English Glossary

Vanessa Salas

Marlon Porras

Total Physical Response• A language-teaching method based on the coordination

of language and physical movement.

In TPR, instructors give commands to students in the target language, and students respond with whole-body actions, before the acquisition of language.

Acquisition versus Learning

Children acquire language through a subconscious process during which they are unaware of grammatical rules.

Language learning, on the other hand, is not communicative.

The emphasis is on the text of the communication and not on the form.

It is the result of direct instruction in the rules of language.

In order to acquire language, the learner needs a source of natural communication.

In language learning, students have conscious knowledge of the new language and can talk about that knowledge.

Silent period• The silent period hypothesis is the idea that when a

language is learned, there should be a period in which the learner is not expected to actively produce any language. This is based on observations of a listening period in infants when they learn a first language.

• Common classroom techniques can address the needs of learners in a silent period. There are also methodologies which explicitly incorporate a silent period, such as Total Physical Response and the Natural Approach.

Mother tongue• First language (also native language) is the language a

person has learned from birth or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity.

• Children brought up speaking more than one language

can have more than one native language, and be bilingual.

EFL / ESL• English as a Foreign Language is the use or study of

English by non-native speakers in an English-speaking environment. That environment may be a country in which English is the mother tongue.

• ESL also refers to specialized approaches to language teaching made for those whos primary language is not English.

Drills• Exercises made after introducing new vocabulary words,

grammar points… in the class. There are different ways to drill.– Choral repetition: studens repeat words or phrases after you.– Drilling with flashcards: show flashcards and then repeat the

word that appears on the image.– Comprehension: asking students to give a synonym, antonym

or translation of a new vocabulary word will check individual comprehension.

– Drilling in pairs: a student’s comprehension is tested by his partner.

– Games: breake your classroom up into sections or conduct some drilling activities in a circle.

Approach• Directing the attention or interest to a particular issue or

problem. • Synonym of way or strategy.

Phonics• Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing of

the English language by developing learners' phonemic awareness—the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes—in order to teach the correspondence between these sounds and the spelling patterns (graphemes) that represent them.

• The goal of phonics is to enable beginning readers to decode new written words by sounding them out, or in phonics terms, blending the sound-spelling patterns.

Digital literacy• Computer literacy refers to knowledge and skills in using

traditional computers (such as desktop PCs and laptops) with a focus on practical skills in using software application packages.

• Digital skills is a more contemporary term but is limited to practical abilities in using digital devices (such as laptops and smartphones).

Literacy• The ability or state of being literate.• Literacy is the ability to read and write.

Multiple Intelligencies• This theory, proposed

by Howard Gardner,

differentiates it into

specific modalities, rather

than seeing intelligence

as dominated by a single

general ability.

Target language• The target language is the language learners are

studying, and also the individual items of language that they want to learn, or the teacher wants them to learn.