolific vocabulary researcher of his generation after Paul Nation. He spent his career at the University of Nottingham, where he is now Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics, having retired from the chair in Septe
Norm-referenced tests (NRTs) measure a learner's performance relative to other test-takers. The goal is to rank and discriminate, spreading scores across a distribution so that each learner's position relative to the group is clear.
A continuous probability distribution that is symmetric, bell-shaped, and fully characterised by two parameters: the mean μ (location) and the standard deviation σ (spread). The probability density is highest at the mean and decreases smoothly as values move further away in either direction. Also ca
Note-taking is the skill of recording key information efficiently during listening or reading. It is both a receptive skill (requiring comprehension and selection) and a productive skill (requiring written output in real time). In academic contexts, it is among the most important study skills learne
Noticing, as operationalized by Schmidt (1990, 2001), is the conscious registration of specific instances of language in input. It is the mechanism by which input becomes intake, the subset of input that is actually processed and made available for acquisition. Schmidt's formulation is narrower and
Richard Schmidt's Noticing Hypothesis (1990, refined 1995, 2001) makes a single sharp claim: input does not become intake without conscious noticing. The hypothesis directly contradicts Krashen's position that acquisition is entirely subconscious, and it has become one of the most empirically produc
A syllabus organised around the meanings learners need to express (notions) and the communicative purposes for which they use language (functions), rather than around grammatical forms or recurrent situations. The first systematic alternative to the Structural Syllabus in mainstream ELT and the brid
A noun phrase (NP) is a word or group of words built around a noun or pronoun head, functioning as subject, object, complement, or prepositional complement in a Clause. NPs range from a single pronoun (she) to highly complex structures with multiple layers of modification.
What schools choose, by omission, not to teach. The concept was introduced by Elliot W. Eisner in The Educational Imagination: On the Design and Evaluation of School Programs (Macmillan, 1979; second edition 1985; third edition 1994), where he argued that what is left out of a curriculum shapes lear
The default statistical claim a researcher tests, conventionally written H₀. In SLA and language-testing studies it usually states that there is no effect, no difference between groups, or no association between variables in the population — for example, that a treatment and control group come from
A working name for the ELT-side reading-comprehension question taxonomy associated with Christine Nuttall's Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language (Heinemann 1982; revised edition 1996; reissued by Macmillan 2005). Nuttall did not publish a single canonical numbered list under that label; the
The observer's paradox, articulated by William Labov (1972), refers to a fundamental methodological dilemma: the aim of linguistic research is to discover how people use language when they are not being systematically observed, yet data can only be obtained through systematic observation, which inev
Any learner activity that is not aligned with the current lesson goal — from quiet daydreaming to active disruption. The category is broader than misbehaviour: a learner doodling alone causes no trouble but is still off-task, and the cost shows up in their learning rather than the room's climate.
Online assessment is the delivery of tests, quizzes, and evaluative tasks through digital platforms. It ranges from low-stakes classroom quizzes on an LMS to high-stakes standardised tests like TOEFL iBT and Duolingo English Test. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated adoption, making online assessment
Online polyglots represent an internet-age phenomenon in which self-directed language learners, often speaking 5, 10, or more languages, share their methods, progress, and motivational strategies through YouTube, blogs, and social media. While not a method in the traditional sense, the polyglot comm
The onset and coda are the consonantal margins of a syllable, flanking the vowel nucleus. Together with the nucleus, they constitute syllable structure. Understanding onset and coda constraints is essential for predicting L2 pronunciation difficulties.
A classification of questions by the constraint on the answer, not by whether the teacher knows the answer (that is the display/referential distinction). Closed questions have a limited, often single correct answer. Open questions invite extended, varied, and unpredictable responses.
Teaching, learning, and research materials released under open licences that permit free reuse, adaptation, and redistribution. The term entered international policy through UNESCO's 2002 Forum on Open Courseware and was formalised in the Recommendation on Open Educational Resources, adopted by UNES
Operationalisation is the process of defining an abstract concept in concrete, measurable terms. It answers the question: How exactly will you measure this? Every research study must bridge the gap between the theoretical Construct (e.g., "proficiency," "noticing," "motivation") and the specific ins
A task type requiring learners to express personal preferences, feelings, or attitudes in response to a given situation. One of three gap-based task types in Prabhu's (1987) taxonomy, alongside Information Gap and Reasoning Gap.
The Oral Approach (also called the Oral Method) refers to the systematic method of language teaching developed by Harold Palmer in the 1920s–1930s, primarily through his work at the Institute for Research in English Teaching in Tokyo (1922–1936). Palmer was arguably the first applied linguist to bri
Orientalists, in Thornbury's taxonomy of language teaching methods, refers to the tradition of scholarly language learning practised by European academics, diplomats, missionaries, and explorers from the 16th to the 19th century, who learned languages such as Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Chinese, and
Merrill Swain's Output Hypothesis (1985, 1995, 2005) emerged from Canadian French immersion research showing that students who received years of comprehensible input still produced persistently inaccurate French. Input was clearly necessary, but it was not sufficient. Swain argued that producing lan
Overgeneralisation (also spelled overgeneralization) is the process by which a language learner extends a linguistic rule beyond its proper domain of application. It is one of the most common sources of intralingual error, meaning errors that arise from the structure of the target language itself ra
The probability of observing data at least as extreme as the data actually obtained, assuming the Null Hypothesis is true. A small p-value signals that the observed result would be unlikely under the null model, and is conventionally taken as evidence against that null.
Pacing is the management of time and rhythm across a lesson, specifically how quickly or slowly the class moves through stages and how smoothly transitions feel. A well-paced lesson has variety and momentum: students are neither racing through material they haven't absorbed nor stuck on a task that'
A two-learner interaction format where the class is divided into pairs to complete a task simultaneously. The dominant alternative to lockstep whole-class teaching for the practice phase of a lesson, and the most efficient way to multiply speaking time across the room.
A paragraph is the basic organisational unit of written discourse. In academic and formal writing, a well-constructed paragraph develops a single main idea through a predictable internal structure: topic sentence, supporting sentences, and (optionally) a concluding sentence.
A paratone is a supra-sentential prosodic unit that marks topic structure in spoken discourse, roughly the spoken equivalent of a written paragraph. Speakers use pitch, pause, and tempo to signal where one topic ends and another begins, giving listeners an auditory roadmap of discourse organisation.
An acronym for topics global ELT publishers routinely instruct authors to avoid: Politics, Alcohol, Religion, Sex, Narcotics, -Isms (such as communism, atheism, feminism), and Pork. The label captures the editorial caution applied to coursebooks intended for sale across multiple markets, where cultu
The Participatory Approach is a language teaching method rooted in Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy, developed in Brazil in the late 1950s for literacy education among oppressed communities and applied to language teaching from the 1980s onward. Like Content-based Instruction, it begins with meaning
Parts of speech (also called word classes or grammatical categories) are the classification system for words based on their grammatical function, morphological behaviour, and syntactic position. They are the essential metalanguage for talking about language: a teacher who cannot identify word classe
A lesson shape from Jeremy Harmer's `ESA` framework that abandons a fixed Engage-Study-Activate order in favour of multiple short stages alternating between the three elements. A patchwork session might run Engage, Activate, Study, Activate, Study, Engage, Activate — any sequence in which the same e
Pattern retrieval is the productive recall of semi-fixed language patterns from memory, cued by meaning or context rather than by the pattern's own wording. It is the practice half of the Lexical Approach: noticing a frame like it's worth ___ing or the more X the more Y is only the first move; the w
Paul Nation is a New Zealand applied linguist whose career has been unusually generous to teachers: large in scholarship, practical in tone, and rich in open-access resources. Associated above all with Victoria University of Wellington, he has become one of the most trusted names in vocabulary teach
The cumulative body of texts a learner meets across a course, treated as a corpus in its own right. Willis introduced the construct to argue that the texts a course supplies are not isolated reading or listening events but a single, shapeable database from which lexical, grammatical, and discourse p
Pedagogic grammar is the grammar of a language rewritten for use in teaching and learning, not for theoretical linguistics or descriptive completeness. It differs from both reference grammar (exhaustive, for consultation) and theoretical grammar (formal models of competence) in that its first questi
An umbrella construct introduced by Richard West to gather the strands of Needs Analysis that focus on the learning process and its setting rather than on target language alone. Where Target Situation Analysis specifies the endpoint, pedagogic needs analysis covers what learners currently lack, how
Learners correcting each other's errors, either in speech or writing. Distinct from teacher correction in that it distributes the corrective role and develops learner autonomy.
Peer feedback is structured learner-to-learner feedback on written (or spoken) work. When trained and guided, learners can provide meaningful response to each other's writing, developing both the reviewer's critical awareness and the writer's revision skills. Without training, peer feedback tends to
Peer observation is a collaborative professional development activity in which colleagues observe each other's lessons for the purpose of mutual learning, not evaluation. Unlike developmental or assessment observation conducted by a manager or trainer, peer observation is characterised by its recipr
Pejoration, also called deterioration or degeneration, is the process by which a word acquires a more negative evaluative meaning over time. The term derives from Late Latin peiorare "to make worse." Pejoration is the affective counterpart of amelioration within the Bloomfieldian typology of semanti
Penny Ur is a British-Israeli ELT writer and teacher educator whose career has been rooted in schools, teacher training, and methodology publishing rather than academic fashion. She taught in Israel for many years, worked at Oranim and Haifa University, and became one of the most trusted practical v
Performance assessment requires learners to do something, such as speak, write, demonstrate, or create, rather than select from pre-determined options. The response is constructed, not chosen, and is evaluated against criteria defined in a rubric or rating scale.
The perlocutionary effect is the actual impact an utterance has on the hearer, namely the consequence of speaking, whether intended or not. Introduced by J. L. Austin (1962), it completes the three-level analysis of speech acts alongside the locutionary act (what is said) and the illocutionary act (
A Personal Learning Network is the informal, self-curated network of people, channels, and resources from which a teacher draws ongoing professional learning. The acronym PLN became common in education circles around 2008–2010 with the rise of teacher Twitter and education blogging, and now covers a
Peter Robinson is an applied linguist known for some of the most ambitious theorizing in task-based research, especially around task complexity, attention, and cognition. Associated with institutions including Aoyama Gakuin University, he has spent much of his career trying to make task design intel
Peter Skehan is a British applied linguist and Professor Emeritus at King's College London whose career has been central to cognitive approaches in SLA and TBLT. He is especially associated with attention, performance limits, task complexity, and the uncomfortable fact that learners cannot do everyt
The Postgraduate Certificate in Education is a UK postgraduate-level initial teacher training qualification, taken after a bachelor's degree, that prepares graduates to teach in state-funded primary and secondary schools. In England, the PGCE is normally completed alongside Qualified Teacher Status
A qualitative methodology that investigates the meaning structures of lived experience — what an experience is like for those who undergo it, prior to theoretical interpretation. In educational research, phenomenology is used to study experiences such as becoming a teacher, learning a second languag
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another. Swapping /b/ for /p/ in "bat" produces "pat," a different word with a different meaning. That substitution test is what makes /b/ and /p/ separate phonemes in English. The concept is abstract: a phoneme
Phonemic awareness is the ability to detect and manipulate the individual phonemes — the smallest distinctive sound units — in spoken words. It is a metalinguistic skill, exercised on speech itself rather than on print, and is a robust predictor of early reading success.
Phonemic transcription is the representation of speech using symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), where each symbol corresponds to one phoneme, the smallest meaning-distinguishing sound unit in a language. It is written between forward slashes: /kæt/ for cat, /ʃɪp/ for ship. The s
Phonetics is the branch of linguistics concerned with the physical sounds of human speech — how they are produced, transmitted, and perceived. It treats speech sounds as concrete physical events, independent of the language-specific systems that organise them.
Phonics is an instructional approach to reading that explicitly teaches the relationship between graphemes (letters and letter combinations) and phonemes (the spoken sounds they represent), with the goal of equipping beginning readers to decode unfamiliar written words.
Phonological awareness is the broad metalinguistic ability to recognise and manipulate the sound structure of spoken language at any level — words, syllables, onsets and rimes, and individual phonemes. It is an umbrella term; Phonemic Awareness is its narrowest sub-skill.
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how sounds function within the system of a particular language. It is concerned not with the physical properties of speech sounds (that is phonetics) but with how sounds are organised, distributed, and contrasted to create meaning.
Phonotactics is the branch of phonology concerned with the rules governing permissible sequences and combinations of phonemes in a given language. Every language has its own phonotactic constraints; they determine which sound sequences are possible words and which are not.
Worksheets, activity cards, and other handouts that publishers explicitly licence for classroom reproduction. The photocopiable label appears on materials (usually inside teacher's books, resource packs, and methodology titles) that publishers expect teachers to copy in normal classroom quantities,
A phrasal verb is a combination of a verb + particle (adverb or preposition) that functions as a single semantic unit, often with a meaning different from or beyond the sum of its parts. Phrasal verbs are one of the most distinctive features of English and one of the hardest areas for L2 learners.
Pidgins and creoles are contact languages that arise when speakers of mutually unintelligible languages need to communicate. They are central to sociolinguistics and have influenced SLA theory through the pidginisation hypothesis.
Stephen Pit Corder (1918–1990) was a British applied linguist, long associated with the University of Edinburgh, whose short 1967 paper "The Significance of Learners' Errors" is generally taken as the founding document of modern SLA as a discipline distinct from foreign language teaching.
Pitch is the perceptual correlate of fundamental frequency (F0), the rate at which the vocal folds vibrate during voicing. Higher vibration rate = higher perceived pitch. In English, pitch is not used to distinguish word meaning (unlike tone languages) but is the primary acoustic medium for Intonati
Place of articulation refers to the location in the vocal tract where the airstream is obstructed or constricted to produce a consonant sound. Together with manner of articulation and voicing, place of articulation is one of the three parameters that define every consonant phoneme. The classificatio
Placement tests assign learners to the appropriate proficiency level or class within a program. Their purpose is practical: put each learner in the group where they will learn most effectively, not too easy (boredom, no challenge) and not too hard (frustration, inability to participate).
A plosive (also called a stop) is a consonant produced by completely blocking the airflow in the vocal tract, building up air pressure behind the closure, and then releasing it in a burst. Plosives are classified by place of articulation and voicing.
Politeness Theory, developed by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1978, revised 1987), is the most influential framework for understanding how speakers manage social relationships through language. It is built on the concept of Face, the public self-image that every person claims in interaction.
Polysemy occurs when a single word form has multiple related meanings connected by shared semantic features or metaphorical extension. It is pervasive in English: the more frequent a word, the more polysemous it tends to be, and this represents a major challenge for L2 learners.
Portfolio assessment evaluates learner ability through a curated collection of work samples produced over time, rather than through a single test performance. A language portfolio typically includes writing samples, project work, self-reflections, recordings, and other evidence of language developme
Positive transfer, also called facilitation, occurs when properties of the learner's first language support, accelerate, or simplify L2 acquisition. A Spanish speaker learning English finds the cognate vocabulary, SVO word order, and Latinate academic register already partially available; an English
The poverty-of-the-stimulus (POS) argument is the central nativist case for an innate language faculty. In its standard form, associated with Chomsky from the late 1950s onwards and sharpened by Steven Pinker, it claims that the linguistic input children receive is too sparse, too noisy, and too uni
PPP (Present–Practice–Produce) is a lesson framework where the teacher presents a target language item, students practise it in controlled exercises, then produce it in freer communication. It has been the dominant lesson structure in coursebook-driven ELT since the 1960s and remains central to many
Practicality is the feasibility of a test given the available resources: time, money, personnel, facilities, and expertise. A test can be theoretically excellent (high Validity, high Reliability) but utterly impractical to implement. Practicality is the reality check on assessment design.
Practice-test congruency is a methodological confound where the treatment group practices activities structurally similar to the post-test, while the control group does not. When the treatment group outperforms the control, it may reflect test familiarity rather than genuine learning.
The practicum is the supervised teaching component of a teacher-education programme. It is where the trainee plans, teaches, and reflects on lessons with real learners under the guidance of a trainer, Cooperating Teacher, or university supervisor — the bridge between the coursework of Pre-service Tr
Pragmatic competence is the ability to use language appropriately in context, producing and interpreting meaning beyond literal sentence-level semantics. It encompasses understanding and performing indirect Speech Acts, recognising Implicature, managing politeness and Face, and shifting Register acc
Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context: how speakers use language to do things, and how listeners infer what speakers intend beyond what is literally said. Where Semantics asks what does this sentence mean?, pragmatics asks what does the speaker mean by saying this, here, now?
Praise and encouragement are forms of positive feedback used to motivate learners and build confidence. Though often conflated, they serve different functions: praise evaluates achievement ("Excellent paragraph structure"), while encouragement acknowledges effort and process ("You're really working
The pre-listening / while-listening / post-listening framework is the standard staging model for receptive listening lessons. It mirrors the Pre-reading While-reading Post-reading model and is grounded in the same schema-theoretic rationale: comprehension requires preparation, guided engagement, and
The pre-reading / while-reading / post-reading framework is the standard staging model for receptive reading lessons. It reflects how skilled readers naturally process text by activating prior knowledge, engaging with content at multiple levels, then responding, and it structures classroom reading t
Pre-service training is the formal preparation a teacher receives before entering paid classroom employment. It contrasts with in-service training (see INSET), which takes place once the teacher is already working, and with Continuing Professional Development, which spans the whole career.
A research design in which participants are measured on the dependent variable before (pre-test) and after (post-test) a treatment or intervention. The difference between pre-test and post-test scores provides evidence of change. This is the default measurement structure in SLA intervention research
Predictive validity is the degree to which test scores forecast performance on a criterion measured at a later point in time. With concurrent validity it forms the criterion-related branch of validity evidence; the two differ only in the gap between test and criterion administration.
Thomas Prendergast (1806–1886) was a British civil servant who, based on observing how children acquire language, developed the "Mastery System" for self-directed language learning. Published in The Mastery of Languages, or The Art of Speaking Foreign Tongues Idiomatically (1864), it was one of the
The strand of Needs Analysis that establishes where learners stand at the start of a course: current proficiency, prior instruction, learning experience, attitudes, and the resources and constraints around them. PSA describes the baseline against which target demands are measured.
Teaching presentation skills means equipping learners to deliver structured, effective oral presentations in English. This is a high-demand skill in academic, professional, and examination contexts, and one that integrates speaking, organisation, and audience awareness.
Priming is the phenomenon whereby prior exposure to a linguistic stimulus (a word, structure, or sound) facilitates or biases subsequent processing or production of the same or a related stimulus. In SLA, priming research reveals how input shapes learner production and how implicit learning mechanis
Principled eclecticism is the position that no single method can adequately serve all learners in all contexts, and that effective teaching requires the informed, context-sensitive selection of techniques and principles from multiple methods. It is the dominant position in contemporary language teac
Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is an instructional approach in which learners acquire knowledge and develop skills by working collaboratively to investigate and resolve complex, authentic, ill-structured problems. Originating in medical education at McMaster University (Barrows & Tamblyn, 1980), PBL h
A lesson plan whose centre of gravity is the procedure — the sequence of instructional moves, with timings, transitions, and interaction patterns — rather than the aims, the rationale, or the language analysis. Procedural plans answer the question what does the teacher do, when, and how, in fine eno
A syllabus whose units are meaning-focused tasks rather than linguistic items. Learners work on problems whose solution requires comprehension and production in the target language; grammar and vocabulary develop as by-products of the effort to mean.
A distinction between curriculum models that begin from pre-specified outcomes (product) and those that begin from principles for valuable educational experiences (process). The clearest articulation is Lawrence Stenhouse's An Introduction to Curriculum Research and Development (Heinemann, 1975), wh
The process approach is Field's (2008) alternative to the dominant "comprehension approach" in L2 listening instruction. Where the comprehension approach tests whether learners understood a text through gist and detail questions, the process approach diagnoses where in the processing chain comprehen
A syllabus that specifies the procedures by which classroom work is planned, carried out, and evaluated rather than the linguistic content it will cover. Content emerges from ongoing negotiation between teacher and learners; the syllabus is the framework for that negotiation.
Process Writing is an approach to teaching writing that shifts attention from the finished text to the cognitive and social processes involved in composing. It emerged in L1 composition studies in the 1970s and was brought into ESL/EFL by researchers including Vivian Zamel (1982, 1983) and Ann Raime
Processability Theory (PT), developed by Manfred Pienemann (1998, 2005), predicts that L2 learners can only produce and comprehend linguistic structures that their current language processor can handle. The theory builds on Levelt's (1989) speech production model and is formalized using Lexical-Func
A tradition of writing instruction that treats the finished text as the primary object of teaching: learners study model texts, internalise their linguistic and rhetorical patterns, and reproduce them in controlled and then freer compositions. Writing is conceived first as linguistic knowledge (voca
Product Writing (also called the product approach or controlled composition) is the traditional approach to teaching writing in ELT, dominant from the 1960s through the early 1980s. It focuses on the end product, a correct, well-formed text, rather than the composing process.
Productive skills, speaking and writing, are the language skills through which learners generate output. Where Receptive Skills involve decoding incoming language, productive skills require learners to construct meaning: retrieving vocabulary, selecting grammatical structures, organising ideas, moni
A proficiency test measures a learner's overall language ability regardless of any particular course of instruction. It is not tied to a syllabus; it assesses what a learner can do with the language in real-world or academic contexts. The question it answers is: What is this person's current level o
The systematic appraisal of a specific language programme or course (its design, delivery, and effects) to inform decisions about its continuation, revision, or expansion. Where curriculum evaluation often targets the framework, programme evaluation targets a bounded instance: a particular EAP cours
Programmed instruction is an approach to teaching in which material is broken into small, carefully sequenced steps (frames), each requiring an active response from the learner, followed by immediate feedback. Originating in B.F. Skinner's behaviourist learning theory (1954), it was applied to langu
A progress test monitors learner development during a course, measuring how much of the syllabus has been learned up to a particular point. It sits between formative assessment (informal, embedded) and the achievement test (formal, end-of-course). The question it answers is: Is this learner on track
Prominence is the perceptual salience of a syllable or word relative to its surroundings in an utterance. A prominent element stands out because it is perceived as more noticeable than adjacent elements. Prominence operates at multiple levels of the prosodic hierarchy.
Pronunciation as a teaching domain covers how learners produce and perceive the spoken form of a language, across the full range from individual phonemes up to the melodic and rhythmic organisation of connected utterances. It is not reducible to "getting the sounds right." Celce-Murcia, Brinton and
Pronunciation teaching has shifted dramatically over the past century, from demanding native-like accuracy through behaviourist drill, to near-total neglect during the communicative era, to the current consensus that intelligible pronunciation is both teachable and essential. The key question is no
Prosody is the study of the elements of speech (stress, rhythm, pitch, length, phrasing, and loudness) that operate over groups of segments rather than within a single consonant or vowel. The term comes from Greek prosōidía "song sung to music", originally referring to the metrical and tonal feature
A non-probability sampling strategy in which participants are selected because they meet criteria specifically relevant to the research question — proficiency band, learner profile, classroom role, exam-history, or a defined level of expertise. The selection logic is theoretical rather than statisti
Pushed output is Swain's (1985, 1995) concept that acquisition is facilitated when learners are pushed beyond their current competence to produce language that is "not only conveyed, but conveyed precisely, coherently, and appropriately." It extends the Output Hypothesis by specifying the conditions
A discussion structure that builds progressively from individuals to pairs to fours to eights to whole class, with consensus required at each stage. First described in ELT Journal by Jordan (1990), the technique creates a natural escalation of communicative challenge while maximising Student Talking
The assignment of short interpretive labels to segments of qualitative data — interview transcripts, field notes, documents, images — to support pattern detection, retrieval, and conceptual development. Coding is the linkage between raw data and analytic claims; the choice of coding method follows f
Qualitative research is an interpretive, naturalistic approach that seeks to understand phenomena from participants' perspectives within their natural contexts. Rather than testing hypotheses with numerical data, qualitative researchers work with words, images, and observations to explore meaning, e
Quantitative research uses numerical data and statistical analysis to test hypotheses, measure variables, and identify patterns. It operates within a positivist or post-positivist paradigm that values objectivity, generalisability, and replicability. In SLA and applied linguistics, quantitative appr
A quasi-experimental design shares the logic of a true experiment, with a treatment group, comparison group, and pre/post measurement, but lacks random assignment. Participants are allocated to conditions based on pre-existing groupings, typically intact classes. This is the most common design in cl
Non-verbal or semi-verbal cues a teacher uses to pull attention back from a noisy activity without raising the voice. Common forms include a raised hand, a countdown ("five, four, three…"), a clap-back pattern that learners echo, a chime or bell, switching the lights, or a phrase the class is traine
A sampling procedure in which every member of a defined target population has a known, non-zero probability of selection. Random sampling is the foundation of inferential statistics: standard errors, confidence intervals, and p-values are all derived under the assumption that the sample was drawn fr
RANGE is the original lexical-profiling utility developed by Alex Heatley, Paul Nation, and Averil Coxhead at Victoria University of Wellington, distributed free at <https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/paul-nations-resources/vocabulary-analysis-programs>. It pioneered the workflow that every later
An activity in which learners rank a set of items according to specified criteria and justify their choices. The open-ended nature of ranking, where there is no single correct order, creates a genuine need for the language of comparison, opinion, justification, and persuasion.
The quality of the interpersonal relationship between teacher and students. Rapport is widely considered a precondition for effective language learning because it lowers the Affective Filter, increases willingness to communicate, and enables risk-taking.
Rasch analysis is a family of measurement procedures based on the model proposed by Danish mathematician Georg Rasch in 1960. The model expresses the probability of a correct response as a logistic function of the difference between a person's ability and an item's difficulty, both estimated on a si
Rater training is the systematic process of calibrating examiners to apply rating scales and band descriptors consistently. Without it, subjective assessment degenerates into personal opinion: different raters apply different standards, and scores become unreliable.
A rating scale is a set of ordered descriptors used to evaluate language performance. Each level (band) defines what a test-taker can and cannot do, providing the criteria that link observed performance to numerical scores. Rating scales operationalise the construct: they make abstract ability visib
Readability is the predicted ease with which a reader can understand a written text. The construct is operationalised through formulas — readability indices — that combine surface features of a text into a single score, usually mapped to a school grade or to a comprehension-difficulty band. The clas
Reading aloud is the practice of vocalising written text, performed by the teacher or by students. It serves fundamentally different purposes depending on who reads and why, and is one of the most controversial classroom activities in ELT: powerful when purposeful, meaningless when routine.
Reading comprehension test design is the principled construction of passage-and-question item sets that measure a defined reading construct. The craft sits at the intersection of applied linguistics, psychometrics, and cognitive psychology, and operates across three coupled surfaces: the passage, th
Reading fluency is the ability to read rapidly with ease and accuracy, and to read with appropriate expression and phrasing (Grabe 2009). It is the reading-specific dimension of Fluency, the point at which word recognition and syntactic parsing become automatic enough to free cognitive resources for
The Reading Method (or Reading Approach) was a language teaching approach prominent in the United States from the 1930s to the 1940s, advocated by the Coleman Report (1929). It emerged as a practical compromise between the ambitious oral goals of the Direct Method and the reality that most American
Reading subskills are the specific cognitive strategies that readers deploy depending on their purpose for reading. A competent reader does not read everything the same way: they skim a newspaper for interesting stories, scan a timetable for a departure time, read a contract intensively for precise
A working typology of the reading genres recurring in mainstream ELT coursebooks. The list below is descriptive rather than canonical: most general English series across the major publishers (Cambridge, Oxford, Pearson, Macmillan, National Geographic Learning) draw from this set, with proportions sh
Real-world objects brought into (or already present in) the classroom and used as teaching aids. The term comes from library science, where "realia" referred to physical artefacts in a collection. In ELT, it means any authentic object, as opposed to something created specifically for language teachi
A task type requiring learners to derive new information from given information through inference, deduction, practical reasoning, or perception of relationships. One of three gap-based task types in Prabhu's (1987) taxonomy.
A recast is the implicit reformulation of a learner's erroneous utterance, preserving the intended meaning while correcting the form. It is the most frequently used and most extensively researched type of corrective feedback in L2 classrooms (Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Sheen, 2006).
Received Pronunciation (RP) is the prestige accent of British English historically associated with the south-east of England, private boarding schools, the older universities, and twentieth-century BBC broadcasting. The term was popularised by Daniel Jones in the early editions of his English Pronou
The distinction between receptive (passive) and productive (active) vocabulary knowledge reflects whether a learner can recognise a word when encountered or actively retrieve and use it in speech or writing. This is not a binary switch but a continuum of knowledge.
Receptive skills, reading and listening, are the language skills through which learners receive and decode input. The older label "passive skills" is misleading and largely abandoned in applied linguistics because reception is anything but passive. Comprehending spoken or written language requires c
Deliberate reintroduction of previously taught language across lessons, units, and terms, so that items meet learners repeatedly in different contexts rather than appearing once and being assumed to have been learned. Recycling is the design-time response to the well-documented finding that single e
Redundancy in listening input is the supportive material (paraphrase, exemplification, repetition, reformulation, definitional gloss) carried alongside the propositional content. Where information density measures new ideas per unit of text, redundancy measures the cushion of restated, partially ove
Reduplication is a word-formation process in which a base, or part of a base, is repeated to produce a new lexeme. In many languages reduplication is fully grammatical, marking plurality, intensity, or aspect; in English it is largely expressive and lexicalised, surviving as a productive but margina
Reference chains are sequences of referring expressions that track an entity through a text, maintaining the reader's awareness of who or what is being discussed. They are a primary mechanism of textual Cohesion and a key area of L2 writing difficulty.
Questions where the teacher does not know the answer at the time of asking. The purpose is to seek genuine information, opinions, or experiences from learners, creating authentic communication in the classroom. The term was introduced by Long and Sato (1983) alongside display questions to describe t
The habit of systematically thinking about one's own teaching in order to improve it. Recognised as the core mechanism of Teacher Professional Development, it is the bridge between experience and expertise. Without reflection, twenty years of teaching is one year of experience repeated twenty times.
Register is the variety of language appropriate to a particular situation. The same speaker uses different registers when texting a friend, writing a cover letter, and presenting at a conference. Register is not about "good" or "bad" English; it is about appropriacy.
Relative clauses are subordinate clauses that modify a noun phrase, introduced by a relative pronoun (who, which, that, whose, whom) or relative adverb (where, when, why). They are one of the most heavily taught structures in ELT and one of the most persistent areas of L2 difficulty.
Reliability is the consistency of test results. A reliable test produces the same (or very similar) results under the same conditions: same test, same learners, same context. If a learner scores 7.0 on Monday and 5.5 on Wednesday with no change in ability, the test is unreliable.
Repair is the mechanism through which participants in conversation deal with problems of speaking, hearing, and understanding. It was first systematically described by Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks (1977) as a core organisation of Conversation Analysis.
Replication is the practice of repeating a study to verify whether its findings hold. It is a cornerstone of scientific knowledge: a finding that cannot be reproduced is not trustworthy. Yet replication is strikingly rare in SLA and applied linguistics research.
Reported speech (indirect speech) is the grammatical system for conveying what someone said without quoting their exact words. It contrasts with direct speech, which preserves the original utterance verbatim.
Restructuring (McLaughlin, 1990) refers to qualitative reorganizations of the learner's internal representational system, moments when the interlanguage undergoes fundamental change rather than incremental improvement. It complements automatization: while automatization makes existing routines faste
Rhythm is the perceived pattern of strong and weak beats in speech: the alternation of prominent (stressed) and non-prominent (unstressed) syllables that gives a language its characteristic "feel." English rhythm is what makes it sound fundamentally different from French, Spanish, or Japanese, and i
Richard Cauldwell is a British phonologist and teacher trainer, founder of the Birmingham-based publisher and consultancy Speech in Action, and the ELT field's most insistent voice on the teachability of bottom-up decoding for L2 listeners. After teaching in France, Hong Kong, and Japan, he joined t
Richard Schmidt was an American applied linguist associated with the University of Hawai'i and one of the decisive figures in the study of attention and awareness in SLA. His name is inseparable from the Noticing Hypothesis, but his broader importance lies in having made the field think much harder
Risk-taking in SLA refers to a learner's willingness to use the target language despite incomplete knowledge: to attempt complex structures, experiment with new vocabulary, speak without certainty, and tolerate the possibility of error. It is an affective-cognitive learner variable that directly aff
Rob Waring is a British applied linguist based in Japan and the leading practitioner-research voice on graded readers and extensive reading. He spent his career at Notre Dame Seishin University in Okayama, where he is now Professor Emeritus, and continues as Visiting Professor at Thammasat Universit
Robert Bley-Vroman is Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, and the author of one of the most-cited theoretical proposals in SLA: the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis. First stated in a 1989 chapter and sharpened in a 1990 Linguistic Analysis paper, the FDH argues that adult sec
Robert DeKeyser is Professor Emeritus of Second Language Acquisition at the University of Maryland, and the clearest voice in SLA for treating language learning as a species of general skill acquisition. He trained in Belgium (BA Leuven) and the United States (MA, PhD Stanford), spent seventeen year
Robert C. Gardner is a Canadian psychologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Western Ontario. For more than four decades, he was the dominant figure in L2 motivation research, and almost every subsequent framework, including Dörnyei's L2 Motivational Self System, defines itself in relati
Robert Phillipson is a British-Danish applied linguist and Professor Emeritus at Copenhagen Business School. Before his academic career, he worked for the British Council, an experience that shaped the sharpest critique of the global English teaching enterprise the field has produced.
Robin Walker is a teacher educator, writer, and pronunciation specialist associated with the international turn in ELT pronunciation work. Over a long career in language teaching, teacher education, and consultancy, he became one of the clearest public advocates for teaching pronunciation in a world
Rod Ellis is a British applied linguist whose career has stretched across the UK, Africa, the United States, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and China. He has taught at universities in several countries, held major professorial posts at institutions such as Temple University and the University of Auc
Roger Gilabert Guerrero is a professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Barcelona and one of the key empirical collaborators on Robinson's Cognition Hypothesis. His research programme takes the theoretical taxonomy — Task Complexity, Task Condition, Task Difficulty — and runs it through a
An activity in which learners take on defined roles and act out scenarios, using language appropriate to the character, context, and communicative purpose. Role plays range from tightly scripted (controlled) to completely open-ended (creative), making them one of the most versatile activity types in
Rote learning is the committing of language material to memory through repetition, without necessary analysis of its underlying structure. It covers everything from isolated L1–L2 word pairs to entire texts, poems, dialogues, and film scripts. For most of the communicative era it was the technique t
A rubric is a scoring tool that articulates the expectations for a performance or product by listing criteria (what to evaluate) and performance level descriptions (what quality looks like at each level along a continuum). Unlike a simple rating scale that uses numerical or evaluative labels alone,
Sampling is the process of selecting participants from a population for inclusion in a research study. How participants are selected determines the External Validity of findings, that is, whether results can be generalised beyond the study's specific sample.
Samuel Messick (1931–1998) was an American psychometrician and long-time Distinguished Research Scientist at Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton. His 1989 chapter "Validity" in Educational Measurement (third edition) reorganized the modern understanding of what test validity is, and its i
Scaffolding is the temporary, calibrated support that enables a learner to perform a task they could not yet manage alone. The metaphor comes from Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976), who used it to describe parent-child tutoring, and it was later integrated with Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development to
A reading sub-skill in which the reader searches a text rapidly to locate specific information (a name, date, number, keyword) without reading the whole text. The reader knows what they are looking for before they start.
The materials-design counterpart to the cognitive construct of schema. Where schema theory explains how prior knowledge shapes comprehension, the design move concerns what coursebook writers actually do at the pre-listening or pre-reading stage to engage that knowledge before learners meet the text.
Schema theory holds that comprehension, in reading, listening, or any cognitive processing, depends on activating existing knowledge structures (schemata) stored in long-term memory. Readers and listeners do not simply decode incoming information; they actively construct meaning by mapping new input
A medium-term planning document that maps out the sequence of lessons over a term, module, or course. It sits between the syllabus (what to teach) and individual lesson plans (how to teach it on a given day), providing a bridge that turns curriculum intentions into a practical teaching schedule.
Donald Schön's distinction between reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action is the foundational conceptual move of the modern reflective practice tradition. Set out in The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, published by Basic Books in 1983, the framework reframed profes
The schwa /ə/ is the most frequent vowel sound in spoken English: up to 70% of vowels in British English running speech are schwas. It is a mid-central, unstressed vowel produced with a neutral mouth position: relaxed lips, half-open jaw, flat tongue.
A scope and sequence document maps what content is taught (scope) and in what order (sequence) across a course, programme, or curriculum. It is the high-level architectural blueprint that ensures coverage, progression, and coherence, the bridge between syllabus design and lesson-by-lesson planning.
Scott Thornbury is a New Zealand-born ELT writer, trainer, and speaker whose career has made him one of the field's most recognizable public intellectuals. He has worked internationally, written extensively on grammar and methodology, and built a profile that combines teacher education, blogging, co
A scripted listening text is dialogue or monologue written in advance and read aloud by voice actors for coursebook audio. The script is drafted to a target level, edited for pedagogic load, and recorded under studio conditions. Almost every mainstream ELT coursebook from Pre-A1 through B2 relies on
Self-assessment is the process by which learners evaluate their own language ability, performance, or progress. It shifts some responsibility for assessment from teacher to learner, building metacognitive awareness and supporting autonomous learning. The question it asks learners is: What can I do?
The learner identifies and repairs their own error without external provision of the correct form. Preferred over teacher correction in CLT approaches because it demonstrates that the learner's Interlanguage already contains the correct form: the error was a performance slip, not a competence gap.
Self-Determination Theory (SDT), developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (1985), is a macro-theory of human motivation that distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and identifies three basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) as essential for optimal funct
Semantic broadening, also called generalization or widening, is the process by which a word's range of reference expands so that it covers more entities, situations, or contexts than it originally did. It is one of the four classical outcomes of semantic change in the Bloomfieldian typology, paired
Semantic change is the diachronic process by which the meaning of a word shifts over time, often to the point that its modern sense diverges sharply from its historical one. It is one of the central topics of historical semantics and a major source of mismatch between etymology and current usage.
Semantic narrowing, also called specialization or restriction, is the process by which a word's range of reference contracts so that it applies to fewer entities than it once did. It is the inverse of broadening and one of the four standard outcomes in Bloomfield's (1933) typology of semantic change
Semantics is the study of meaning in language: what words, phrases, and sentences mean independently of context. It asks: what does this expression mean by virtue of its linguistic form alone? Context-dependent meaning is the domain of Pragmatics.
Semi-fixed expressions are formulaic sequences containing one or more variable slots within an otherwise stable frame. They are more flexible than Fixed Expressions but more predictable and conventionalised than free combinations of words.
A semi-scripted listening text sits between fully scripted dialogue and unedited authentic recording. Speakers receive a scenario, role description, or content outline (sometimes a target lexical or functional set) and improvise within it. Recordings are made in a studio under direction, then edited
A gamified error-identification activity in which learners "bid" on sentences, some grammatically correct and some containing errors, using a fixed budget of play money. Teams that buy correct sentences profit; teams that buy incorrect sentences lose their investment. An engaging alternative to trad
Sentence stress is the pattern of stressed and unstressed words in an utterance. While Word Stress determines which syllable is prominent within a word, sentence stress determines which words are prominent within a phrase or sentence. It is the engine that drives English Rhythm and the mechanism thr
Shadowing is a pronunciation and listening technique in which the learner repeats audio in real time, with the smallest possible lag, attempting to match the speaker's segments, rhythm, stress, and intonation. The technique has its origins in interpreter training and was introduced into language-lea
Content-area instruction delivered in English but designed and modified so that English language learners can access grade-level subject matter while developing academic English. The dominant US K-12 expression of Content-based Instruction, distinct from EMI (which assumes high learner proficiency)
The lesson-by-lesson and week-by-week planning that turns scheme-of-work entries into teachable sessions. Short-term planning is where general aims become specific `Lesson Aims`, where target language is checked for meaning, form, and pronunciation, where `Anticipated Problems` are surfaced, and whe
The Silent Way is a language teaching method developed by Caleb Gattegno, first described in Teaching Foreign Languages in Schools: The Silent Way (1963). It grew from Gattegno's earlier work in mathematics education and is classified among the humanistic or designer methods of the 1970s.
Simon Borg is a British-Maltese applied linguist, former Professor of TESOL at the University of Leeds, and now an independent consultant in language teacher education. His work has defined teacher cognition as a research area: what teachers know, believe, and think, and how those inner lives intera
This entry covers learner-production simplification, an SLA construct about output. For the materials-design technique of reducing linguistic complexity in pedagogic texts, see Adapting Authentic Texts, Intuitive Simplification, Text Elaboration, and Graded Language.
An extended, multi-stage Role Play in which learners engage with a realistic scenario that mirrors real-world complexity. While a role play might involve a brief exchange between two characters, a simulation involves sustained interaction with realistic constraints, props, documents, and consequence
Situational authenticity is one of the two complementary qualities of authenticity in Bachman and Palmer's framework (Language Testing in Practice, 1996). It refers to the degree of correspondence between the characteristics of a test task and the characteristics of tasks in the TLU domain. Where th
Situational Language Teaching (SLT) is a British approach to language teaching developed between the 1930s and 1960s, primarily by Harold Palmer, A.S. Hornby, and Pittman. It is sometimes called the Oral-Situational Approach. SLT shares the Direct Method's commitment to oral practice and target-lang
A syllabus organised around recurrent real-world situations — at the bank, at the doctor, ordering a meal, asking directions — with language items selected for their utility within each setting. The unit of design is the social context, not the grammatical form or the communicative function.
Skill Acquisition Theory (SAT) is a cognitive theory of learning, applied to SLA primarily by Robert DeKeyser. It draws on Anderson's (1982, 1993, 2007) ACT (Adaptive Control of Thought) framework and proposes that language learning follows the same path as learning any complex cognitive skill, from
A staging architecture organised around the four skills rather than around language items. Skills frameworks split into two families: the Pre / While / Post sequence used for receptive skills, and the product or process sequence used for productive skills. Both families exist because skill developme
A syllabus organised around the macro-skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, together with their micro-skills (skimming, gist listening, paragraph organisation, turn-taking), rather than around grammar, situations, functions, or tasks. Content is selected and sequenced to develop these
A reading sub-skill in which the reader passes quickly over a text to get the gist, the main idea, general topic, or overall structure, without attending to detail.
Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is the scientific study of how people learn languages beyond their first. It investigates the cognitive, linguistic, social, and environmental factors that shape the development of a new language system in the learner's mind. The field draws on linguistics, psycholo
A slip of the tongue (Latin lapsus linguae) is an unintended deviation from the form a speaker meant to produce, where the speaker has the target form available and would correct it on noticing. The term covers the full range of speech errors studied in psycholinguistics, from sound exchanges to who
SMART is an acronym-based framework for writing clear, actionable learning objectives. Originally from management theory (Doran, 1981), it has been widely adopted in education and ELT as a tool for ensuring that lesson aims and learning outcomes are precise enough to be taught, assessed, and evaluat
A readability index developed by G. Harry McLaughlin and published in his 1969 Journal of Reading paper SMOG Grading: A New Readability Formula. SMOG is an acronym for Simple Measure of Gobbledygook. McLaughlin built it as a faster, more accurate replacement for the Gunning Fog Index: same predictor
A snowball discussion is a structured discussion technique that begins with individual written reflection, then builds through pairs and small groups to a whole-class discussion. It is similar to Pyramid Discussion but specifically starts with a written element, ensuring that every learner has formu
Sociocultural Theory (SCT) is the SLA framework derived from Lev Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology and developed for second language research primarily by James Lantolf and colleagues from the 1990s onward. It holds that higher mental functions, including language, are first inter-mental (pe
A sociolect is a language variety associated with a particular social group, defined by factors such as social class, age, gender, occupation, or ethnicity. Where dialect is primarily geographic, sociolect is primarily social.
Sociolinguistic competence is the knowledge of sociocultural rules governing appropriate language use: the ability to produce and interpret utterances that are suitable for a given setting, topic, relationship between participants, and communicative purpose.
A five-level scheme for describing the structural complexity of learner responses, developed by John B. Biggs and Kevin F. Collis in Evaluating the Quality of Learning: The SOLO Taxonomy (Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome) (Academic Press, 1982). SOLO classifies the quality of an observed p
Sonorant and obstruent are the two major classes of speech sounds defined by the degree of constriction in the Vocal Tract and the resulting airflow.
Spaced repetition is the practice of reviewing material at gradually expanding intervals so that each review occurs as the trace is on the verge of being forgotten. The underlying spacing effect — the finding that distributed practice yields better long-term retention than the same amount of study m
A Special Interest Group is a themed sub-community within a larger professional association whose members share a focused area of professional concern — pronunciation, young learners, teacher development, ESP, inclusive practices. Within ELT, SIGs are the day-to-day operating unit of the major profe
Speech act theory holds that utterances are not just statements about the world; they are actions performed through language. When a judge says "I sentence you to five years," the words do not describe a sentencing; they are the sentencing. J.L. Austin (1962, How to Do Things with Words) originated
Speech in Action is a Birmingham-based independent ELT publisher and consultancy founded in 2001 by Richard Cauldwell after he left the English department at the University of Birmingham. Its catalogue is small, tightly focused, and entirely organised around a single claim: L2 learners fail at liste
Speech rate is the speed of the recorded voice in a listening text, conventionally measured in words per minute (wpm) or syllables per second. It is one of the most-controlled editorial variables in coursebook audio production and one of the most studied variables in listening-comprehension research
A curriculum design in which key concepts and skills are revisited repeatedly at increasing levels of complexity. Originated with Jerome Bruner (1960, The Process of Education).
A spoonerism is a speech error in which corresponding sounds, usually word-initial consonants, are exchanged between two nearby words, producing a new and often comic phrase: crushing blow becomes blushing crow, jelly beans becomes belly jeans, bunny rabbit becomes runny babbit.
Stabilization is an extended period of no apparent progress in interlanguage development for a particular linguistic feature. It shares surface characteristics with fossilization, where the learner appears stuck, but differs fundamentally in that stabilization is potentially reversible.
Staging is the sequencing of activities within a lesson: the order in which tasks appear and how each one builds toward the lesson aims. Every stage should have a clear purpose (why this activity here) and a logical connection to what comes before and after. A well-staged lesson feels like a coheren
The strand of Needs Analysis that identifies the parties whose interests, expectations, and authority shape a language programme — learners, teachers, programme administrators, sponsors, employers, parents, ministries, examination boards, accrediting bodies — and audits what each group requires of t
A measure of the spread of a set of values around their mean, expressed in the same units as the data. The standard deviation is the square root of the variance — the average squared deviation from the mean. A class with mean reading score 70 and SD 5 is much more homogeneous than a class with the s
The standard error of measurement (SEM) estimates the spread of observed scores expected around an examinee's true score on repeated testing. In classical test theory it is the standard deviation of the error component of an observed score and is computed as
A standard language is a codified, prestigious variety that has been selected for use in education, government, media, and formal communication. It is a social and political construct, not a linguistically superior form.
Standardization is the process of training and calibrating examiners/raters so they apply a rating scale consistently. Without it, the same performance can receive different scores from different raters, undermining inter-rater reliability and, by extension, test validity.
Statistical significance indicates whether an observed result is unlikely to have occurred by chance, given the assumption that no true effect exists (the null hypothesis). Conventionally, a result is deemed "statistically significant" when p < .05, meaning there is less than a 5% probability of obt
Stephen Krashen is an American linguist and educator whose name became almost synonymous with the great input turn in late twentieth-century SLA. Born in Chicago in 1941, he earned his doctorate in linguistics at UCLA and went on to teach at the University of Southern California, where he later beca
Stimulated recall is a retrospective introspective method in which participants view or listen to a recording of their own performance and report what they were thinking at the time. The recording serves as a stimulus to help participants reconstruct their thought processes, reducing reliance on una
A cognitive-psychology framework for the structural regularities of narrative text. The dominant formulation, Stein and Glenn (1979), models a story as a setting plus one or more episodes, each consisting of an initiating event, an internal response, an attempt, a consequence, and a reaction. Mandle
The simplest of Jeremy Harmer's three `ESA` lesson shapes: Engage, then Study, then Activate, in that order, once each. The metaphor is a single arrow flying from initial interest to final language use, with the language work compressed into the middle.
Strategic competence is the ability to compensate for breakdowns or limitations in communication, maintaining the flow of interaction when linguistic resources fall short.
A probability-sampling technique that divides the target population into mutually exclusive subgroups (strata) defined by characteristics relevant to the research question, then samples within each stratum. Strata in language research typically correspond to proficiency band, year level, L1 backgrou
The distinction between stress-timed and syllable-timed languages describes two tendencies in how languages organise the temporal rhythm of speech. While the strict dichotomy is an oversimplification (rhythm exists on a continuum), it remains a useful pedagogical framework for understanding why L2 l
A strong form is the full, unreduced pronunciation of an English function word, with its citation vowel intact. Can /kæn/, was /wɒz/, for /fɔː/, and /ænd/, to /tuː/. The strong form is what dictionaries list and what learners typically encounter first, but in connected speech it is the marked option
A syllabus organised around grammatical forms — verb tenses, sentence patterns, morphological contrasts — sequenced from simple to complex and from frequent to rare. The dominant model in mainstream ELT from the 1940s through the 1970s, and still the backbone of most general-English coursebooks.
Student Talking Time (STT) is the proportion of a lesson during which learners are speaking. It serves as a rough but useful proxy for learner engagement and productive language use. The core argument is simple: students learn to speak by speaking, and a lesson where the teacher dominates airtime de
Style shifting is the process by which speakers adjust their language along a formality continuum depending on the communicative context. Every speaker style-shifts. It is a universal feature of human language use, not a sign of inconsistency or "bad English."
Subject-verb agreement (also called concord) is the grammatical requirement that the verb matches its subject in number and person. In English, this is morphologically simple: only the third person singular present tense carries the -s inflection (she writes vs they write), yet it remains a persiste
Coordination and subordination are the two fundamental mechanisms for combining clauses in English. They produce different structural relationships and carry different discourse implications.
Secondary learning outcomes that support the main lesson aim, typically involving enabling language, sub-skills, or complementary skills that learners need in order to achieve the primary outcome. A lesson with a main skills aim will usually have subsidiary language aims, and vice versa.
Substitution is a cohesive device in which one linguistic element is replaced by a pro-form, a word that stands in for a longer expression recoverable from the context. Halliday and Hasan (1976) identified it alongside reference, Ellipsis, conjunction, and Lexical Cohesion as one of the five major t
Suggestopedia is a language teaching method developed by Bulgarian psychiatrist-educator Georgi Lozanov in the 1970s, rooted in his theory of suggestology, the study of how non-rational and non-conscious influences can be harnessed to optimise learning. Lozanov later preferred the term Desuggestoped
Summative assessment measures what learners have achieved at the end of a defined period: a unit, course, term, or program. Its purpose is to certify, grade, or rank, not to inform ongoing instruction. Often called "assessment OF learning."
Resources used in addition to the main coursebook to extend, adapt, enrich, or replace coursebook content. Supplementary materials fill gaps, provide variety, match specific learner needs, and keep teaching responsive rather than coursebook-dependent.
Suprasegmental features are phonological properties that extend over more than a single segment, ranging across syllables, words, phrases, or whole utterances rather than being localised to individual consonants and vowels. The category covers stress, pitch (tone and intonation), and length, plus th
Suprasegmentals are phonological features that operate above the level of individual segments (phonemes). Where segmental phonology deals with consonants and vowels, the building blocks of words, suprasegmental (or prosodic) features deal with how those segments are organized across syllables, words
A working distinction in readability, lexical analysis, and automated text scoring. Surface features are properties of a text you can compute by counting tokens: no parsing, no meaning, no lookup against an external resource. Deep features require linguistic processing, external knowledge, or both.
A survey activity is a classroom task in which students create and/or conduct surveys, asking classmates questions, recording answers, and reporting results. It naturally integrates question formation, speaking, listening, note-taking, and often writing and presenting, making it one of the most effe
Susan M. Gass is an American applied linguist and University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University, where she has been based for decades in the Second Language Studies program. Her career has centred on input, interaction, and the methodology of SLA research itself.
Syllable structure refers to the internal organisation of a syllable into its constituent parts: onset, nucleus, and coda. The nucleus and coda together form the rhyme (or rime). Understanding syllable structure is fundamental to predicting L2 pronunciation difficulties.
Syllabus design is the process of selecting and organising the content of a language course, deciding what to teach and in what order. It is a subset of the broader field of Course Design (or curriculum development), which also encompasses needs analysis, methodology, materials, and assessment. The
A syllabus specifies what is to be taught and in what order. The choice of syllabus type reflects assumptions about language and learning.
Synonymy and antonymy are fundamental sense relations: the ways in which word meanings relate to each other within the lexical system of a language. Understanding these relations is central to vocabulary teaching, lexical cohesion in writing, and developing the nuanced word knowledge that separates
Syntax is the system of rules governing how words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. It determines that The cat sat on the mat is English but Cat the on sat mat the is not. Where morphology operates within the word, syntax operates between words.
A synthetic syllabus segments the target language into discrete linguistic items and teaches them one at a time, on the assumption that the learner will eventually reassemble the parts into usable language. Wilkins coined the term in Notional Syllabuses (1976), defining a synthetic language-teaching
A seven-step inductive model of curriculum development advanced by Hilda Taba in Curriculum Development: Theory and Practice (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962). Taba framed it as a grassroots alternative to top-down planning: teachers, not central administrators, design teaching-learning units and let
Text As a Linguistic Object. The second of the two contrasting stances toward classroom text introduced by Tim Johns and Florence Davies (1983). In TALO, the text is treated as a specimen of language. Its reason for being in the lesson is what grammatical or lexical features can be "quarried" from i
A tap and a flap are consonants formed by a single, rapid contact between two articulators, briefly interrupting the airstream. They are distinguished from plosives by the speed and minimal pressure of the closure: there is no build-up and explosive release, just a momentary touch.
A central construct from Lyle Bachman and Adrian Palmer's Language Testing in Practice (Oxford University Press, 1996). The TLU domain is the set of real-world language-use situations to which a test is intended to generalise. Test tasks are valid to the extent that their characteristics correspond
The strand of Needs Analysis that profiles the language demands of the situation learners are preparing to enter — a job, an academic programme, a professional examination, a workplace role. TSA asks what learners will have to do with the language at the end of training and works backwards from that
In task-based research the words complexity and difficulty are not synonyms. Peter Robinson's Triadic Componential Framework (Robinson 2001, 2005, 2007) reserves complexity for cognitive demands intrinsic to the task itself, difficulty for how demanding individual learners perceive that task to be,
The three-phase instructional framework for Task-Based Language Teaching proposed by Jane Willis in A Framework for Task-Based Learning (1996, Longman). The framework sequences a lesson through pre-task, task cycle, and language focus, designed to create optimal conditions for language acquisition b
Task design is the principled creation of communicative tasks for language learning: selecting, structuring, and calibrating activities so that they generate the interaction, output, and attention to form that drive acquisition. It is a core competence in TBLT but relevant to any communicative metho
A syllabus organised around pedagogic tasks (purposeful activities with non-linguistic outcomes) as the units of selection, sequencing, and evaluation. Linguistic content is not pre-specified; it arises from the language demands of the tasks learners are expected to perform.
This distinction, central to the Bryfonski-McKay controversy, separates two fundamentally different ways of using tasks in language teaching.
Text As a Springboard for Production. A third stance toward classroom text, commonly attributed to Lindsay Clandfield's British Council TeachingEnglish article, which extends the original TAVI / TALO pair introduced by Tim Johns and Florence Davies (1983). In TASP, the text is treated as a stimulus
Text As a Vehicle of Information. One of two contrasting stances toward classroom text introduced by Tim Johns and Florence Davies (1983) at the University of Birmingham in the ESP/EAP reading tradition. In TAVI, the text is treated as a carrier of meaning. It is read or listened to for what it says
Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) is an approach to language instruction that organises learning around the performance of meaningful tasks rather than the accumulation of language items. It emerged in the 1980s from dissatisfaction with structural syllabuses and the limitations of PPP, and it rep
Teacher autonomy names a teacher's capacity and willingness to make principled decisions about their own teaching and professional learning rather than simply implement decisions made by others. The concept is the teacher-side counterpart to learner autonomy and is treated in the literature as both
Teacher beliefs are the personal theories, assumptions, and values that teachers hold about language, learning, teaching, and their students. They act as a filter through which teachers interpret training, make classroom decisions, and respond to new ideas. Often implicit and unarticulated, beliefs
Teacher cognition refers to the unobservable dimension of teaching: what teachers know, believe, and think, and how these mental constructs shape their classroom decisions and practices. It is the study of the mental lives of teachers: their knowledge systems, belief structures, attitudes, assumptio
Teacher identity refers to how teachers understand themselves as professionals: the beliefs, values, knowledge, experiences, and social positions that shape their sense of who they are as teachers. It is not fixed but fluid, constructed and reconstructed through practice, interaction, and reflection
A teacher portfolio is a curated collection of evidence that documents a teacher's practice, professional growth, and reflective thinking over time. Unlike a CV or a list of qualifications, a portfolio tells the story of a teacher's development through concrete artefacts and the reflections that con
Teacher research is the systematic, intentional investigation by teachers into their own practice. It is broader than Action Research: it encompasses any form of principled inquiry undertaken by classroom practitioners to understand teaching and learning in their own contexts. The term signals a shi
The idea that a teacher plays multiple roles during a lesson, shifting between them depending on the activity, the learners, and the stage of the lesson. The most widely cited framework in ELT is Jeremy Harmer's eight roles, presented in The Practice of English Language Teaching (2001, revised in su
Teacher Talking Time (TTT) is the proportion of a lesson during which the teacher is speaking. The traditional advice is to minimize it, but this oversimplifies: the real issue is not quantity but quality. Unnecessary TTT, such as rambling instructions, over-explanation, thinking aloud, and filling
Freeman (1989) drew a foundational distinction in language teacher education between training and development: two complementary but fundamentally different processes that serve different purposes and operate through different mechanisms.
The vocal instrument a teacher uses to deliver instruction and manage the room: projection, pitch range, pace, volume, and the deliberate use of pauses and stress. Distinct from the grammatical voice (active/passive) categorisation, which is unrelated. Teacher voice is a craft skill that affects com
Teacher wellbeing names the physical, emotional, mental, and social health of teachers as it relates to their capacity to teach, learn, and remain in the profession. Once treated as a private matter, it has become a recognised dimension of teacher quality and retention research, on the argument that
Teacher workload names the volume and distribution of work teachers undertake beyond direct contact with learners — planning, marking, administration, meetings, reporting, communication with parents, and statutory duties. It is one of the most extensively studied predictors of teacher attrition and
The companion volume to a coursebook, written for the teacher rather than the learner. Also published under the labels teacher's book, teacher's edition, and teacher's guide — usage varies by publisher and market, with no consistent technical distinction between them.
A teaching journal is a regular written record of teaching experiences used as a tool for professional development. It makes the implicit explicit by surfacing beliefs, assumptions, patterns, and questions that might otherwise go unexamined. Farrell (1998, 2013) and Richards and Lockhart (1994) iden
A teaching philosophy is a written, first-person statement in which a teacher articulates their beliefs about teaching and learning, the methods they use, and the goals they hold for students. It serves both as a reflective exercise — clarifying what the teacher actually thinks they are doing — and
Team teaching (also called co-teaching) involves two or more teachers collaboratively planning, delivering, and evaluating instruction for the same group of learners. It is not simply "two teachers in the room"; genuine team teaching requires shared responsibility for learning outcomes and coordinat
Teenage Learners in ELT covers adolescents in secondary education, conventionally roughly 12 to 18, sitting between primary children and adults. The category is defined less by age than by what happens cognitively and socially in adolescence: a shift in reasoning, a renegotiation of identity, and a
Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (TELL) is a broad umbrella term for any use of technology to support language learning and teaching. It supersedes CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) by encompassing not just computers but mobile devices, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, social
A critical distinction in linguistics and language teaching: tense is a grammatical category marked on the verb, aspect describes how an event unfolds in time, and time is the real-world temporal reference. These three systems interact but do not map neatly onto each other.
Teresa Pica (1945–2011) was Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education from 1983 until her death, and one of the researchers who turned the Interaction Hypothesis from a Long-and-Varonis slogan into a mature empirical programme. She came to SLA sideways: fi
TESOL International Association — Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages — is the principal North American–based professional body for English language educators. Founded in 1966 and headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, it operates worldwide through a network of more than a hundred aff
Four overlapping acronyms label the field of teaching English to non-native speakers. They differ chiefly in how they frame the learner's relationship to English and in regional usage rather than in classroom method.
Test bias occurs when a test systematically advantages or disadvantages a particular group of test takers due to factors that are irrelevant to the construct being measured. In language testing, a biased test conflates language proficiency with extraneous variables such as cultural knowledge, gender
Test specifications (also called a test blueprint or test spec) are the detailed document that defines what a test measures, how it measures it, and under what conditions. They are the bridge between the abstract construct and the concrete test; without them, test development is guesswork.
Test-retest reliability is the consistency of scores when the same test is administered to the same examinees on two occasions. The Pearson correlation between the two score sets is termed the coefficient of stability and indexes the proportion of score variance attributable to a stable trait rather
Test-Teach-Test (TTT) is a lesson framework that reverses the logic of PPP by starting from learner performance rather than teacher presentation. The teacher sets a communicative task (Test 1), observes what learners can and cannot do, teaches to the gaps revealed (Teach), then sets a similar task t
Text complexity is the construct that readability formulas attempt to operationalise. It refers to the cumulative load a written text places on a reader, integrating surface-linguistic features (sentence length, lexical frequency), discourse-level features (cohesion, anaphoric distance, rhetorical s
Text elaboration is a written-input modification strategy that retains low-frequency vocabulary, complex syntax, and the structural features of authentic discourse, then adds redundancy, paraphrase, and explicit signals of cohesion to support comprehension. Michael H. Long proposed it as an alternat
Text memorisation is the oldest technique in language teaching that still works: the learner commits an entire text (dialogue, poem, speech, screenplay, prayer, song) to memory and learns to reproduce it accurately. It has been used across cultures for centuries, from Quranic recitation to classical
The same text scored on the same formula by two different tools will give two different numbers. This is not a bug in either tool. It is a structural property of how text metrics are defined: the published formulas operate on inputs — token counts, sentence counts, syllable counts, complex-word coun
Text structure is the organisational pattern a writer uses to arrange ideas within a text. Recognising text structure aids reading comprehension by allowing readers to anticipate content, identify key information, and construct mental representations of the text's argument or narrative. It is equall
Text type is a classification of texts based on their primary communicative function and rhetorical purpose. While Genre refers to culturally recognised categories of text (essay, letter, report), text type refers to the underlying functional mode: a single genre may combine multiple text types.
Text-based Instruction (also called the genre-based approach or genre pedagogy) is an approach to language teaching that organises learning around text types (genres): the predictable patterns of language that serve particular social purposes. Drawing on systemic functional linguistics (Halliday), i
A framework for materials development set out by Brian Tomlinson in Developing Materials for Language Teaching (Continuum, 2003; second edition Bloomsbury, 2013). Text comes first — the writer selects a rich, engaging text and designs activities outward from it — and the syllabus is mapped onto what
A materials-design principle: the comprehension or production task that follows a text must be answerable from that text and must demand the kind of processing the lesson targets. Alignment fails in two directions. A task can demand processing the text does not support, forcing learners to invent or
a, an indefinite article about prep., adv. above prep., adv. across prep., adv. action n. activity n. actor n. actress n. add v. address n. adult n. advice n. atraid adj. after prep afternoon n. again adv agen. ago adv. agree v. air n. airport n. all det., pron. also adv. always adv. amazing adj. an
The Threshold Level is a Council of Europe specification, first published in 1975 by Wilkins, van Ek, and Trim, that describes what an adult learner needs to be able to do in English to function independently in everyday situations in a country where the language is spoken. It marked a decisive shif
A method for identifying, analysing, and reporting patterns of meaning across a qualitative dataset. Thematic analysis is theoretically flexible — it can serve realist, constructionist, or critical orientations — and is widely used as a foundational technique across Qualitative Research in education
Thematic structure, a central concept in Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), analyses the clause as a message. Every clause has a Theme (the starting point, what the message is about) and a Rheme (what is said about it). Theme choice is not random; it shapes how text flows, how ideas c
Theodore S. Rodgers is an American applied linguist and Emeritus Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. His career spanned language teaching, curriculum design, and a long partnership with Jack Richards that produced the most widely used framework in the field fo
The point in Grounded Theory data collection at which sampling additional cases yields no new categories, properties, or relationships in the developing analytic framework. Reaching saturation is the methodological criterion for stopping data collection; before saturation the theory is incomplete, a
A thesis statement is the central claim or argument of an essay, typically placed at the end of the introduction. It tells the reader what the essay will argue and, implicitly, how it will be organised. In academic writing, the thesis statement is the single most important sentence in the essay beca
A think-aloud protocol is a data collection method in which participants verbalise their thoughts while performing a task. The researcher records and transcribes this concurrent verbal report, then analyses it to infer the cognitive processes underlying task performance.
A three-stage cooperative strategy developed by Frank Lyman (1981) at the University of Maryland: learners think individually, discuss with a partner, then share with the class. The structure scaffolds participation by ensuring everyone processes the question before anyone speaks publicly, making it
Thomas S. C. Farrell is an Irish-Canadian applied linguist and Professor of Applied Linguistics at Brock University in Ontario. For more than two decades his central subject has been reflective practice in language teaching — what it actually consists of, how teachers can do it without it collapsing
The Threshold Hypothesis is Cummins's account of when bilingualism produces cognitive benefits, when it produces no clear effect, and when it carries cognitive costs. Proposed in the late 1970s to reconcile a contradictory body of research on bilingualism and intelligence, the hypothesis claims that
Timothy Francis Johns (1936–2009) was a British applied linguist whose work at the University of Birmingham reshaped how teachers think about reading in a foreign language and about the place of authentic linguistic data in the classroom. He is remembered for two things above all: the TAVI/TALO dist
Time management in the ELT classroom refers to the planning and in-lesson management of time across lesson stages: allocating appropriate duration to each activity, knowing when to cut or extend, managing transitions efficiently, and handling early finishers. It is directly linked to Pacing, the rhy
Institutional decisions about when classes meet, for how long, and in what order across the week. Timetabling sits above lesson planning in the planning hierarchy: a teacher can plan only within whatever the timetable provides, and the same syllabus delivered on different timetables will produce not
The tip of the tongue (TOT) state is the experience of being temporarily unable to retrieve a known word while remaining sure that the word is known and that retrieval is imminent. The speaker often has access to partial information: the first letter, the number of syllables, the stress pattern, sem
The Teaching Knowledge Test is a modular Cambridge qualification that assesses the knowledge base of English language teaching through objective testing. It does not assess classroom practice. TKT sits below CELTA in the Cambridge Qualifications Ladder as a low-stakes, low-cost route into ELT termin
TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) — the dominant English proficiency test for academic admission in North America. Developed and administered by ETS (Educational Testing Service), a US non-profit (also produces GRE, SAT, AP).
TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) — the dominant English proficiency test for workplace and corporate use, particularly in East Asia. Developed and administered by ETS (same organization as TOEFL). Fundamentally different from IELTS and TOEFL in purpose: TOEIC does not target a
A tone unit (also called tone group, intonation group, or thought group) is a stretch of speech produced under a single coherent intonation contour. It is the basic unit of intonation analysis and the domain in which pitch movement conveys meaning.
The tonic is the most prominent syllable in a tone unit — the syllable on which the main pitch movement of the unit begins. It carries the primary, or nuclear, accent and signals the focus of new or contrastive information. Halliday calls it the tonic syllable; Wells and the British "Standard Standa
The tonic syllable (also called the nucleus or tonic stress) is the most prominent syllable in a tone unit. It is the syllable on which the main pitch movement, the tone, begins. Its placement is the primary mechanism by which English speakers signal the informational focus of an utterance.
Tony Wright (b. 1948) is a British ELT writer and teacher educator, Emeritus Professor of Language Education at the University of St Mark & St John (Marjon) in Plymouth. He has taught and trained teachers across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and continental Europe, and his work sits
Top-down processing is the use of background knowledge, context, and expectations to interpret language, working from the "big picture" down to make sense of individual details. Rather than building meaning word by word from the input, the listener or reader draws on what they already know about the
Topic familiarity is the prior knowledge a candidate brings to a reading passage's subject matter. In testing, it is the most consequential reader-side variable that is not part of the reading construct, and managing it is one of the principal jobs of professional passage selection.
Topic management refers to how speakers introduce, develop, shift, and close topics in conversation. It is a key area of Conversation Analysis and a critical component of spoken Discourse Competence.
A topic sentence states the main idea of a paragraph. It performs two functions: it tells the reader what the paragraph is about (the topic) and what the writer's point about that topic is (the controlling idea). Together, these define the paragraph's scope: everything that follows should develop, i
Total immersion is the "zero method" of language teaching: the learner is placed entirely within the target language environment, with all instruction and interaction conducted in L2. There is no explicit language teaching as such; language is acquired as a by-product of living and learning in it. T
Total Physical Response (TPR) is a language teaching method developed by James Asher, a psychology professor at San Jose State University, first published in 1969. It coordinates language input with physical movement, grounded in the observation that children develop listening comprehension long bef
TPRS — Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling — is an input-based foreign-language method built around co-created class stories told entirely in the target language. Blaine Ray, a high-school Spanish teacher in Bakersfield, California, developed it in the late 1980s and through the 19
The Trade-Off Hypothesis is Peter Skehan's account of how second-language learners allocate limited attentional resources during task performance, and what this allocation predicts about the shape of their output. Developed in A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning (1998) and refined across the n
A transition is the movement between stages or activities in a lesson. Smooth transitions maintain momentum, minimise dead time, and signal to learners that one phase has ended and another is beginning. Poor transitions are one of the most common causes of wasted time and lost energy in language les
Transitivity describes whether and how a verb relates to participants in a Clause. In traditional grammar, it concerns whether a verb takes an object. In Functional Grammar (Halliday), transitivity is a far richer system for analysing how language represents experience.
Translanguaging is a theory of multilingual practice developed most influentially by Ofelia Garcia and Li Wei (2014). It holds that multilingual speakers do not operate with separate, bounded language systems but draw on a single integrated linguistic repertoire. The term was coined by Cen Williams
Translingual practice, as theorised by Suresh Canagarajah (2013), moves beyond Translanguaging and Code-Switching by questioning the very notion of separate, bounded languages. Rather than treating languages as discrete systems that speakers switch between, translingual practice sees all communicati
The Triadic Componential Framework is Peter Robinson's system for classifying and sequencing pedagogic tasks in task-based language teaching. First set out in Robinson (2001) and refined across the following decade, it underpins the Cognition Hypothesis by giving teachers, researchers, and syllabus
Triangulation is the use of multiple data sources, methods, researchers, or theoretical perspectives to study the same phenomenon. The logic is convergence: if different approaches yield consistent findings, confidence in the results increases. If they diverge, the discrepancy itself is analytically
A trill is a consonant produced by a series of rapid vibrations between an active articulator and a passive one. The vibration is aerodynamic, not muscularly controlled — the speaker positions the articulator close to the contact surface, and airflow alone causes it to oscillate, much like the reed
Trinity CertTESOL is the Trinity College London Level 5 Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, a pre-service initial teacher training qualification structurally parallel to Cambridge CELTA and the only other Ofqual Level 5 certificate with externally moderated assessed teach
The Licentiate Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, awarded by Trinity College London, is a postgraduate-level ELT qualification regulated at Level 7 of the Ofqual Regulated Qualifications Framework — equivalent to the Cambridge DELTA and aimed at experienced teachers seeking
A triphthong is a vowel sound that glides through three distinct vowel qualities within a single syllable. In English, triphthongs are formed by adding /ə/ to the closing diphthongs, creating a rapid movement from one vowel position through a second to a third.
Turn-taking is the system that governs who speaks when in conversation. The foundational model was proposed by Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (1974) in "A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation," the most cited paper in Language.
The four-question framework for curriculum planning set out by Ralph W. Tyler in Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (University of Chicago Press, 1949). It established objectives-driven curriculum design as the dominant twentieth-century paradigm and remains the conceptual antecedent of
The two ways a statistical test can reach a wrong decision under the Neyman–Pearson framework. Type I error is the false rejection of a true Null Hypothesis — concluding an effect exists when none does. Type II error is the failure to reject a false null — missing a real effect. Their probabilities
The number of unique word forms (types) in a text divided by the total number of running words (tokens). A text of 100 tokens with 60 distinct word forms has a TTR of 0.60. The simplest and oldest operationalisation of Lexical Diversity, introduced in stylometric work in the early twentieth century
U-shaped development describes a three-stage pattern in language acquisition where a learner first produces a correct form, then regresses to an incorrect form, and finally restores correct usage at a higher level of organisation. Far from indicating failure, the middle stage reflects active restruc
Ultimate attainment refers to the end-state grammar a second-language learner reaches after the acquisition process has effectively stopped changing. It is the dependent variable in much of the research on age effects, aptitude, and the critical period, because the claim that adults cannot reach nat
A curriculum-design framework that anticipates learner variability from the outset rather than retrofitting accommodations. UDL asks designers to provide multiple means of engagement (the why of learning), multiple means of representation (the what), and multiple means of action and expression (the
Universal Grammar (UG) is the theoretical claim, developed by Noam Chomsky from the 1960s onward, that all human languages share a common underlying structure rooted in an innate biological endowment. UG specifies what a possible human language can look like, and it is the formalised content of what
An unscripted listening text is a recording of genuine spontaneous speech, captured for purposes other than language teaching and used in the classroom without rewriting. Source material includes broadcast interviews, podcast extracts, vox-pops, recorded service encounters, lecture clips, and conver
Uptake, in Lyster and Ranta's (1997) influential framework, is the learner's immediate response following the teacher's corrective feedback. It is a discourse-level construct, an observable move in classroom interaction, not a direct measure of acquisition, though it may facilitate it by pushing lea
Usage-based theory is the account of language acquisition that treats grammar as an emergent product of language use rather than the unfolding of an innate biological endowment. Most closely associated with Michael Tomasello in developmental psycholinguistics and with Joan Bybee, Nick Ellis, and Ade
Validity is the degree to which a test measures what it claims to measure. It is the most important quality of any assessment: a test that does not measure what it purports to is useless, regardless of how reliable or practical it is.
A specification of language-learning objectives broadly equivalent to B2 on the CEFR, the upper level in the Council of Europe's Threshold–Waystage–Vantage trio. The canonical reference is Vantage by J. A. van Ek and J. L. M. Trim, published by Cambridge University Press for the Council of Europe in
A verb phrase (VP) is the predicate of a Clause, consisting of a main (lexical) verb and any preceding auxiliaries. The English VP is the primary carrier of tense, aspect, modality, voice, and negation: an extraordinary amount of grammatical information packed into a single phrase.
Very Young Learners (VYLs) in ELT denotes pre-school children, conventionally taken as ages 3 to 6 — the band before formal schooling and before stable L1 literacy. The category is bounded above by Young Learners and is qualitatively distinct, not just smaller-scale: VYLs are pre-literate or emergen
Vocational English as a Second Language: a US-context strand of workplace EOP aimed at adult immigrants and refugees preparing for or working in entry-level jobs. Distinguished from general adult ESL by its focus on the language demands of specific occupational clusters (food service, manufacturing,
The essential context for CEFR-referenced curriculum work in Vietnam — policy, testing, recognition, and the gap between official targets and classroom reality.
A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is an online platform that provides an integrated set of tools for teaching and learning: content delivery, activity management, communication, assessment, and progress tracking. Common VLEs include Moodle, Canvas, Google Classroom, and Blackboard.
Vocabulary cards (also called word cards or flash cards) are a deliberate vocabulary learning tool in which target words are written on one side of a card and definitions, translations, or example sentences on the other. When used with spaced repetition, they are one of the most efficient methods fo
Listening texts demand fewer word families than reading texts to reach the same coverage figure. The pattern, established by Nation (2006) and reinforced by Webb and Rodgers' television and movie corpora, has direct consequences for materials design: a learner population that is far below the readin
Vocabulary depth (also quality of vocabulary knowledge) refers to how well a learner knows a word, as opposed to vocabulary breadth (how many words they know). The most influential framework is Nation's (2001) multidimensional model, which demonstrates that "knowing a word" involves far more than a
Vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) are deliberate techniques and actions learners use to discover the meaning of new words and to consolidate vocabulary knowledge. Schmitt's (1997) taxonomy, the most widely used classification, organises strategies into two broad categories: discovery (finding out
The vocal tract is the air passage extending from the larynx upward to the lips and nostrils, comprising the resonating cavities and articulators that shape the airstream into speech. It is the primary object of Articulatory Phonetics.
A measure of Lexical Diversity developed theoretically by David Malvern and Brian Richards in the late 1990s and given a computational implementation by Gerald McKee, Malvern, and Richards in 2000. The output parameter is conventionally written D, and the tool name vocd (now vocd-D to distinguish it
Voice is a grammatical category that describes the relationship between the verb and its subject. English has two voices: active (the subject performs the action) and passive (the subject receives the action).
Voicing refers to whether the vocal folds (vocal cords) in the larynx vibrate during the production of a speech sound. When they vibrate, the sound is voiced; when they do not, the sound is voiceless. This binary distinction is one of the three defining parameters for consonant classification, along
Vowel reduction is the process by which vowels in unstressed syllables lose their full quality and shift toward a centralised, shorter sound, typically schwa /ə/ or /ɪ/. It is the phonetic mechanism underlying weak forms and a primary driver of English rhythm.
The Vietnamese Standardized Test of English Proficiency is the domestic high-stakes English test administered by Vietnam's Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) and a designated network of universities. It reports performance on the country's six-level Foreign Language Proficiency Framework for
The pause a teacher leaves after asking a question before calling on a student or rephrasing. First systematically researched by Mary Budd Rowe, who discovered that teachers typically wait less than one second, and that extending this pause to three seconds or more transforms the quality of classroo
Short activities at the start (warmers) and end (coolers) of a lesson. Not filler; they serve specific pedagogical functions.
Washback (also called backwash) is the effect that a test has on teaching and learning. Tests do not just measure learning; they shape it. The higher the stakes, the stronger the washback.
A specification of language-learning objectives roughly equivalent to A2 on the CEFR, situated below The Threshold Level in the Council of Europe's Modern Languages Programme. The canonical reference is Waystage 1990 by J. A. van Ek and J. L. M. Trim, published by Cambridge University Press for the
A weak form is the reduced pronunciation that an English function word takes when it is unstressed, which is its default state in connected speech. The vowel is typically replaced by schwa /ə/ or another short central vowel, and consonants may also be elided or assimilated. Can in I can swim surface
Function words (articles, prepositions, auxiliaries, pronouns, conjunctions) have two pronunciation forms in English: a strong form used in isolation or under contrastive stress, and a weak form used in their normal, unstressed position in connected speech. The weak form is the default; the strong f
The Whole Language Approach is a philosophy of literacy instruction developed primarily by Kenneth Goodman (1967) and Frank Smith (1971), rooted in the belief that reading is a meaning-driven, top-down process. Goodman's landmark paper "Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game" (1967) argued that s
An interaction format where the teacher fronts the entire group simultaneously and all learners attend to the same input or activity in lockstep. The traditional default for explanation, modelling, and shared review, and still the most efficient format for stages where one piece of input must reach
William O'Grady (b. 1952) is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and the clearest theorist of emergentist syntax working from outside the usage-based mainstream. His work takes seriously the project of explaining grammatical structure without innate UG, but does so through
Willingness to Communicate (WTC) is a learner's readiness to enter into L2 discourse at a particular moment with a specific person, using the second language. The construct was adapted from L1 communication research (McCroskey & Baer, 1985) to L2 contexts by MacIntyre, Clément, Dörnyei, and Noels (1
Word association is an activity in which students say or write words connected to a stimulus word, building chains of lexical connections. It serves multiple purposes in ELT: warming up, activating vocabulary, assessing lexical knowledge, and exploring how words are stored and connected in the menta
A word family consists of a base word and all its inflected and derived forms. The concept, central to Paul Nation's vocabulary research framework, assumes that knowing one member of a family provides partial access to others through shared form and meaning.
Word formation is the set of morphological processes by which new words are created from existing material. Understanding these processes gives learners two powers: they can decode unfamiliar words by breaking them into recognizable parts, and they can expand their productive vocabulary from known r
Word parts, including prefixes, suffixes, and roots, are the morphological building blocks of complex words. Knowing common affixes enables learners to break down unfamiliar vocabulary, infer meaning, and expand their lexicon systematically.
Word stress is the prominence given to one syllable in a multi-syllable word, realized through a combination of increased loudness, greater duration, higher pitch, and fuller vowel quality. The stressed syllable stands out; the unstressed syllables around it are reduced: shorter, quieter, and often
A practice book paired with a coursebook, providing additional exercises that extend and consolidate the material covered in the corresponding student-book unit. Workbooks sit downstream of the main lesson — they reinforce rather than introduce — and are typically completed individually, often as ho
Working memory (WM) is the limited-capacity cognitive system responsible for temporarily holding and manipulating information during complex tasks such as reasoning, comprehension, and language production. In SLA, individual differences in WM capacity are among the strongest predictors of L2 learnin
The principled construction of single-sheet handouts that learners complete in class or for homework. Worksheets carry a small slice of the lesson — controlled practice, a reading task, a short survey, a writing frame — and need to work without the live teacher voice that surrounds them in class.
World Englishes (WE) is a paradigm that recognises and legitimises the diversity of English varieties worldwide. The field challenges the assumption that British or American English are the only "correct" standards, arguing instead that English has been nativised and adapted wherever it is used.
A writing conference is a brief, focused one-to-one conversation between teacher and student about a piece of writing in progress. The teacher's role is to ask questions and listen rather than correct, helping the writer discover what they want to say and how to say it more effectively. Graves (1983
Young Learners (YL) in ELT denotes primary-school-aged children learning English, conventionally taken as roughly ages 7 to 12. The label is bracketed below by Very Young Learners (3–6) and above by adolescents, and the boundaries are pedagogical rather than psychometric: a YL classroom is one desig
The state in which a learner has no unanswered questions about a text. The term is Scott Thornbury's (2011), borrowed from Frank Smith's Understanding Reading, where Smith writes: "We predict to reduce any uncertainty we might have, and therefore to reduce the amount of external information we requi
The ZISA project (Zweitspracherwerb italienischer, spanischer und portugiesischer Arbeiter, "Second Language Acquisition by Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese Workers") was a research programme initiated in 1974 at the University of Wuppertal, directed by Jürgen Meisel with students Manfred Pienemann
Zoltán Dörnyei was a Hungarian-born applied linguist and Professor at the University of Nottingham whose work made motivation in language learning intellectually serious again. He became one of the dominant figures in the study of learner psychology, individual differences, and research methods in a
Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is the distance between what a learner can do independently and what they can achieve with assistance from a more capable peer or teacher. Introduced in Mind in Society (1978), it is the central concept of sociocultural theory and one of the most widely