Ins.

Marwa Mustafa Alkwash

Terms of language

 Mother Tongue is more intimate. It is the language of our family, the language
of our people. In most contexts, "mother tongue" also implies that the language is
particularly important to a person's or group's identity and culture. For example, a
person in Puerto Rico may grow up speaking both Spanish and English with equal
fluency, and so we would consider that person a native speaker of both languages,
with both as a native language or a first language. But if that person's family
identifies more strongly with Spanish-language culture, then the person may
consider only Spanish to be either "mother language."
  "native language" or "first language" are generally used to refer to the
language(s) that a person has spoken since infancy or early childhood. To put this
into context- if however someone uses these two words together "Arabic is my
mother tongue but French is my native/first language" then here native/first carries
the impression of being educated in that language and being fluent whereas in a
mother tongue isn't necessarily completely fluent so much as "this is what we
speak in my house"
 Primary language is the language in which we feel the most comfortable
expressing ourselves. This can change throughout our life: if we stop using our
primary language in favor of another one, eventually the new one may become our
primary language. Note that a language can be our primary language even if we are
not fully (native-like) proficient in it.
 The additional language is called a second language (L2)
 target language (TL) , which refers to any language that is the aim or goal of
learning.
 A second language is typically an official or societally dominant language
needed for education, employment, and other basic purposes. it is often acquired
by minority group members or immigrants who speak another language natively.
In this more restricted sense, the term is contrasted with other terms in this list.
 A foreign language is one not widely used in the learners’ immediate social
context which might be used for future travel or other cross cultural
communication situations, or studied as a curricular requirement or elective in
school, but with no immediate or necessary practical application.
 A library language is one which functions primarily as a tool for further
learning through reading, especially when books or journals in a desired field of
study are not commonly published in the learners’ native tongue.
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 An auxiliary language is one which learners need to know for some official
functions in their immediate political setting, or will need for purposes of wider
communication, although their first language serves most other needs in their lives.
 Multilingualism refers to the ability to use two or more languages. (Some
 linguists and psychologists use bilingualism for the ability to use two
 languages and multilingualism for more than two, but we will not make
 that distinction here.) Monolingualism refers to the ability to use only one.
 the concept of multilingual competence to refer to “the compound state of a
mind with two [or more] grammars”, monolingual competence which refers to
knowledge of only one language.
 Innate capacity a part of language structure which is genetically “given” to
every human child.
 the term Interlanguage (IL) to refer to the intermediate states (or interim
grammars) of a learner’s language as it moves toward the target L2.
 Second Language Acquisition (SLA) refers both to the study of individuals and
groups who are learning a language subsequent to learning their first one as young
children, and to the process of learning that language.
 The term language community refers to a group of people who share knowledge
of a common language to at least some extent.
 Dialect is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular area,
community or social group, often differing from other varieties of the same
language in minor ways as regards vocabulary, style, pronunciation, and
orthographic conventions; either standard or nonstandard (vernacular).Cockney is a
dialect of English."
 Vernacular is the native language or native dialect in a specific population.
Different to a language of wider communication that is a second language or
foreign language to the population, such as a national language or standard
language. - It is a type of dialect.
 Accent refers to how people pronounce words;  how someone speaks another
language
 Language variety: is a general term for any distinctive form of a language or
linguistic expression. Linguists commonly use language variety (or simply variety)
as a cover term for any of the overlapping subcategories of a language,
including dialect, register, jargon, and idiolect
 Jargon refers to the specialized language of a professional or occupational
group; for example, lawyers use legalese, while academics use academese.
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  Idiolect is the distinctive speech of an individual, a linguistic pattern regarded as

unique among speakers of a person's language or dialect. In linguistics, idiolects
fall under the study of linguistic variation, such as dialects and accents.
  Lingua franca: is a language used as a medium of communication by people
whose native languages are different. And also known as a trade language, contact
language, international language, and global language.
 Creole is a pidgin which became a native language: the children of the pidgin
speakers start using it as their first language. It is an independent linguistic system
with expanded vocabulary and structures. Creole performs all the referential and
affective functions of a language.
 Pidgin is a language which is grammatically, lexically and phonologically
simplified, containing some elements of a native language (usually structures and
pronunciation) and some elements of a second language (usually vocabulary). It is
a fossilized interlanguage performing only a narrow range of functions (e.g. trade,
basic communication).

 Terms related to language acquisition & linguistics

Accuracy is the ability to produce language which is phonologically,
grammatically and lexically correct.
Fluency is the ability to produce language in a natural way, with the rate,
hesitations, fillers, etc. Typical for a native speaker.
Approach is a general philosophy or a set of beliefs on the nature of
language, language acquisition and language teaching.
Method is a set of principles on how teaching should be conducted, which
teaching strategies/procedures/techniques should be used for
presenting/practicing/testing particular language skills or for facilitating
particular aspects of learning. Method answers the most basic question in
teaching methodology: how to teach?
Technique is a practical realization of a method. Technique is any action
taken by the teacher in the classroom, directly or indirectly affecting the
learning process.

A curriculum is the combination of instructional practices, learning

experiences, and students' performance assessment that are designed to bring
out and evaluate the target learning outcomes of a particular course.
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Syllabus describes the contents of teaching. It enlists the points/ problems to

be taught, focusing on various aspects: grammar, vocabulary, phonology
(structural syllabus); notions, functions, situations (communicative
syllabus); task (task-based syllabus); and a mixture of all the aspects (multi-
dimensional syllabus).
Input is language the learner is exposed to in both formal and informal
context, in a written or spoken form
Output is the language produced by the learner, in a written or spoken form.
Intake is a fraction of input that has been internalized by the learner. The
input-intake ratio depends on many factors accompanying the learning
process: psychological, environmental, methodological, etc.
Fossilization is a process in which SLA is stopped, usually as a result of
affective factors (e.g lack of motivation or negative attitude) It leads to the
internalization of the incorrect language forms by the learner.
Language Competence is a system of language rules internalized by the
language learner. A learner’s communicative competence, ie. His/her ability
to communicate, is usually referred to as a set of competences:
- Linguistic competence (the ability to use the language accurately in
terms of phonological, grammatical, and lexical accuracy)
- Sociolinguistic competence (the ability to understand and produce
utterances appropriately in various social contexts)
- Discourse competence (the ability to behave in the process of
discourse development, the ability to organize sentences in cohesive,
ie. Grammatically linked, and coherent, ie pragmatically linked,
utterances)
- Strategic competence (the ability to use various linguistic and non-
linguistic devices to overcome limitations in linguistic knowledge)
Language Performance is the practical realization of language competence. In
other words, it is language production, usually accompanied by unintentional
repetitions, hesitations, mistakes.
Communicative competence it’s what a speaker needs to know to communicate
appropriately within a particular language community.
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Coherence is defined as the quality of being logical, consistent and able to be

understood. Imagine coherence as a building (It’s an analogy, go with it).
Cohesion on the other hand refers to the act of forming a whole unit. It is effectively
a subset of coherence
English grammar is the way in which meanings are encoded into wordings in the
English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, sentences,
and the structure of whole texts.
Mistakes are usually accidental. They are performance based, and can be self-
corrected. Mistake is less formal than error, and is usually used in daily speech.
Errors are usually made due to the lack of knowledge. So, the action was wrong
because it was different from the rules, model or specific code. Error is a more
formal word than mistake.