ELT Terms
ELT terms are the words that are generally used when teaching the English language. They are words and phrases that you may come across in English Language Teaching.
Accuracy:
The ability to produce grammatically accurate sentences; language is grammatically correct English with proper vocabulary
Achievement:
Accomplishing the objectives of a chapter or a unit
Acquire:
Learn a language unconsciously by using it.
Active:
An energetic, agile and lively child.
Active listening:
A method where the student replicates what the facilitator is saying to reveal his/her understanding; this technique helps when a teacher is not too keen to openly correct a student’s mistake.
Activity:
Something facilitators organize to simplify teaching or to help a child comprehend what is being taught.
Approach:
A unified but broadly based theoretical position about the nature of language and of language learning and teaching that forms the basis of methodology in the language classroom.
Aptitude:
The ability, talent or capacity of a child at which he/she can learn a foreign language.
Aural:
Related to listening; the auditory or the acoustic skills of a child Authentic: Genuine, reliable or dependable material taken from books and magazines for the betterment of the children.
A person who knows and uses two languages equally well or with the same ease.
Brainstorming:
A group activity where students freely suggest, give or contribute their thoughts to a topic to create or produce ideas. Chorus: Communicating or reciting collectively as a group.
Chorus repetition:
The entire class, as a group, replicating a sentence or an example given by the teacher
Classroom management:
The organization of class activities by the facilitator like the setting up of the classroom, carrying out innovative ideas to teach in the class, class events, managing group activities, giving directions and supervision of pupils behaviour.
Cleft Sentence:
A sentence which has been divided into two parts, each with its own verb, to emphasis a particular piece of information, e.g. It was Ramesh who did most of the work.
Collaborative Learning:
Learning in groups, through “discussion, clarification of ideas, and evaluation of other’s ideas. It is based on an age old adage that says “two heads are better than one”. Students who demonstrated lower levels of achievement improved when working in diverse groups.
In collaborative learning where members support and rely on each other to achieve an agreed-upon goal. The classroom is an excellent place to develop team-building skills you will need later in life. The idea of collaborative learning has a lot to do with Lev Vygotsky’s idea of the “zone of proximal development”. It considers what a student can do if aided by peers and adults.
Collocation:
The way in which words are used together regularly e.g. “do the dishes” and “do your homework”, but “make the bed” and “don’t make noise”
.
Communication:
is the act of speaking, writing or giving information to someone and being understood by them; verbal skills or how a person talks to another individual.
Communicative competence:
The capability to converse or correspond successfully; the aim of learning a foreign language is to be able to speak or talk in it effectively
Communicative language teaching (CLT):
An approach to foreign or second language learning which stresses that the objective of language learning is to speak or talk in it effectively or communicative competence.
Competence:
One’s underlying knowledge of a system, event or fact; the unobservable ability to perform language, but not to be confused with performance.
Constructivism:
The integration of various paradigms with an emphasis on social interaction and the discovery, or construction, of meaning.
Context:
The circumstances, connection or situation in which a thing is done; the reason why a certain topic or subject is done.
Curriculum:
The entire portion or the topics month wise that are to be taught during a full academic year.
Dialogue:
A conversation or exchange of sentences used to practice or rehearse speaking.
Discourse:
A language (either spoken or written) beyond the sentence level; relationships and rules that govern the connection and inter-relationship of sentences within communicative contexts.
Discourse analysis:
The examination of the relationship between forms and functions of language beyond the sentence level.
Discourse marker:
An expression that typically connects two segments of a discourse, but do not contribute to the meaning of either, e.g. adverbials (however), conjunctions (but), prepositional phrases (in fact).
Drilling:
Repetition or monotonous repetitive teacher-controlled way of practicing where the pupil’s just keep repeating what the teacher has said even without comprehending it e.g. children might be saying the letters of the alphabet in sequence without understanding them.
Elision:
The leaving out of a sound or sounds in speech, e.g. suppose (spose).
Ellipsis:
Leaving out words or phrases from sentence where they are unnecessary,e.g. john went to the door and (he) opened it.(Nominal Ellipsis), I’ll go, but he won’t (go) (Verbal Ellipsis)
Embedding (embedded sentence):
The occurrence of a sentence within another sentence, e.g. the news / he had got married / surprised his friends
Extensive reading:
Reading widely or a lot; extensive reading is done to build up
good reading habits and expanding knowledge of vocabulary, structure and style of
a language
Facilitator:
Facilitator is a teacher who tends to conduct a student-centred class and is less dominant with the pupils than in the conventional approach to teaching; in communicative classrooms, facilitators are inclined to work in partnership with students to build up their language skills; a facilitator may also take the task of adviser or trainer rather than a teacher.
Feedback:
Reporting or giving information about a student to a parent or a teacher can test children to know what they have comprehended; feedback can be verbal or written
Fluent:
Conversing or communicating in a foreign language with ease; talking in a very natural, free, native like and normal manner, not forcefully or artificially
Forms: (of language):
The “bits and pieces” of language, such as morphemes, words, grammar rules, discourse rules, and other organisational elements of language.
Functions:
(of language) The meaningful, interactive purposes within a social (pragmatic)
context, that we accomplish with forms of language.
Genre:
A typical of discourse that occurs in a particular setting that has distinctive recognizable patterns and norms of organisation and structure, and has particular and distinctive communicative function.
Gesture:
A facial or body expression like a frown or smile that silently says something
Idiom:
A phrase or a saying where the meaning of the expression is different fromthat of the individual words e.g. ‘He backed up his friend’s claim’ or ‘Please hear me out’.
Imagery:
The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, in a literary work. Language which appeals to the five sense .E.g: Mother rocking the cradle. Here child senses with eyes and ears.
Inductive Teaching:
It is the most popular method of communicative language teaching; this is a student-centred teaching methodology where the pupils use the language extensively to find out the sentence structure and language rules through various examples –first examples then rules.
Integrated approach:
A teaching methodology where all the subjects are inter linked with one another and are taught in synchronization with each other; teaching is done through a theme which is predominant in all the subjects; all the four skills, i.e., listening, speaking, reading and writing are taught in coordination
and not cut off from each other
Intensive reading:
When a child reads his/her text books slowly, where he/she is able to understand and grasp everything read.
Intrinsic Motivation:
Learning due to an enjoyable of the process itself.
Jargon:
Speech or writing used by a group of people who belong to a particular trade, profession or interest group, usually disliked by and incomprehensible to people outside the group.
Language acquisition device (LAD):
An innate, metaphorical "mechanism" in young children's brains that predisposes them to acquire language (cf. Chomksy).
language skills:
There are four language skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing; speaking and writing are productive skills where a child develops his/her creative ability; reading and listening are the receptive skills where a pupil builds his/her aural proficiency. Meta language: Language used to analyse or describe a language.
Metaphor:
A comparison between essentially unlike things , Meter The measured pattern of rhythmic accents in poems . Like the other is a metaphor. Examples are, Harry was a lion in the fight, the birth of laughter, stealing eyes, noisy looms and broken heart. Life is a dream. She is a tower of strength.
Method :
A coherent, prescribed group of activities and techniques for language teaching, unified by a homogeneous set of principles or foundations; sometimes proclaimed to be suitable for all foreign language teaching contexts.
Motivation:
An incentive, inspiration or encouragement given to children to learn something new; the desire to learn.
Multiple intelligence(s):
A theory developed by Dr. Howard Gardner. He suggests that there are at least eight different types of intelligences or ways in which a child can learn; for ELT, linguistic, intelligence is the most vital, though other intelligences, like intra-personal intelligence and inter-personal intelligence, can also have an effect on the activities in the class.
Native speakers:
Those people who speak their mother tongue, English is the native language of the people of UK
Objective:
The main purpose, aim or the idea behind teaching a lesson to the pupils; the learning objective is based on the learning outcome from a lesson; objectives state particularly what the students will be able to do in a specified time period.
Open-ended question:
A question which can have various answers; a question
like ‘What did you eat for breakfast?’ will have a different answer from each
student; a question which has a very wide range of options.
Oral:
It is related to speaking or by word of mouth; the verbal ability of a child tocommunicate in a foreign language is of immense importance and should be developed.
Parallelism:
I HATE cohesion, I HATE sentence structure, I HATE phonology,
and what is more, I'm even starting to HATE Quiz let
Pedagogy:
The art or science of being a teacher, teaching or educating little children; the function or work of a teacher; it is the art or the ability to teach; it is generally the plan or the approach a teacher takes or the style of instruction that is followed in the classroom; the interest of a child is developed only if the teaching style is creative; it is sometimes referred to as the correct use of teaching methodologies or strategies.
Performance:
One’s actual “doing” of language in the form of speaking and writing (production) and listening and reading (comprehension).
Portfolio:
A purposeful collection of student work that exhibits the student or the students’ efforts, progress or achievement in a given area.
Portfolio Assessment:
The assessment based on the portfolio that consists of
samples of work produced by students over a period of time may be called portfolio
assessment.
Pragmatics:
Study of the use of language in communication, particularly the relationship between sentences and the contexts and situation in which they are used, e.g. dependence on real world knowledge, understanding of speech acts, and influence of relationship.
Rapport:
A calm association or connection between the facilitator and all the children of a
class
Realia:
Real items used as teaching aids to make learning interesting; these can be pictures from magazines or newspapers, objects, toys, real fruits or vegetables etc., Receptive language skills: Reading and listening are receptive language skills where a pupil builds his/her aural skills.
Redundancy:
The degree to which a message contains more information that is
needed, most languages have built-in redundancy, e.g. he looks sad (the‘s’ is not
needed for comprehension)
Rubric:
Instructions which indicate what has to be done in a test or instructional activity.
Reinforcement:
The support or revision practice which is given to the pupils after the completion of a lesson or chapter; this is done to make sure the children have understood what has been done in the class or taught to them
Role play:
An activity where pupils enact plays, maybe from their text books; this innovative methodology helps children comprehend the language and develops an interest in the students to learn
Rote learning:
Mugging up or memorization without understanding the meaning of the lesson studied.
Scaffolding: Support given to learners to enable them to perform tasks beyond their capacity.
Sight word approach:
When a word is taught to a child as a whole and not through phonics or spellings; sight words can be put up in the class room and read daily, helping the children recognizing them as a word rather than mugging them up.
Stimulus:
An incentive or inspiration given to a child to bring about a change for the better in him/her
Simile :
A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though. Examples include as cool as a cucumber, as white as snow, life is just like an ice-cream, enjoy it before.
Social constructivism:
A branch of constructivism that emphasizes the importance if social interaction and co-operative learning in constructing both cognitive and emotional images of reality
Student-centred:
Student is the most important person in the classroom; here the students actively participate in the teaching or learning; under the supervision of the teacher, the students organize role play, debates, discussions etc to help each other learn a topic; facilitators can ask students to create or make teaching aids or material to facilitate teaching; the teacher is seen more as a facilitator or helper
than the dominant figure in the classroom; in a student-centred class, the focus is on what the students are doing and saying.
Syllabus:
The entire portion or the topics month wise that are to be taught during
a full academic year
Thematic syllabus:
A curriculum or syllabus which is based on themes; where all the subjects of the unit revolve around one idea.
Vocabulary:
The words, terminology or expressions which make the foundation of a language; these should be practiced well by the children till they become a habit or a routine for the children or till they are fluent with them; children should be at ease conversing in that particular language
Whole word approach or sight word approach:
When a word is taught to a child as a whole and not through phonics or spellings; sight words can be put up in the class room and read daily, helping the children in recognizing them as a word
rather than mugging them up
Whole language learning:
Whole language integrates reading, writing, listening and speaking and defines the role of the teacher as one of facilitator and the role of the student as an active participant in a community of learners
