A very useful English Glossary that contains usual words of education techniques

1. English Glossary
Vanessa Salas
Marlon Porras

2. Total Physical Response
• A language-teaching method based on the coordination
of language and physical movement.
In TPR, instructors give commands to students in the
target language, and students respond with whole-body
actions, before the acquisition of language.

3. Acquisition versus Learning
Children acquire language through
a subconscious process during
which they are unaware of
grammatical rules.
Language learning, on the other
hand, is not communicative.
The emphasis is on the text of the
communication and not on the
form.
It is the result of direct instruction
in the rules of language.
In order to acquire language, the
learner needs a source of natural
communication.
In language learning, students
have conscious knowledge of the
new language and can talk about
that knowledge.

4. Silent period
• The silent period hypothesis is the idea that when a
language is learned, there should be a period in which
the learner is not expected to actively produce any
language. This is based on observations of a listening
period in infants when they learn a first language.
• Common classroom techniques can address the needs
of learners in a silent period. There are also
methodologies which explicitly incorporate a silent
period, such as Total Physical Response and the Natural
Approach.

5. Mother tongue
• First language (also native language) is the language a
person has learned from birth or within the critical period,
or that a person speaks the best and so is often the
basis for sociolinguistic identity.
• Children brought up speaking more than one language
can have more than one native language, and be
bilingual.

6. EFL / ESL
• English as a Foreign Language is the use or study of
English by non-native speakers in an English-speaking
environment. That environment may be a country in
which English is the mother tongue.
• ESL also refers to specialized approaches to language
teaching made for those whos primary language is not
English.

7. Drills
• Exercises made after introducing new vocabulary words,
grammar points… in the class. There are different ways
to drill.
– Choral repetition: studens repeat words or phrases after you.
– Drilling with flashcards: show flashcards and then repeat the
word that appears on the image.
– Comprehension: asking students to give a synonym, antonym
or translation of a new vocabulary word will check individual
comprehension.
– Drilling in pairs: a student’s comprehension is tested by his
partner.
– Games: breake your classroom up into sections or conduct
some drilling activities in a circle.

8. Approach
• Directing the attention or interest to a particular issue or
problem.
• Synonym of way or strategy.

9. Phonics
• Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing of
the English language by developing learners' phonemic
awareness—the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate
phonemes—in order to teach the correspondence
between these sounds and the spelling patterns
(graphemes) that represent them.
• The goal of phonics is to enable beginning readers to
decode new written words by sounding them out, or in
phonics terms, blending the sound-spelling patterns.

10. Digital literacy
• Computer literacy refers to knowledge and skills in using
traditional computers (such as desktop PCs and laptops)
with a focus on practical skills in using software
application packages.
• Digital skills is a more contemporary term but is limited to
practical abilities in using digital devices (such as laptops
and smartphones).

11. Literacy
• The ability or state of being literate.
• Literacy is the ability to read and write.

12. Multiple Intelligencies
• This theory, proposed
by Howard Gardner,
differentiates it into
specific modalities, rather
than seeing intelligence
as dominated by a single
general ability.

13. Target language
• The target language is the language learners are
studying, and also the individual items of language that
they want to learn, or the teacher wants them to learn.