Terminologia dydaktyka

a test that is given at the end of a course to see how much the learners have learned.

achievement test

collecting information in order to gauge a learner’s progress; assessment may be formal, as in testing, or informal, as in simply observing learners doing tasks.

assessment

a phrase of two or more words that is stored and used as a single unit, such as by the way, head over heels, see you later.

Chunk

a test consisting of a text in which every word has been replaced by a space

Cloze test

the way that certain words regularly occur together, such as good clean fun but not bad dirty fun

Collocation

a classroom speaking or writing task in which the learners have to interact in order to solve a problem or complete a task.

Communicative activity

language teaching methods whose goal is meaningful communication rather than knowledge of language rules, for example.

Communicative approaches

the teaching, through English, of a subject, such as geography, natural science or history, to learners whose first language is not English.

Content-based learning (also content and language integrated learning or CLIL)

they way English is now used by many non-native speakers to communicate with other non-native speakers; also called English as a Lingual Franca (ELF)

English as an International Language (EIL)

a general term for the content of courses that are targeted at group of learners, such as business people or university students, whose particular vocational or academic need have been identified; ESP contrasts with general English.

English for Special Purposes (also English for Specific Purposes; ESP)

the use of fingers to represent the elements of a word or phrase in order to display its form or to identify an error.

finger-coding, finger correction

a stage in teaching where the learner’s attention is directed to the form of a language item, e. g. when the teacher points out the –ed ending on regular past tense verb.

focus on form

an exercise that requires learners to complete a sentence or text in which certain items have been removed.

gap fill

an extended reading text whose level of language has been controlled so as be more easily intelligible for learners.

graded reader

the grammatical system that a learner creates in the course of learning another language

interlanguage

the capacity of the learner to learn independently of teachers, and one of the goals of learner training.

learner autonomy

an activity in which learners supply personally relevant information (e.g. their favourite hobbies) or help create materials.

learner-based activity

an approach to language teaching that foregrounds the importance of vocabulary acquisition, including the learning of chunks.

lexical approach

a group of related words, a word family (e.g. a lexical set of furniture might be chair, table, television, sofa).

lexical set

the ability to read and write in a language in order to achieve one’s functional goals.

literacy

the language that is used to talk about language, such as grammatical terminology

metalanguage

the procedures and techniques characteristic of teaching.

method

the effort that learners put into language learning as a result of their desire of need to learn the language.

motivation

test items that give candidates a number of possible answers from which they must choose the correct one

multiple-choice questions

person who has acquired a language as a child and therefore has an intuitive understanding of its grammar, as contrasted with a non-native speaker, for whom the language is an L2.

native speaker

the process of determining the purposes for which a learner is learning a language and for designing a course (typically an ESP course) that is appropriate.

needs analysis

a teaching situation where there is one teacher and one learner

one-to-one

a learning style related to the senses (e.g. an auditory learning style, a visual learning style).

perceptual learning style

a way of organising language learning around a syllabus of tasks rather than grammar structures.

task-based learning

a guide for the teacher that usually accompanies most coursebooks.

teacher's book

the area that a teacher uses in the classroom while teaching.

teaching space

a way of describing lessons that begin with some productive task which is followed by instruction that targets areas diagnosed as needing teaching, which is in turn followed by a repeat of the initial task or a similar task.

test-teach-test

assessing learners' level or progress, either at the outset of a course (placement testing, diagnostic testing) or at the end of a course (achievement testing)

testing

a straight line representing the passage of time, often used in teaching verb tenses

time line

a language teaching method in which learners' respond to sequences of commands, based on the principle that language is best acquired through comprehension, not production.

Total Physical Response

a written record of what happens in a classroom

transcript

comprehension-checking questions which require the learner to decide if a statement is true or false.

true/false questions

an activity done at the beginning of the lesson to ease the transition into the lesson itself.

warmer, warm-up