Terms associated with ESL

Academic language: language used in the learning of academic subject matter in formal schooling context; aspects of language strongly associated with literacy and academic achievement, including specific  academic terms or technical language, and speech registers related to each field of study.

Accent: This can mean word stress – control has the accent on the second syllable but we use it to mean the pronunciation used by some speakers – a regional or class accent.

Acquisition: A term used to describe language being absorbed without conscious effort; i.e. the way children pick up their mother tongue. Language acquisition is often contrasted with language learning. The internalization of rules and formulas which are then used to communicate in the L2. For some researchers, such as Krashen, ‘acquisition’ is unconscious and spontaneous, and ‘learning’ is conscious, developing through formal study.

Active Vocabulary: The words and phrases which a learner is able to use in speech and writing. Contrasted with Passive Vocabulary.

Advanced: A level of attainment where the learner has mastered most of the structures and functions of the language and is able to move freely through several registers – there may be a working vocabulary of in excess of 3000 words.

Aptitude: The specific ability a learner has for learning a second language. This is separate from intelligence.

Bilingualism: Being able to communicate effectively in two or more languages, with more or less the same degree of proficiency.

Communication Strategies: Strategies for using L2 knowledge. These are used when learners do not have the correct language for the concept they wish to express. Thus they use strategies such as paraphrase and mime: See learner strategies and production strategies.

Communicative Approaches: Approaches to language teaching which aim to help learners to develop communicative competence (i.e., the ability to use the language effectively for communication). A weak communicative approach includes overt teaching of language forms and functions in order to help learners to develop the ability to use them for communication. A strong communicative approach relies on providing learners with experience of using language as the main means of learning to use the language. In such as approach, learners, for example, talk to learn rather than learn to talk.

Communicative Competence: The ability to use the language effectively for communication. Gaining such competence involves acquiring both sociolinguistic and linguistic knowledge (or, in other words, developing the ability to use the language accurately, appropriately, and effectively).

Communicative Language Teaching: An approach concerned with the needs of students to communicate outside the classroom; teaching techniques reflect this in the choice of language content and materials, with emphasis on role play, pair and group work, among others.

Comprehensible Input: When native speakers and teachers speak to L2 learners, they often adjust their speech to make it more comprehensible. Such comprehensible input may be a necessary condition for acquisition to occur.

Comprehensible Output: The language produced by the learner (the ‘output’) may be comprehensible or incomprehensible. The efforts learners make to be comprehensible may play a part in acquisition.

Competence: Ability to function according to the cultural rules of more than one cultural system; ability to respond in culturally sensitive and appropriate ways according to the cultural demands of a given situation.

Dialect: The regional variety of a language, differing from the standard language, in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation or idiomatic usage.

Discourse: Unit of language greater than a sentence: language in action or performance communicatively.

ESL: English as a Second Language – English language programs in countries where English is the dominant or official language. programs designed for non-English-speaking immigrants in the USA are ESL programs.

Extensive Reading: Reading for general or global understanding, often of longer texts.

Feedback: The response learners get when they attempt to communicate. This can involve correction, acknowledgement, requests for clarification, backchannel cues (e.g., “mmm”). Feedback plays an important role in helping learners to test their ideas about the target language.

Filter: Learners do not attend to all the input they receive. They attend to some features, and ‘filter’ other features out. This often depends on affective factors such as motivation, attitudes, emotions, and anxiety.

Formal instruction: This occurs in classrooms when teachers try to aid learning by raising the learners’ consciousness about the target language rules. Formal instruction can be deductive (the learners are told the rules) or inductive (learners develop a knowledge of the rules through carrying out language tasks).

Functions: the things people do through language, for example, instructing, apologizing, complaining. Functional Approach: A course based on a functional approach would take as its starting point for language development, what the learner wants to do through language. Common functions include identifying oneself and giving personal facts about oneself; expressing moods and emotions.

Genre: A category of literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content (e.g., an historical novel is one fictional genre).

Grapheme: The written symbols for sounds in language; i.e., letters of the alphabet or a character in picture writing (as in Japanese kange)

Idiom: An expression in the usage of a language that has a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements (e.g., raining cats and dogs).

Inflection: The change in form of a word, which indicates a grammatical change. For example: behave – behaved – behaviour – misbehave.

Input: This constitutes the language to which the learner is exposed. It can be spoken or written. It serves as the data which the learner must use to determine the rules of the target language.

Interference: According to behaviorist learning theory, the patterns of the learner’s mother tongue (L1) get in the way of learning the patterns of the L2. This is referred to as ‘interference’.

L2: A term used to refer to both foreign and second languages: See foreign language; second language.

L2: Second language.

Materials: Anything which is used to help to teach language learners. Materials can be in the form of a textbook, a workbook, a cassette, a CD-Rom, a video, a photocopied handout, a newspaper, a paragraph written on a whiteboard: anything which presents of informs about the language being learned.

Monitor: Language learners and native speakers typically try to correct any errors in what they have just said. This is referred to as ‘monitoring’. The learner can monitor vocabulary, phonology, or discourse. Krashen uses ‘Monitoring’ to refer the way the learner uses ‘learnt’ knowledge to improve naturally ‘acquired’ knowledge.

Morpheme: The smallest unit of language that is grammatically significant. Morphemes may be bound; that is, they cannot exist on their own. For example, er, un, ed, mis, among others. Or, they can be free, as is ball in football, a compound noun comprised of such word plus ‘foot’.

Morphology: The branch of linguistics which studies how words change their forms when they change grammatical function, i.e., their inflections swim – swam – swum – swimming – swimmer; cat – cats; mouse – mice; happy – happier – happily, among others: See also Syntax.

Motivation: This can be defined in terms of the learner’s overall goal or orientation. ‘Instrumental’ motivation occurs when the learner’s goal is functional (e.g. to get a job or pass an examination), and ‘integrative’ motivation occurs when the learner wishes to identify with the culture of the L2 group. ‘Task” motivation is the interest felt by the learner in performing different learning tasks.

Multilingualism: Ability to speak more than two languages; proficiency in many languages.

Native language: Primary or first language spoken by an individual: (See L1).

Phoneme: The smallest unit of sound which causes a change of meaning: cattle – kettle /kæte/.

Schema theory: A theory of language processing based on the notion that past experiences lead to the creation of mental frameworks that help us make sense of new experiences.

Second language: The term is used to refer to a language which is not a mother tongue but which is used for certain communicative functions in a society. Thus English is a second language in Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Singapore. French is a second language in Senegal, Cameroon and Tahiti: See foreign language.

S.L.A.: This is an abbreviation for Second Language Acquisition and is normally used to refer to research and theory related to the learning of second and foreign languages.

Target language: This is the language that the learner is attempting to learn. It comprises the native speaker’s grammar.

Teacher talk: Teachers make adjustments to both language form and language function in order to help communication in the classroom. These adjustments are called ‘teacher talk’.

TESL: Teaching English as a Second Language – a term that refers to teacher training programs in ESL.

Text: Any scripted or recorded production of a language presented to learners of that language. A text can be written or spoken and could be, for example, a poem, a newspaper article, a passage about pollution, a song, a film, an extract from a novel or a play, a passage written to exemplify the use of the past perfect, a recorded telephone conversation, a scripted dialogue or a speech by a politician. Total Physical Response

Method: Developed by Asher, where items are presented in the foreign language as ‘orders’, ‘commands’ and “instructions” requiring a physical response from the learner (e.g., ‘opening a window’ or ‘standing up’ after being asked, linguistically, to carry out such command).

Transfer: Knowledge of the L1 is used to help in learning the L2. Transfer can be positive, when the two language have similar structures, or it can be negative, when the two languages are different, and L1-induced errors occur. Trinity College London Responsible 

Universal grammar: A set of general principles that apply to all languages, rather than a set of particular rules.

Vlog: Short for video blog.

Vodcast: A video podcast.

Workbook: A book which contains extra practice activities for learners to work on in their own time. Usually the book is designed so that learners can write in it and often there is an answer key provided in the back of the book to give feedback to the learners.