Tag Archives: ELT jargon

Applied Linguistics dictionary Part 19

Posted on 27/11/2008 by alexcase

minimum adequate speech vocabulary – the words “whatever!”, “I”, “was”, “like”, “yer” and “right!” mode of discourse – fashion for discourse analysts placeholder words – “Keep my seat till I get back, can you?” reeferents – stoners relevance theory – … Continue reading →

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The Alternative Dictionary of TEFL acronyms etc Part 18

Posted on 24/11/2008 by alexcase

British National Corpus – the official body responsible for the death of UK society CDA – Critical Discourse Analysis – using discourse analysis to slag people off content words- vocabulary used by happy people core lexicon – a capsule hidden … Continue reading →

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An Alternative Dictionary of ELT jargon Part 17

Posted on 10/11/2008 by alexcase

adjacency pairs- the strange connection between students being sat beside each other in the first lesson and forming couples back channelling- TEFL euphemism for shirt lifting boundary marker-use of textbooks to stake out territory on a desk caretaker talk-

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An alternative dictionary of ELT Part 16

Posted on 15/10/2008 by alexcase

androgogy- teaching like a girly man behaviourism- the theory that making your students pretend they have stiff upper lips will make them act and speak like Englishmen, and wearing a crown in class will make them speak Queen’s English co-hyponym … Continue reading →

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The dream dictionary for TEFL teachers

Posted on 15/09/2008 by alexcase

What elements of your dreams tell you about your TEFLing future: Suddenly realising you have no clothes on – you will realise halfway through your next improvised grammar explanation that it doesn’t make any sense   Water – You will … Continue reading →

Posted in Grammar, Teaching English Abroad, Teaching English in Spain, TEFL working conditions, Warmers | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

An alternative A to Z of ELT Part 15

Posted on 14/09/2008 by alexcase

Innateness hypothesis- The theory that studying English is inherently boring, so why bother with games. See also “Inaneness hypothesis”* Input- The theory that the language we expose students to should be as carefully chosen as when programming a computer or … Continue reading →

Posted in Cambridge Delta, Linguistics, applied linguistics and SLA, Teaching English in Spain, TEFL heroes- Scott Thornbury | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Alternative ELT Jargon Dictionary Part 14

Posted on 27/07/2008 by alexcase

UPDATE: Complete collection now here. ARELS- Association of Reasonably good English Language Schools BAAL- The false god of Applied Linguistics Direct method- A system of language learning aimed at making Japanese students say what they really mean Ditransitive- verbs often … Continue reading →

Posted in ARELS, English for Academic Purposes, International House, Linguistics, applied linguistics and SLA, TEFL | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Alternative ELT jargon dictionary- Chomsky-rich special edition

Posted on 24/07/2008 by alexcase

UPDATE: Complete collection now here. ALR- ape language research-looking into whether it is possible to teach English to West Ham or Birmingham City fans Chomsky hierarchy (the) – Noam’s at the top, and whoever agrees with him most is in … Continue reading →

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The alternative EFL jargon dictionary Part 12

Posted on 10/07/2008 by alexcase

SLA- Second Language Acquisition- The theory that you are guaranteed to learn a language if you just spend enough money on it STT- Stupid Talking Time- How long you should let a student talk after you realize they’ve got completely … Continue reading →

Posted in Linguistics, applied linguistics and SLA, TEFL, TOEFL | Tagged , | 5 Comments

The Alternative TEFL Jargon dictionary Part 11

Posted on 06/07/2008 by alexcase

Anthropological linguists- Studying the feuds and other interactions of linguists as if they were a Papua New Guinea tribe Contrastive analysis- trying to work out what the picture on a bad photocopy is when asked to talk about it in … Continue reading →

Posted in Linguistics, applied linguistics and SLA, Teaching English in Asia, TEFL, The Silent Way, TPR | Tagged , | Leave a comment