Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching: Key Vocabulary

Essential vocabulary, methodologies, techniques, and theoretical constructs from Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching (3rd Edition) by Diane Larsen-Freeman and Marti Anderson.

Believing Game

An inquiry process described by Peter Elbow that requires adopting the originator's perspective and temporarily withholding doubt to understand a method's internal rationale before evaluating it.

Doubting Game

A rule-governed critical process described by Peter Elbow that evaluates an idea using logic and evidence, treating knowing as an act of discrimination and testing.

Grammar-Translation Method

A traditional language teaching method, formerly called the Classical Method, focused on analyzing grammar rules, translating texts between languages, and studying literary texts for mental exercise.

Deductive Grammar Teaching

An instructional technique where an explicit grammar rule is presented with examples, and students are subsequently instructed to apply the rule to other examples.

Cognate

A word in the target language that shares similar spelling or sound patterns and a corresponding meaning with a word in the learner's native language.

Direct Method

An oral-based language teaching method built on the rule that no translation is allowed; meaning is conveyed directly through demonstration, realia, and visual aids.

Inductive Grammar Teaching

A pedagogical technique where students are given language examples and guided to induce or figure out the underlying grammatical rule without being given an explicit explanation.

Audio-Lingual Method (ALM)

A structuralist, habit-formation method based on behavioral psychology and descriptive linguistics that drills grammatical sentence patterns through spoken dialogue and immediate reinforcement.

Backward Build-up Drill

An expansion drill used when learners struggle with a long sentence; the teacher breaks it down, starting with the final phrase and expanding backward to preserve natural intonation.

Minimal Pair

A pair of words differing by only one sound (such as 'ship' and 'sheep'), used in drills to help students discriminate and accurately produce target language phonemes.

The Silent Way

A method developed by Caleb Gattegno based on the principle that 'teaching is subordinated to learning,' where the teacher uses silence, gestures, and specialized charts to foster learner autonomy.

Sound–Color Chart

A wall chart containing colored blocks representing all vowel and consonant sounds of a language, allowing students to produce sounds and words without auditory modeling.

Fidel Charts

Color-coded wall charts in the Silent Way that display all the different spelling variations for each sound in the target language.

Inner Criteria

Internal standards of correctness developed by learners that enable them to monitor, evaluate, and self-correct their own language production without relying on teacher feedback.

Desuggestopedia

A teaching method developed by Georgi Lozanov that uses suggestion, cheerful environments, and the fine arts to eliminate psychological barriers and activate learners' reserve mental capacities.

Peripheral Learning

The effortless absorption of information from the classroom environment, such as grammatical posters or travel scenes hung on walls, without direct conscious attention.

Receptive Phase

The initial phase of a Desuggestopedia lesson consisting of two concerts: a first concert with dramatic text reading synchronized to music, and a second concert with normal-speed reading.

Infantilization

A relaxed, playful, childlike state fostered in Desuggestopedia learners that lowers inhibition, builds trust in the teacher, and makes them more receptive to learning.

Community Language Learning (CLL)

A humanistic method originated by Charles A. Curran based on Counseling-Learning, where the teacher acts as a language counselor and students form a supportive community to generate their own texts.

Whole-Person Learning

An educational view that engages not just the student's intellect, but also their feelings, physical reactions, instinctive protective reactions, and desire to learn.

Human Computer™

A CLL activity where a student selects words or phrases from a transcript to practice and controls the teacher, who repeats the utterance correctly without unsolicited interruption.

SAARRD

Charles Curran's acronym representing the six essential elements of nondefensive learning in Community Language Learning: Security, Aggression, Attention, Reflection, Retention, and Discrimination.

Total Physical Response (TPR)

A Comprehension Approach method founded by James Asher that models target language instruction on native language acquisition by directing student actions through spoken imperative commands.

Comprehension Approach

A general language teaching orientation that gives priority to listening comprehension and input before requiring learners to speak.

Affective Filter

A metaphorical mental barrier caused by negative emotional states like anxiety or low confidence that restricts a learner's ability to process and acquire comprehensible input.

Action Sequence

A linked series of imperative commands in TPR (also called an operation) that guides students through an entire interconnected procedure, such as writing and mailing a letter.

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

A broad, meaning-focused approach aimed at developing communicative competence by engaging students in purposeful, socially appropriate communication across a variety of contexts.

Communicative Competence

The ability to know when and how to say what to whom, integrating knowledge of linguistic forms, meanings, functions, and social appropriateness.

Information Gap

A condition in communication where one interlocutor possesses information that the other does not know, requiring a genuine exchange of meaning to bridge the gap.

Display Question

A question to which both the teacher and the student know the answer, used solely to check whether a student has mastered a linguistic item rather than to elicit genuine information.

Content-based Instruction (CBI)

An approach that integrates the learning of target language skills with the study of academic subject matter or themes, making language the medium of learning.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)

The European designation for a dual-focused educational approach in which an additional language is used as a medium to teach and learn non-language curricular subjects.

Dictogloss

A multi-step classroom activity where learners listen twice to a content text, take notes on the second reading, and collaborate in small groups to reconstruct and edit the passage.

Graphic Organizer

A visual diagram (such as a chart, web, or map) used to organize, connect, and remember academic concepts and discourse organization.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Vygotsky's concept defining the distance between a learner's actual independent problem-solving capacity and the level of potential development attained through adult guidance or peer collaboration.

Whole Language (WL) Approach

A holistic, top-down educational approach that engages students with whole, meaningful, and purposeful texts rather than decomposing language into isolated sub-skills.

Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT)

An approach using an analytic syllabus where classroom activities are organized around communicative tasks with clear, measurable outcomes rather than around grammatical sequences.

Analytic Syllabus

A syllabus organized in terms of the purposes for which people learn a language and the communicative tasks required, leaving learners to induce grammatical rules from whole language input.

Synthetic Syllabus

A syllabus organized around discrete linguistic items (grammar points, vocabulary, functions) ordered from simple to complex, which learners are expected to synthesize for communication.

Focus on Form

An instructional technique where a teacher draws learners' attention briefly and reactively to a grammatical feature while they are engaged in a meaningful communicative task.

Input Enhancement

A method of highlighting specific linguistic features in written or spoken input (such as bolding or color-coding) to increase learners' noticing of target forms.

Reasoning-gap Task

A task identified by N. S. Prabhu that requires learners to derive new information by inferring or deducing it from information they have already received.

Opinion-gap Task

A task identified by N. S. Prabhu requiring learners to articulate their personal preferences, attitudes, or feelings to resolve an issue or complete an activity.

English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)

The use of English as a contact language among speakers from different native language backgrounds, emphasizing mutual intelligibility rather than conformity to native-speaker norms.

Participatory Approach

A critical pedagogical method based on the work of Paulo Freire that builds curriculum around the social, economic, and political problems of students' daily lives.

Problem Posing

A core technique of the Participatory Approach where the teacher identifies a critical issue from student dialogues and presents it back to the class for collaborative analysis and action.

Banking Method of Education

Paulo Freire's term for traditional education where a teacher unilaterally deposits knowledge into passive students, assuming learners lack knowledge of their own needs.

Plurilingualism

An individual's ability to communicate in several languages to varying degrees, viewing all acquired linguistic codes as an interconnected, additive communicative repertoire.

Metacognitive Strategies

Executive learning strategies used by students to plan, monitor, and evaluate a learning task, such as previewing a reading or self-assessing comprehension.

Positive Interdependence

A cooperative learning principle where students perceive that they sink or swim together, recognizing that individual success depends upon the success of every group member.

Electronic Text Corpus

A large, digitized, computer-searchable database of authentic spoken and written language used to investigate real-world usage patterns, frequencies, and collocations.

Concordance

A computer-generated list showing multiple authentic occurrences of a target search word or phrase centered in its immediate textual context.

Grammaring

Diane Larsen-Freeman's concept of grammar as a dynamic, emergent skill: the ability to use grammatical structures accurately, meaningfully, and appropriately.

Principled Eclecticism

A teaching practice where a teacher consciously combines techniques from multiple methods based on an explicit, theoretically coherent understanding of learning and contextual learner needs.