Teaching English as a Second Language
99 flashcards by MentisLibrary
Acquisition stages, CEFR levels, the four skills, and the methods from grammar-translation to task-based teaching. Plus what research says about error correction, pronunciation goals, and which words to teach first.
- What does TESOL stand for?
- Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, used both for the field and for the international professional association.
- What is the difference between ESL and EFL?
- ESL is English taught where English is the surrounding community language; EFL is English taught where it is not.
- What does ESOL mean?
- English for Speakers of Other Languages, a term often preferred because it covers learners for whom English may be a third or fourth language.
- What is ELL, and how does it compare to MLL?
- English Language Learner, a common US school label. Many systems now prefer Multilingual Learner or Emergent Bilingual to name the languages a student already has as an asset.
- What is ESP?
- English for Specific Purposes: courses built around the language of a defined domain such as aviation, nursing, or academic writing.
- What is EAP?
- English for Academic Purposes, a branch of ESP focused on the reading, writing, listening, and speaking demands of university study.
- What is the difference between language acquisition and language learning in Krashen's terms?
- Acquisition is subconscious pickup through meaningful input; learning is conscious study of rules. Krashen argued only acquisition produces fluent spontaneous use.
- What are the five hypotheses in Krashen's Monitor Model?
- The acquisition-learning hypothesis, the monitor hypothesis, the natural order hypothesis, the input hypothesis, and the affective filter hypothesis.
- What is Krashen's input hypothesis?
- Acquisition happens when learners understand input slightly beyond their current level, written as i plus 1.
- What is comprehensible input?
- Language the learner can understand from context even though it contains unknown elements.
- What is the affective filter hypothesis?
- Anxiety, low motivation, and low self-confidence raise a mental barrier that blocks input from being acquired.
- What is the output hypothesis?
- Producing language pushes learners to notice gaps in their knowledge and to process syntax, which comprehension alone does not require.
- What is the interaction hypothesis?
- Conversational negotiation of meaning, including clarification requests and confirmation checks, makes input comprehensible and drives acquisition.
- What is noticing in second language acquisition?
- The claim that learners must consciously register a feature in the input before it can be acquired.
- What is interlanguage?
- The learner's own developing language system, with its own rules, distinct from both the first language and the target language.
- What is fossilization?
- The stabilizing of incorrect interlanguage forms that persist despite continued exposure and instruction.
- What is language transfer?
- The influence of a learner's first language on their production and comprehension of the second.
- What is a false friend?
- A word that looks or sounds like a word in the learner's first language but means something different.
- What is the natural order hypothesis?
- The claim that grammatical features are acquired in a broadly predictable sequence regardless of teaching order.
- What is the silent period in second language acquisition?
- An early stage in which a learner understands more than they produce and may speak very little.
- What are the commonly used stages of English language proficiency?
- Preproduction or silent, early production, speech emergence, intermediate fluency, and advanced fluency.
- What characterizes the preproduction stage?
- Minimal spoken output, reliance on gestures, pointing, and yes or no responses, with a growing receptive vocabulary of a few hundred words.
- What characterizes the early production stage?
- One and two word answers and short familiar phrases, with roughly a thousand words of receptive vocabulary.
- What characterizes the speech emergence stage?
- Simple sentences and short conversations with frequent grammatical errors, and around three thousand words in use.
- What characterizes the intermediate fluency stage?
- Complex sentences, opinions expressed with support, and increasing use of academic language, with errors in more complex structures.
- What is the difference between BICS and CALP?
- BICS is basic interpersonal communicative skills, the conversational fluency used in everyday contexts; CALP is cognitive academic language proficiency, the abstract decontextualized language of schooling.
- Roughly how long does each of BICS and CALP take to develop?
- Research generally reports about one to three years for conversational fluency and about five to seven years or more for academic language proficiency.
- What is the common underlying proficiency hypothesis?
- Skills and concepts learned in the first language transfer to the second, so strong first language literacy supports English literacy.
- What is Cummins's quadrant framework?
- A grid crossing cognitive demand with contextual support, used to plan tasks that stay cognitively challenging while adding context.
- What is the CEFR?
- The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, a scale describing language ability with can-do statements.