ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING APPROACHES

AND METHODS

GLOSSARY

Active phase: the second phase of a Desuggestopedia lesson, in which students actively work
with the language they have been introduced to in the receptive phase.

Adjunct model: students enrolled in a regular academic course also take a language course
linked to the academic course.

Advance organization: a learning strategy focused on improving reading skills by learning to

preview and to skim to get the gist of a reading passage.

Affective filter: a metaphorical filter that is caused by a student’s negative emotions, which
reduce the student’s ability to understand the language spoken to them.

Analytic syllabus: ‘[O]rganized in terms of the purposes for which people are learning
language and the kinds of language performance that are necessary to meet those purposes’
(Wilkins 1976: 13).

Antonym: a word with the opposite meaning to another word, e.g. ‘cold’ is the antonym of ‘hot.’

Apprenticeship of observation: a term to describe the fact that teachers come to teacher
training with ideas about the teaching/learning process formed from the years they have spent
as students themselves (Lortie 1975).

Associationism: a learning theory that assumes that language learning takes place when
learners associate forms with their meanings.

Attitude of inquiry: a teacher’s commitment to inquire and reflect on his or her teaching
practice, learning from every experience (Larsen-Freeman 2000).

Authentic language: language used in a real context.

Banking method of education: a more ‘traditional’ form of education where the teacher
‘deposits’ information in the students, making the assumption that the teacher knows what the
students need to learn.

Bottom-up approach to reading instruction: a learning to read approach that begins with
students learning the basic elements of language, e.g. sound–symbol correspondences.

Cognate: a word with a similar appearance (and usually a similar meaning) across languages.

Cognitive code approach: an approach in which learners are seen to be actively responsible
for their own learning, engaged in formulating hypotheses in order to discover the rules of the
target language.

Cognitive strategies: learning strategies which involve learners interacting and manipulating
what is to be learned.

Coherence: a property of discourse where sentences are connected in a meaningful way.

Cohesion: a property of discourse where sentences are connected with explicit linguistic forms,
such as conjunctions.
Communicative approach: an approach to language teaching that makes learning to
communicate central.

Communicative competence: knowing when and how to say what to whom. Being
communicatively competent in the target language means being able to communicate
appropriately with others.

Community of practice: a group of people who share a common interest and/or a profession.
As they share information, they learn from each other (Lave and Wenger 1991).

Competency-based instruction: adults study certain vital life-coping or survival skills, such as
how to fill out a job application or use the telephone.

Comprehensible input: language that is understood by students. The teacher ensures that she
or he is understood by using pictures, gestures, and occasional words in the students’ native
language.

Comprehension approach: a general approach that includes methods that give importance to
input, especially in the form of listening comprehension.

Computer-assisted language learning (CALL): instruction that uses computer or webbased

technology to teach language.

Concordance: a computer-generated list of words or phrases, used in limited contexts.

Conditioning: associated with behaviorism, conditioning is a process whereby students learn to

respond correctly to stimuli through shaping and reinforcement.

Conscious and subconscious planes: communication takes place on two planes. On the
conscious plane, the learner attends to the language. On the subconscious plane, the learner
receives messages about the ease of the learning process. Learning is enhanced when there is
unity between the conscious and subconscious planes.

Constructivism: students are actively involved in constructing their own knowledge through
experience and problem solving (Dewey 1913).

Control and initiative: a teacher exercises lesser or greater control in the classroom, which
influences how much initiative students are encouraged and able to take (Stevick 1980).

Cooperative learning: students learn from and with each other in groups.

Counsel: in Counseling-Learning/Community Language Learning, the teacher does not offer

advice, but rather ‘counsels’ the students by showing that he is really listening to them and
understanding what they are saying. This is typically demonstrated by an ‘understanding
response.’

Critical discourse analysis: the study of how identity and power relations are constructed in
language.

Critical pedagogy: instruction that is premised on the belief that ‘what happens in the
classroom should end up making a difference outside of the classroom’ (Baynham 2006: 28).

Deductive grammar teaching: the teacher explains grammar rules to students, who then apply
them to different examples.

Discourse or suprasentential level of language: the organization of language as texts, e.g.

how sentences go together to make up a paragraph.

Discrete-point test: an analytical approach to language testing in which each test question
assesses one distinct feature of the language.
Display question: a question to which both teacher and student know the answer, but that is
used by the teacher to find out what a student knows or is able to do.

Doubting game and believing game: the doubting game requires someone to evaluate an
idea using logic and evidence. The believing game requires taking on the perspective of the
originator of the idea, to see it through his or her eyes. It is important to play both games. The
goal is to understand an idea fully before judging it (Elbow 1973).

Emergentism: a language learning theory that sees language as emerging from meaningful
language use. Speakers’ language is shaped and reshaped by experience.

Endangered languages: languages that are in danger of disappearing due to the declining
numbers of people who speak them.

English as a lingua franca: the language used by millions of non-native English speakers,
primarily for use in multilingual language contact situations.

Fidel charts: color-coded Silent Way charts that show sounds of the language and the various
ways the same sound can be spelled.

Five minds: a theory focused on cognitive abilities or ‘minds’ that individuals need to develop in
order to be successful in a changing world (Gardner 2007).

Focus on form: the teacher directs learners’ attention briefly to linguistic structure while the
learners are engaged in a meaningful activity.

Functions: speech acts, such as inviting, promising, introducing one person to another, that are
performed within a social context.

Generative words: from Freire’s work in literacy education, words that are important to the
people in their community, which are used to teach basic decoding and coding skills.

Genres: different types of language texts, e.g. poetry or scientific writing. Globalization: the
expansion of businesses internationally.

Grammaring: an approach to teaching grammar that treats grammar as an ability to use

grammar structures accurately, meaningfully, and appropriately, rather than as a set of static
rules to be applied (Larsen-Freeman 2003).

Graphic organizer: a diagram used by teachers to help students organize and remember new
information.

Human computer™: in Counseling-Learning/Community Language Learning, the student

chooses which aspect of language to practice and controls how much to practice it. The teacher
repeats correctly what the student says as often as the student desires. i + 1: language that is
just in advance of students’ current level of language proficiency (‘i’). Inductive grammar
teaching: the teacher gives students examples with a particular grammar structure. The
students figure out the rule.

Infantilization: Desuggestopedia teachers consciously create an environment in which students

can release their fears and become ‘childlike’ in their classroom interactions. Information gap:
an activity where not all the information is known by all the participants. They have to share the
information they have in order to complete the activity.

Inner criteria: students develop their own inner criteria for correctness—to trust and to be
responsible for their own production in the target language (Gattegno 1972).

Input enhancement: promoting students’ noticing of a particular language feature, such as

putting in boldface type a particular structure in a reading passage.

Input flooding: promoting students’ noticing by using particular language items with great
frequency.
Language for academic purposes: language studied so as to be able to participate
successfully in academic contexts.

Language for specific purposes: language studied in order to participate in a specific activity
or profession, e.g. German for business purposes. Learning strategies: ‘the techniques or
devices which a learner may use to acquire knowledge’ (Rubin 1975: 43).

Linguistic competence: mastery of the linguistic structures of the target language.

Literacies: literacy in the unique forms, vocabulary, and norms of different discourses, e.g.
those of politics or business.
Metacognitive strategies: learning strategies that are used to plan, monitor, and evaluate a
learning task, e.g. arranging conditions for learning, setting long and short-term goals and
checking one’s comprehension during listening and reading (Chamot and O’Malley 1994).

Minimal pair: pairs of words which differ in only one sound, e.g. ‘ship’ and ‘sheep.’

Multicompetence: being able to use more than one language in a way that one’s needs are
met without necessarily imitating monolingual native speaker use.

Peripheral learning: students learn from what is present in the environment, even if their
attention is not directed to it. Pluralism: the belief that there is some value in each method.

Plurilingualism: an individual’s language proficiency in several languages.

Principled eclecticism: teachers build their own method by blending aspects of other methods
in a principled manner.

Recast: a form of corrective feedback in which a teacher reformulates correctly what a student
has said incorrectly.

Receptive phase: the first phase in a Desuggestopedia lesson where a dialogue is read with
musical accompaniment and read a second time at normal speed.

Register: the level of formality of a text.

Relativism: the belief that each method has its strengths and weaknesses and that therefore
different methods are suitable for different contexts.

SAARRD: in Counseling-Learning/Community Language Learning, this acronym represents the

six elements necessary for nondefensive learning: S = Security; A = Aggression (students are
given the opportunity to assert themselves); A = Attention (students’ attention is focused); R =
Reflection; R = Retention (integration of the new material takes place within the whole self); D =
Discrimination (sorting out the differences among target language forms).

Scaffolding: language support provided by a teacher, which enables learners to communicate

something they could not do otherwise, e.g. building a complete utterance together with the
students.

Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP): effective practices for sheltered

instruction (Short and Echevarria 1999).

Sheltered-language instruction: an instructional approach that allows for the integration of

language and content by supporting students’ understanding of the content in the target
language.

Social/affective learning strategies: learning strategies where learners interact with other
persons or pay attention to the affective domain to improve learning (Chamot and O’Malley
1994).

Strong and weak version of the communicative approach: in the weak version of the
communicative approach students are learning to use English; in the strong version, students
use English to learn it (Howatt 1984).
Synonym: a word with a similar meaning to another word, e.g. ‘sick’ is a synonym of ‘ill.’

Synthetic syllabus: a syllabus comprising linguistic units: grammar structures, vocabulary

items, functions, etc. It is the learner’s responsibility to synthesize the linguistic units for the
purpose of communication (Wilkins 1976).

Task: an activity, with a clear outcome, in which learners communicate meaningfully.

Task-supported teaching: teaching with meaningful communicative tasks, without excluding

the possibility of using tasks with a grammatical focus.

Top-down approach to reading instruction: a learning to read approach that begins with
students engaging with the general ideas of the text as a way in to understanding the text.

Understanding response: a response from a listener that paraphrases what the speaker has
just said, without questions, opinions, or judgments.

Whole-person learning: teachers consider not only their students’ intellect, but they also have
some understanding about the relationship among students’ feelings, physical reactions,
instinctual protective reactions, and desire to learn.

Workplace literacy: the skill adult learners need at their workplace to read and write about
relevant content.

World ‘Englishes’: different varieties of English, each spoken in a country that was a former
British colony, e.g. Indian English.

World wide web (www or ‘the web’): a way of accessing information over the Internet.

Zone of proximal development (ZPD): an area of learning potential lying between the
learner’s ability to operate independently and the learner’s ability to operate with the help of a
teacher or a more competent peer (Vygotsky 1978).