Quick Reference A-C

Back to ELT Terms

Source: English Club www.macmillan.com.mx



 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:

  1. Linguistic intelligence – the ability to use and understand language.
  2. Logical-mathematical intelligence – the ability to understand mathematical operations, logical reasoning, and scientific thinking.
  3. Intra-personal intelligence – the ability to understand your own thoughts and feelings.
  4. Inter-personal intelligence – the ability to understand other people’s moods and feelings.
  5. Musical intelligence – the ability to understand and play music.
  6. Spatial intelligence – the ability to understand the relationships of objects in space – on maps, in the street and so on.
  7. Kinesthetic intelligence – the ability to control your fine motor movements.
  8. 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:
  1. We construct our own inner model of the world according to our perceptual and learning preferences (mainly auditory, visual, kinaesthetic).
  2. 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:
  • Presenting new language, either with graded language, as in the structural-situational approach, or with a deep-end strategy.
  • Practicing the language with controlled exercises.
  • Producing the language with free exercises.


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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:

  1. Subject pronouns: I, you, he, she, it, we, they
  2. Object pronouns: me, you, him, her, it, us, them
  3. Possessive pronouns: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs
  4. Demonstrative pronouns: this, that, these, those
  5. 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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