Glossary of basic terms for ELT materials development and design

Authentic text: A text which is not written or spoken for language teaching purposes. A newspaper article, a rock song, a novel, a radio interview and a traditional fairy tale are examples of authentic texts. A story written to exemplify the use of reported speech, a dialogue scripted to exemplify ways of inviting and a linguistically simplified version of a novel wold not be authentic texts.

See simplified texts; text.

Authentic task: A task which involves lerners in using language in a way that replicates its use in the 'real world' outside the language classroom. Filling in blanks, changing verbs from the simple past to the simple present and completing substitution tables are, therefore, not authentic tasks. Examples of authentic tasks would be answering a letter addressed to the lerner, arguing a particular point of view and comparing various holiday brochures in order to decide where to go for a holiday.

See pedagogic task.

         Bottom-up approach to language comprehension and production: This approach teaches the microskills first (e.g. grammar, vocabulary, sentince structure), before asking learners to use the language (communication). The focus is on the various components of the language first. Students then have to fit these together in comprehending or producing language.

See top-down task.

Communicative approaches: Approaches to language teaching which aim to help learners to develop communicative competence (i.e. the ability to use the language effectively for communication). A weak communicative approach includes overt teaching of language forms and functions in order to help learners to develop the ability to use them for communication. A strong communicative approach relies on providing learners with experience of using language as the main means of learning to usse the language. In suchas approach, learners, for example, talk to learn rather than learn to talk.

Communicative competence: The ability to use the language effectively for communication. Gaining such competence involves acquiring both sociolinguistic and linguistic knowledge (or , in other words, developing the ability to use the language accurately, appropriately, and efectively).

Concordances (or concordance lines): A list of authentic utterances each containing the same focused word or phrase e.g.:

The bus driver still didn't have any change so he made me wait.
I really don't mind which one. Any newspaper will do. I just
...know what they are saying. Any teacher will tell you that it's

See authentic.

Corpus: A bank of authentic texts collected in ordr to find out how language is actually used. Usually a corpus is restricted to a particular type of language use, for example, a corpus of newspaper English, a corpus of legal documents, or a corpus of informal spoken English.

See text.

Coursebook: A textbook which provides the core materials for a course. It aims to provide as much as posiible in one book and is designed so that it could serve as the only book which the learners necessarily use during a course. Such a book usually focuses on grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, functions and the skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking.

See supplementary materials.

Discovery activity: An activity which involves learners in investing energy and attention in order to discover something about the language for themselves. Getting learners to wotk out the rules of direct speech from examples, asking learners to investigate when and why a character uses the modal 'must' in a story and getting learners to notice and explain the use of ellipsis in a recorded conversation would be examples of discovery activities.

Experiential: Refferring to ways of learning language through experiencing itin use rather than through focusing conscious attention on language items. Reading a novel, listening to a song and taking part in a project are experiential ways of learning a language.

Foreign language: A language which is not normally used for communication in a particular society. Thus English is a foreign language in France and Spanish is a foreign language in Germany.

Form-focused tasks: These tasks have a linguistic focus (grammar, vocabulary, etc.). According to this approach, a linguitic focus, in the form of grammatical consciousness-raising activities, should be incorporated into task design.

See Meaning-focused tasks

Global coursebook: A coursebook which is not written for learners from a particular culture or country but which is intended for use by any class of learners in the specified level anywhere in the world.

         Interactional tasks: Tasks which promote communication and interaction. The idea behind this approach is that he primary purpose of speech is the maintenance of social relationships.

See transactional tasks.

Language awareness: Approaches to teaching language which emphasise the value of helping learners to focus attention on features of language in use. Most such approaches emphasise the importance of learners gradually developing their own awareness of how the language is used through discoveries which they make themselves.

See discovery activities.

Language data: Instances of language use which are used to provide information about how the language is used. Thus a corpus can be said to consist of language data.

See corpus.

Language practice: Activities which involve repetition of the same language point or skill in an environment which is controlled by the framework of the activity. The prupose for language production and the language to be produced are usually predetermined by the task of the teacher. The intention is not to use the language for communication but to strengthen, through successful repetition, the ability to manipulate a particular language form or function. Thus getting all the students in a class who already know each other repeatedly to ask each other their names would be a practice activity.

See language use.

Language use: activities which involve the production of language in order to communicate. The purpose of the activity might be predetermined but the language which is used is determined by the learners. Thus getting a new class of learners to walk round and introduce themselves to each other would be a language use activity; and so would getting them to complete a story which they have been given the beginning of.

Learning styles: The way(s) that particular learners prefer to learn a language. Some have a preference for hearing the language (auditory learners), some for seeing it written down (visual learners), some for learning it in discrete bits (analytic learners), some for experiencing it in large chunks (global or holistic or experiential learners) and many prefer to do something physical whilst experiencing the language (kinaesthetic learners).

L2: A term used to refer to both foreign and second languages.

See foreign language; second language.

Materials: Anything which is used to help to teach language learners. Materials can be in the form of a textbook, a workbook, a cassette, a CD-Rom, a video, a photocopied handout, a newspaper, a paragraph written on a whiteboard: anything which presents of informs about the language being learned.

Materials adaptation: Making changes to materials in order to improve them or to make them more suitable for a particular type of learner. Adaptation can include reducing, adding, omitting, modifing and supplementing. Most teachers adapt materials every time they use a textbook in order to maximise the value of the book for their particular learners.

Materials evaluation: The systematic appraisal of the value of materials in relation to their objectives and to the objectives of the learners using them. Evaluation can be pre-use and therefore focused on predictions of potential value. It can be whilst-use and therefore focused on awareness and description of what the learners are actually doing whilst the materials are being used. And it can also be post-use and therefore focused on analysis of what happened as a result of using the materials.

Meaning-focused tasks: These tasks focus on communication of meaning. Meaning-focused tasks do not provide practice activities which focus on individual linguistic components as a preliminary to engagement in communicative tasks. According to the meaning-focused approach, involvement in communicative tasks is all that is necessary to develop competence in a second language. See Form-focused tasks

Multi-media materials: Materials which make use of a number of different media. Often they are available on a CD-Rom which makes use of print, graphics, video and sound. Usually such materials are interactive and enable the learner to receive feedback on the written or spoken language which they produce.

Pedagogic task: In pedagogic tasks, learners are required to do things which it is extremely unlikely they would be called upon to do outside of the classroom. Completing one half of a dialogue, filling in the blanks in a story and working out the meaning of ten nonsense words from clues in a text would be examples of pedagogic tasks.

See real-world tasks.

PPP: An approach to teaching langauge items which follows a sequence of presentation of the item, practice of the item and the production of the items. This is the approach currently followed by most commercially produced textbooks and has the advantage of apparent systematicity and economy. However, it is based on the "linear" and "behaviorist" view of language learning, which researchers have shown to be incorrect. This approach ignores the cyclic nature of learning, and treats learning as a series of "knowable facts".

See language practice; SLA; language use.

Process approach: The process approach focuses on the means whereby learning occurs. The process is more important than the product. In terms of writing, the important aspect is the way in which completed text was created. The act of composing evolves through several stages as writers discover, through the process, what it is that they are trying to say.

See product approach.

Product approach: The product approach focuses on the end result of teaching/learning. In terms of writing, there should be something "resulting" from the composition lesson (e.g. letter, essay, story, etc.). This result should be readable, grammatically correct and obeying discourse conventions relating to main points, supporting details and so on.

See process approach.

Real-world tasks: These are tasks which use "authentic" materials and situations. Learners are required to approximate, in class, the sorts of behaviors required of them in the world beyond the classroom.

See pedagogic tasks.

Second language: The term is used to refer to a language which is not a mother tongue but which is used for certain communicative functions in a society. Thus English is a second language in Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Singapore. French is a second language in Senegal, Cameroon and Tahiti.

See foreign language.

Self-access materials: Materials designed for learners to use indepently (i.e. on their own without access to a teacher or a classroom). They are normally used by the learner at home, in a library or in a self-study centre.

Simplified texts: These are texts which have been made simpler so as to make it easier for learners to read them. The usual principles of simplification involve reduction in length of the text, shortening of sentences, omission or replacement of difficult words or structures, omission of qualifying clauses and omission of non-essential detail. It is arguable, however, that such simplification might make the words easier to understand but could make it more difficult for the learners to achieve global understanding of a text which is now dense with important information. It might be more profitable to cimplify texts by adding examples, by using repetition and paraphrase and by increasing redundant information. In other words, by lengthening rather than shortening the text.

SLA: This is an abbreviatoin for Second Language Acquistion and is normally used to refer to research and theory related to the learning of second and foreign languages.

Supplementary materials: Materials designed to be used in addition to the core materials of a course. They are usually related to the development of skills of reading, writing, listening or speaking rather than to the learning of language items.

See coursebook.

Task based: This refers to materials or courses which are designed around a series of authentic tasks which give learners experience of using the language in ways in which it is used in the 'real world' outside the classroom. They have no pre-determined language syllabus and the aim is for learners to learn from the tasks the language they need to participate successfully in them. Examples of such tasks would bes working out the itinerary of a journey from a timetable, completing a passport application form, ordering a product from a catalogue and giving directions to the post office.

See authentic tasks.

Text: Any scripted or recorded production of a language presented to learners of that language. A text can be written or spoken and could be, for example, a poem, a newspaper article, a passage about pollution, a song, a film, an extrac from a novel or a play, a passage written to exemplify the use of the past perfect, a recorded telephone conversation, a scripted dialogue or a speech by a politician.

Top-down approach to language comprehension and production: The top-down view of language learning starts from use of the language. Study of grammar, vocabulary, etc. come later, once the learner has started using the language for communication. This utilizes knowledge of the larger picture, as it were, to assist in comprehending or using smaller elements.

See bottom-up task.

Transactional tasks: These tasks are primarily concerned with the transfer of information.

See interactional tasks.

Workbook: A book which contains extra practic activities for learners to work on in their own time. Usually the book is designed so that learners can write in it and often there is an answer jey procided in the back of the book to give feedback to the learners.

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