Quick Reference J-L

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Source: English Club www.macmillan.com.mx



J
Jigsaw listening

A technique for developing listening skills. Students listen to sections of a listening passage in the wrong order. They have to decide on the correct order.

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Jigsaw reading A technique for developing reading skills. Students are given sections of a reading text which they have to arrange in the correct order.

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 K
Key In textbooks, the set of answers to an exercise is sometimes called the Key or Answer Key.

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Key questions Questions you can ask your students to check they understand the meaning of a new structure.

Example:
You’ve taught your students the simple past with sentences like “He went to the museum on Saturday.”
You check they understand the idea of the past with questions like:
Is he at the museum now?
Is he going to the museum tomorrow?
Does he go to the museum every day?
Where was he on Saturday?


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Key words The key words in a text are the words which contain the most important information.

Example: A text about a house might begin:

It’s a big house near the town and it has a swimming pool.

The key words would be big, near the town, swimming pool.

Identifying key words in a text is an important reading skill.

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Kinesthetic learners Kinesthetic (or Kinaesthetic) learners learn best when there is a strong element of physical response in the learning process – gesturing, mime or TPR.

Kinesthetic learning is particularly important at the preschool and primary level.

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 L
L1 / L2 L1 is the students’ native language.
L2 is the language which the students are learning.

Example:
A class of Mexican students learning English:
Their L1 is Spanish.
Their L2 is English.

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L1 interference Students’ errors are sometimes the result of trying to express themselves using the structures of their native language.

Example:
A Spanish-speaking student who says:
The people in Mexico is very friendly.

instead of

The people in Mexico are very friendly.

(Because gente is singular, but people plural.)

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L2 competence A students’ ability to communicate effectively in the target language. This involves use of both receptive and productive language skills.

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Language acquisition / Language learning Language acquisition is the process by which children learn their native language. They can achieve full competence in speaking without any formal instruction.

Language learning is the process by which we learn a language through formal instruction. Adults taking English classes are learning the language, not acquiring it.

The distinction sometimes becomes blurred, as in the case of children learning a second language at school, or an adult “picking up” a language by living in the country but not taking language classes.

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Language Learning See Language acquisition / Language learning.

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Laterality The tendency for the left side and the right side of the brain and the body to develop special functions.

Examples:
Most people use either their right hand or their left hand for writing. Very few people can use both. Most right-handed people have their language abilities concentrated in the left hemisphere of the brain.

Laterality develops throughout childhood. Babies and very young children often use their hands indiscriminately, but by adolescence laterality is usually fully established.

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Lead-in A lead-in introduces the theme of the class to the students, or prepares the students for a new activity during the lesson. Lead-ins can be in English or the students’ native language.

Remember that students can understand much more than they can produce, so you can explain and involve the students using language more complex than they are capable of producing.

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Learner autonomy A key concept in modern teaching theory. The main idea behind learner autonomy is that students should take responsibility for their own learning, rather than be dependent on the teacher.

Learner autonomy involves ideas such as:
  • the teacher becoming less of an instructor and more of a facilitator
  • discouraging students from relying on the teacher as the main source of knowledge
  • encouraging students’ capacity to learn for themselves
  • encouraging students to make decisions about what they learn
  • encouraging students’ awareness of their own learning styles
  • encouraging students to develop their own learning strategies
Several recent technological developments have helped encourage greater learner autonomy. CD-ROMs are available for complete language courses, or as supplementary material for textbooks. Through the Internet, students can take self-access or distance learning language courses. Many schools and universities have their own intranets to complement traditional courses. These developments will probably never completely replace the classroom and the teacher, but are already dramatically changing our role as teachers.

Related ideas: cogntivism, learner training, learning strategies, learning styles.

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Learner training The key phrase in learner training is learning to learn.

Key ideas in learner-training are:
  • taking responsibility for your own learning
  • awareness of how you learn
  • awareness of what is being learned
  • awareness of what has been learned
  • awareness of what you still need to learn
  • organization of notebooks
  • development of study skills
  • developing learning strategies
Learner-training is closely related to the idea of Learner autonomy.

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Learning strategies The different techniques which students develop as they learn the target language.

Examples:
  • writing grammatical rules
  • working out their own rules (see Heuristics)
  • organizing vocabulary into lexical sets.
  • practising the language on chat-lines or face to face with speakers of the language
Learning strategies are a key part of Learner training, which itself is a concept closely related to Learner autonomy.

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Learning styles Different students learn in different ways.

Examples:
  • Some students prefer to see new structures in writing before they try to say it – they are visual learners.
  • Some students are confused by new written language. They prefer to speak the new language first – they are oral learners.
  • Some students need to copy the new language in their notebooks before they try to produce it.
  • Students can also differ in the time they need between new language input and output. Some students like to have a silent period when they can listen to the language without producing it.
  • Other students need to speak new language immediately.
Learning styles affect all the processes of learning a language: how much is remembered; how much recycling is needed; how quickly material is learned and so on.

The idea of learning styles is a feature of key areas of ELT such as Multiple Intelligences, Learner Training and Constructivism.

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Lexical approach The lexical approach rejects the traditional split of language into grammar and vocabulary. Instead, it proposes four types of language:

1. Words, e.g. ball, chair, car.
2. Chunks – words that often occur together, e.g. a crime has been committed, get in touch with the police.
3. Fixed phrases, e.g. Can I help you?
4. Semi-fixed phrases, e.g. It’s great to see you, It’s lovely to see you, Great to see you again, etc.

A key concept in this approach is collocation, which is closely related to the idea of word chunks.

The lexical approach emphasizes the need for very large amounts of input, and encourages students to recognize and use grammatical structures without explicitly teaching them.

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Lexical set Words that belong to a particularly group. This group could be a:

1. Semantic group
Example: cat, dog, elephant, snake
belong to the semantic group Animals.

2. Syntactical group
Example: pretty, long, unusual, frightening
belong to the syntactical group Adjectives.

3. Functional group
Example: Hello, Hi, Good morning, Hello there
belong to the functional group Greetings.

Lexical sets are often referred to as Word Families.

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Lexis The lexis of a language is the complete set of words used in that language.

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Listening for detail An important listening skill. Students listen to a tape and get the most important information from it. To focus the students’ attention, they can be given questions about the tape before they listen to it.

Example:
Students listen to a tape about the problems of the world. Before listening, they read questions such as:

1. What does the speaker think are the five main problems of the world?
2. Which country does he give as an example of each problem?
3. What solution does he suggest for each problem?

Students can then try to answer one or more of the questions before listening (a pre-listening activity), or listen to the tape and then answer the questions.

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Listening for gist An important listening skill. Students listen to a tape and answer general questions about it to show that they understand the main idea.

Example:
Students listen to a tape about the problems of the world and answer questions such as:

1. Is the speaker optimistic or pessimistic?
2. Does the speaker think there are a lot of problems in the world?

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Listening for specific information An important listening skill. Students listen for a short list of specific information on a tape which contains other information as well.

Example: Students listen to a tape of a person asking for information about a flight times. They answer questions such as:

1. What are the numbers of the flights to France?
2. What times are the flights to France?
3. How long does it take to fly to France?

Listening for specific information is similar to Listening for detail. The difference is that in Listening for specific information, students are required to distinguish relevant information from irrelevant information. In Listening for detail, the students are required to extract all the information.

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Listening skills Some of the most important listening skills are:
  • Listening for gist
  • Listening for detail
  • Listening for specific information
  • Inferential listening
Click on the text to go to the relevant entry.

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Lockstep A lockstep activity is when all the language produced in the class is directly controlled by the teacher.

A choral drill is an example of a lockstep activity.

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Look and Say approach See Whole word approach.

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Low challenge See Challenge.

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