| M |
| Main
idea |
An
important reading
skill. Students read a text and identify the main idea of
the whole text, or each paragraph. To help them, they are
usually given three or four options to choose from.
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| Minimal
pairs |
Minimal
pairs are pairs of words which have only one different
sound.
Examples:
close clone
but bat
top tip
Minimal pairs are often used for making students aware of
pronunciation differences and for helping students to improve
their pronunciation.
For this purpose, minimal pairs which have easily confused
vowel or consonant sounds are often selected.
Examples:
These minimal pairs differ only by the same short or long
vowel sound.
hit heat
rid read
fit feet
ship sheep
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| Mistake |
See
Errors
and mistakes.
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| Mixed
ability class |
In
a graded or streamed class all the students have approximately
the same level of linguistic competence.
In a mixed ability class, the students have different
levels of ability – some are perhaps at basic level and
others are intermediate.
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| Model
sentence |
A
sentence which gives students an example of the grammatical
structure they are learning.
Example:
If students are learning the past simple, model sentences
could be:
He went to the museum.
He visited his friends.
He bought a shirt.
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| Motivation |
The
reasons why students are learning English. Motivation
can be intrinsic or extrinsic.
Intrinsic motivation comes from inside the student:
- because she wants to work in an English speaking country
- because she can get a better job if she speaks English
- because she likes American culture and wants to find out
more about it
- because she enjoys the classes.
Extrinsic motivation comes from pressures on the
student:
- it’s a requirement of the school
- his parents want him to learn English
- he’ll lose his job if he doesn’t learn English.
Motivation is an important factor in a student’s learning
process. Generally speaking, intrinsically-motivated students
learn more effectively than extrinsically-motivated students.
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| Multiple
intelligences |
The
theory of multiple intelligences was developed by
Howard Gardner. He suggested that there are at least eight
different types of intelligence:
- Linguistic intelligence – the ability to use and
understand language.
- Logical-mathematical intelligence – the ability to
understand mathematical operations, logical reasoning, and
scientific thinking.
- Intra-personal intelligence – the ability to
understand your own thoughts and feelings.
- Inter-personal intelligence – the ability to
understand other people’s moods and feelings.
- Musical intelligence – the ability to understand and
play music.
- Spatial intelligence – the ability to understand the
relationships of objects in space – on maps, in the
street and so on.
- Kinesthetic intelligence – the ability to control your
fine
motor movements.
- Naturalistic intelligence – the ability to classify,
understand and use the natural world.
A person’s ability in these different intelligences may vary
enormously. For the purposes of ELT,
linguistic intelligence is one of the most important – but
other intelligences, such as intra-personal intelligence and
inter-personal intelligence, can have an effect on the
activities in the class and on a student’s ability to learn.
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|
| N |
| Natural
approach |
This
approach studies the stages which children go through when
they acquire their native language, and then tries to adapt
those same stages to the classroom.
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| Neurolinguistic
programming (NLP) |
A
concept which is applied to many different areas such as
psychology, holistic medicine, and learning in general. In the
context of ELT,
the basic ideas are:
- We construct our own inner model of the world according
to our perceptual and learning preferences (mainly
auditory, visual, kinaesthetic).
- Teaching is most effective when it mirrors the
student’s inner virtual world.
A key idea in NLP is the mind map, which helps the
student to express in English his inner virtual world.
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| NLP |
See
Neurolinguistic
programming.
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| Notional
approach |
Teaching
a language by concentrating on the notions of the language one
by one.
Example:
You could have a class which concentrates on points in time,
and teach expressions such as:
My birthday is in December.
My birthday is on December 12th.
I arrived at 1 o’clock.
I arrived on Monday.
A notional syllabus does not grade the language, so it is very
different from the Structural-situational
approach.
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| Notions |
The
concepts of a language.
Examples:
Time: point of time, duration, future time, present time, past
time etc.
Size: width, height, weight, bulk, etc.
Quantity: a lot, a few, none, many, not many, hardly any, etc.
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|
| O |
| Open-ended
questions |
A
question such as Have you ever been to Mexico? normally
only has two possible answers: Yes, I have. or No, I
haven’t.
A question such as What do you do on weekends? has a
very wide range of possible answers. It is an example of an open-ended
question.
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| Overgeneralization |
When
students apply a rule to an inappropriate piece of language,
they are overgeneralizing.
Example:
Students learn that superlative forms of adjectives can be
made with –est, such as the nicest, the quickest,
etc.
If they start to produce incorrect superlatives like the
goodest, the comfortablest and the expensivest,
they are overgeneralizing.
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|
| P |
| Parallel
writing |
A
technique to facilitate writing. Students read a text and then
write another text using the structures of the first but with
new vocabulary.
Example:
Students read a text about the life of a famous person in
their country.
They then write a parallel composition using the same format
about another famous person in their country.
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| Performance |
See
Competence
and Performance.
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| Phonics
approach / Whole word approach |
Two
very different approaches to learning to read.
The phonics approach emphasizes the relationship
between letters and sounds: for example, sounding the letters
of the word cat as:
c-a-t.
The whole word (or look and say) approach
teaches children to recognize individual words, not the sounds
of the letters in words.
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| Position
holders / Fillers |
These
are the short and usually meaningless words which we use when
we are pausing to think, and we want to indicate that we
haven’t finished talking.
Typical position holders in English are:
er, uh, you know, sort of, like, well, kind of
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| PPP |
PPP
is the standard presentation
technique – Presentation, Practice, Production.
This means:
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| Pre-listening
activities |
An
activity which you give to students before they listen to a
tape or video. Typical pre-listening activities are:
- Predicting the content of what they are about to listen
to.
- Eliciting what students know about the subject of the
tape or video, what they don’t know, and what they would
like to know.
- A class discussion about the subject of the tape or
video.
- Answering questions about the subject of the tape or
video.
- A script of the tape or video with some of the details
replaced by blanks. For example, in an interview, all the
answers could be replaced by blanks.
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| Pre-reading
activities |
An
activity which you give to students before a reading text.
Typical pre-reading activities are:
- Predicting the content of the text.
- Eliciting what students know about the subject of the
text, what they don’t know, and what they would like to
know.
- A class discussion about the subject of the text.
- Answering questions about the subject of the text.
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| Presentation |
Introducing
the students to new language – grammar, vocabulary or
functions. Presentations can be graded,
as in the structural-situational
approach, or they can use a deep-end
strategy.
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| Production |
Speaking
and writing
are production activities - the students are creating
language.
Reading
and listening
are recognition activities. The students are not
required to create language, they only have to understand the
language that is given to them.
Language learners can usually recognize much more than they
can produce.
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| Productive
language |
Speaking
and writing
are the productive language skills - when they speak
and write, students have to produce new language.
Reading
and listening
are the two receptive language skills - students are
not required to produce new language.
See also Recognition
/ Production.
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| Pronoun
reference |
One
of the most important reading
skills.
Example:
Sue gave a book to Tony, but he never read it.
What does it refer to?
What does he refer to?
Pronoun reference ask students to identify the meaning of
words such as he, she, they, it, this, that, these, those,
one and ones.
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| Pronouns |
Pronouns
take the place of a noun in sentences. There are various types
of pronouns:
- Subject pronouns: I, you, he, she, it, we, they
- Object pronouns: me, you, him, her, it, us, them
- Possessive pronouns: mine, yours, his, hers, its,
ours, theirs
- Demonstrative pronouns: this, that, these, those
- Indeterminate (or indefinite) pronouns: someone, no
one, anyone everyone, somebody, nobody, anybody,
everybody, somewhere, nowhere, anywhere, everywhere,
something, nothing, anything, everything
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| Psychomotor
skills |
The
learning of complex sequences of actions that require
perceptual information (input from the eyes, for example) and
control of the muscles.
Example:
Learning to tie shoelaces.
The child needs to process the following information:
- from the eyes (where are the shoelaces?)
- from the fingers (what shape are the shoelaces under the
fingers? How tight is the knot?, etc)
They then need to combine this information with controlling
the muscles of the fingers and hands to move the shoelaces in
the correct way.
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