dictionary

LONGMAN DICTIONARY OF LANGUAGE TEACHING AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS

(with Richard Schmidt) 3rd Edition. Longman

Background

Dr. Richards explains the background to this book:

"This dictionary grew out of my work at the Regional Language Centre, Singapore, when I first started teaching there in the 1970s. I found that many of the students doing courses there in applied linguistics and language teaching, particularly those for whom English is a second or foreign language, had difficulty coping with much of the specialized terminology that they encountered in books and articles. In discussing this issue with Professor John Platt, a leading Australian linguist who was visiting the center at the time, we decided it would be useful to try to identify what some of this terminology was and to write definitions for as many key terms as we could identify. John's wife, Heidi Platt, also a linguist, joined us in this project. Longman expressed interest in the project and this resulted in the Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics, which was published in 1985.

This was a fairly modest work, and there was soon need for an expanded edition. This lead to the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, published in 1992. This was largely the work of Heidi Platt (now resuming the use of her maiden name Heidi Weber after the death of John Platt) and myself. The change in title reflected the fact that language teaching and applied linguistics were by then no longer considered synonymous. The second edition contained some 2000 terms.

When Longman approached me in 2000 with the idea of a third edition, Heidi was no longer available to contribute, but I was fortunate to obtain the collaboration of my former colleague (and long time friend) at the University of Hawaii, Richard Schmidt, who is a widely respected scholar in the field of applied linguistics. An outstanding young Ph.D. student from Korea, Youngkyu Kim agree to review terms from testing, research design and statistics, while Richard Schmidt and I reviewed the other areas. We identified some 800 additional terms we felt should be included in the third edition of the dictionary, and revised most of the existing entries. For the third edition we also decided not to include phonetic transcriptions or suggestions for further reading. The former no longer seemed necessary and the latter date too quickly.

The result is the third edition of the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, which was published in 2002. This is a book of some 600 pages containing definitions of nearly 3000 terms from such fields as teaching methodology, curriculum development, sociolinguistics, testing, research, syntax, and phonology.

We believe this will be a very useful resource of those doing courses in TEFL, TEDOL, applied linguistics, and introductory courses in general linguistics and related fields."

SOME SAMPLE DEFINITIONS FROM THE DICTIONARY

deskilling
The loss of skills which a person once had through lack of use. In teaching, deskilling refers to the removal of a teacher's responsibility and participation in certain important aspects of teaching, leaving the teacher to deal with lower-level aspects of instruction. Some educators argue that the over-dependence on textbooks deskills teachers, since textbooks do much of the thinking and planning that teachers themselves should be allowed to do.

dicto comp
A technique for practicing composition in language classes. A passage is read to a class, and then the students must write out what they understand and remember from the passage, keeping as closely to the original as possible but using their own words where necessary.

English as an international language
A term used to characterize the status of English as the world's major second language and the commonest language used for international business, trade, travel, communication etc. Like the term World Englishes, the notion of English as an International Language recognizes that different norms exist for the use of English around the world and that British, American, Australian or other mother-tongue varieties of English are not necessarily considered appropriate targets either for learning or for communication in countries where English is used for cross-cultural or cross-linguistic communication, e.g. for example, when a Brazilian and a Japanese businessperson use English to negotiate a business contract. The type of English used on such occasions need not necessarily be based on native speaker varieties of English but will vary according to the mother tongue of the people speaking it and the purposes for which it is being used.

English as a second language
also ESL
A basic term with several somewhat different definitions. In a loose sense, English is the second language of anyone who learns it after learning their FIRST LANGUAGE in infancy in the home. Using the term this way, no distinction is made between second language, third language, etc. However, English as a SECOND LANGUAGE is often contrasted with English as a English as a foreign language. Someone who learns English in a formal classroom setting, with limited or no opportunities for use outside the classroom, in a country in which English does not play an important role in internal communication (China, Japan, and Korea, for example), is said to be learning English as a foreign language. Someone who learns English in a setting in which the language is necessary for everyday life (for example, an immigrant learning English in the U.S.) or in a country in which English plays an important role in education, business, and government (for example in Singapore, the Philippines, India, and Nigeria) is learning English as a second language.

fluency, fluent
The features which give speech the qualities of being natural and normal, including native like use of PAUSING, rhythm, INTONATION, STRESS, rate of speaking, and use of interjections and interruptions. If speech disorders cause a breakdown in normal speech (e.g. as with APHASIA or stuttering), the resulting speech may be referred to as dysfluent, or as an example of dysfluency.

In second and foreign language teaching, fluency describes a level of proficiency in communication, which includes:

• a the ability to produce written and/or spoken language with ease
• b the ability to speak with a good but not necessarily perfect command of intonation, vocabulary, and grammar
• c the ability to communicate ideas effectively
• d the ability to produce continuous speech without causing comprehension difficulties or a breakdown of communication.

It is sometimes contrasted with accuracy, which refers to the ability to produce grammatically correct sentences but may not include the ability to speak or write fluently.

learnability hypothesis
The idea, attributed to Manfred Pienemann, that a second or foreign language learner's acquisition of linguistic structures depends on how complex these structures are from a psychological processing point of view, defined as the extent to which linguistic material must be re-ordered and re-arranged when mapping semantics and surface form. The psycholinguistic processing devices acquired at one stage are a necessary building block for the following stage. This implies a teachability hypothesis as well, since structures cannot be taught successfully if the learner has not learned to produce structures belonging to the previous stage.

learner autonomy
In language teaching, the principle that learners should be encouraged to assume a maximum amount of responsibility for what they learn and how they learn it. This will be reflected in approaches to needs analysis, content selection, and choice of teaching materials and learning methods.

limited English speaker
also LES
(in BILINGUAL EDUCATION or an ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE PROGRAM) A person who has some proficiency in English but not enough to enable him or her to take part fully and successfully in a class where English is the only MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION. Such a person is sometimes said to have limited English proficiency. However since these students actually speak two languages, the term "limited English speaker" has been criticized in recent years for focusing only on their linguistic weaknesses while ignoring their linguistic strengths. For this reason, in many places the term has been abandoned in favor of terms such as "ESL learner" or "bilingual student."

linguistic imperialism
The theory that languages may be seen as occupying a dominant or dominated role in a society. It is argued that English plays a dominant role internationally and plays a role in maintaining the economic and political dominance of some societies over others. Because of the role of English as the dominant international language, many other languages have been prevented from going through processes of development and expansion. The spread of English is viewed as imposing aspects of Anglo-Saxon Judaeo-Christian culture and causing a threat to the cultures and languages of non-English speaking countries.

listening comprehension
The process of understanding speech in a first or second language. The study of listening comprehension processes in second language learning focuses on the role of individual linguistic units (e.g. PHONEMES, WORDS, grammatical structures) as well as the role of the listener's expectations, the situation and context, background knowledge and the topic. It therefore includes both TOP DOWN PROCESSING and bottom up processing. While traditional approaches to language teaching tended to underemphasize the importance of teaching listening comprehension, more recent approaches emphasize the role of listening in building up language competence and suggest that more attention should be paid to teaching listening in the initial stages of second or foreign language learning. Listening comprehension activities typically address a number of listening functions, including recognition (focusing on some aspect of the code itself), orientation (ascertaining essential facts about the text, such as participants, the situation or context, the general topic, the emotional tone, and the genre), comprehension of main ideas, and understanding and recall of details.

memory
The mental capacity to store information, either for short or long periods. Two different types of memory are often distinguished:

• a. Short term memory refers to that part of the memory where information which is received is stored for short periods of time while it is being analyzed and interpreted. Working memory is a more contemporary term for short-term memory which conceptualizes memory not as a passive system for temporary storage is involved but an active system for temporarily storing and manipulating information needed in the execution of complex cognitive tasks (e.g., learning, reasoning, and comprehension). In the influential model of Baddeley, working memory consists of two storage systems, the articulatory loop for the storage of verbal information and the visuospatial sketchpad for the storage of visual information, plus a central executive, a very active system responsible for the selection, initiation, and termination of processing routines (e.g., encoding, storing, and retrieving).
• b. Long term memory is that part of the memory system where information is stored more permanently. Information in long term memory may not be stored in the same form in which it is received. For example, a listener may hear sentence A below, and be able to repeat it accurately immediately after hearing it. The listener uses short term memory to do this. On trying to remember the sentence a few days later the listener may produce sentence B, using Information in long term memory which is in a different form from the original message.
  A: The car the doctor parked by the side of the road was struck by a passing bus.
  B: The doctor's car was hit by a bus.

multiple intelligences
also MI
A theory of intelligence that characterizes human intelligence as having multiple dimensions that must be acknowledged and developed in education. Conceptions of intelligence that dominated earlier in the 20th Century, particularly through the influence of the Stanford-Binet IQ test, were based on the idea that intelligence is a single, unchanged, inborn capacity. Advocates of MI argue that there are other equally important intelligences, found in all people in different strengths and combinations. MI this belongs to the group of instructional philosophies that focus on the differences between learners and the need to recognize learner differences in teaching. The theory of MI is based on the work of the psychologist Gardner who posits 8 intelligences:

• 1. Linguistic: the ability to use language in special and creative ways, which is something lawyers, writers, editors and interpreters are strong in
• 2. Logical/mathematical: this involves rational thinking and is often found with doctors, engineers, programmers and scientists
• 3. Spatial: this is the ability to form mental models of the world and is something architects, decorators, sculptors and painters are good at
• 4. Musical: a good ear for music, as is strong in singers and composers
• 5. Bodily/kinesthetic: having a well coordinated body is something found in athletes and craftspersons
• 6. Interpersonal: this refers to the ability to be able to work well with people and is strong in salespeople, politicians and teachers
• 7. Intrapersonal: the ability to understand oneself and apply one's talent successfully, which leads to happy and well adjusted people in all areas of life.
• 8. Naturalist: refers to those who understand and organize the patterns of nature

The theory of multiple intelligences has been applied both in general education as well as in language teaching, where an attempt is made to provide learning activities that build on learners' inherent intelligences.

native speaker
A person who learns a language as a child and continues to use it fluently as a dominant language. Native speakers are said to use a language grammatically, fluently and appropriately, to identify with a community where it is spoken, and to have clear intuitions about what is considered grammatical or ungrammatical in the language. One of the goals of linguistics is to account for the intuitions the native speaker has about his/her language. Dictionaries, reference grammars and grammatical descriptions are usually based on the language use of the native speaker of a dominant or standard variety. In some contexts (the teaching of some languages in some countries) it is taken as a basic assumption that the goal of learning a second or foreign language is to approximate as closely as possible to the standards set by native speakers; in other teaching and learning contexts, this assumption is increasingly being questioned and native speakers no longer have the privileged status they used to have.

statistical significance
A term used when testing a STATISTICAL HYPOTHESIS, which refers to the likelihood that an obtained effect, such as a difference or correlation, could have occurred by chance alone (through SAMPLING ERROR). An observed significance level, or p-value, symbolized as p (for probability), is the probability of obtaining an observed effect as extreme as or more extreme than you observed if the NULL HYPOTHESIS were true. The p-value is compared to a predetermined significance level, or alpha (a), specified in advance before conducting a study. If the p-value is less than or equal to a, this means that either the observed effect is an extremely rare occurrence or the null hypothesis is wrong so that we reject the null hypothesis and the result is said to be statistically significant. If the p-value is greater than a, we fail to reject the null hypothesis and the result is said to be not statistically significant. The most common significance levels are p < 0.05 and p < 0.01, where the symbol < means "less than". If the difference between two means, for instance, is given as significant at the p < 0.05 or at the 0.05 level, this indicates that such a difference could be expected to occur by chance in only 5 out of every 100 times that a sample is randomly drawn from the population when the null hypothesis is true. A significance level of 0.01 means that the difference could be expected to occur by chance only 1 out of 100 times. Thus, the lower the probability of chance occurrence (p), the higher the significance level, and the greater the probability that the observed effect is a true one and not due to chance.

strategy training
also learner training
Training in the use of LEARNING STRATEGIES in order to improve a learner's effectiveness. A number of approaches to strategy training are used, including:

• Explicit or direct training: learners are given information about the value and purpose of particular strategies, taught how to use them, and how to monitor their own use of the strategies.
• Embedded strategy training: the strategies to be taught are not taught explicitly but are embedded in the regular content of an academic subject area, such as reading, maths or science.
• Combination strategy training: explicit strategy training is followed by embedded training.

subtitles
Also captioning
The practice of superimposing written text on film or video. From the perspective of a language learner, subtitled film or video may have the audio portion in the target language and the text in the native language (standard subtitles), the audio portion in the native language and the text in the foreign language (reversed subtitles), or both the audio and the video in the target language (closed-captions). Closed-captioning, also known as bi-modal input, was originally developed for the hearing impaired and required special equipment but is now a standard function on most televisions and video cassette recorders (VCRs). Digital video disks often provide all three options. There is some research evidence that all three types of captioning can be useful aids to language learning.

supervision
(in teacher education) The monitoring and evaluation of a student teacher's teaching performance by a supervisor. Current approaches to supervision differ with respect to whether the supervisor's primary role is seen to be as an evaluator of teaching performance or as a facilitator or consultant. When the former is the case, the supervisor seeks to point out the differences between actual teaching performance and ideal teaching behavior, guiding the student teacher's development and offering suggestions for improvement. When the supervisor acts more as a consultant or facilitator, the goal is to explore aspects of teaching that have been determined through negotiation, and to encourage teacher self development through reflection and selfobservation.

task
(in teaching) An activity which is designed to help achieve a particular learning goal. A number of dimensions of tasks influence their use in
language teaching. These include:

• goals - the kind of goals teachers and learners identify for a task
• procedures - the operations or procedures learners use to complete a task
• order - the location of a task within a sequence of other tasks
• pacing - the amount of time that is spent on a task
• product - the outcome or outcomes students produce, such as a set of questions, an essay, or a summary as the outcome of a reading task
• learning strategy - the kind of strategy a student uses when completing a task
• assessment - how success on the task will be determined
• participation - whether the task is completed individually, with a partner, or with a group of other learners
• resources - the materials and other resources used with a task
• language - the language learners use in completing a task (e.g. the mother tongue or English, or the particular vocabulary, structures or functions the task requires the learners to use).

The concept of task is central to many theories of classroom teaching and learning, and the school curriculum is sometimes described as a collection of tasks. From this viewpoint, school work is defined by a core of basic tasks that recur across different subjects in the curriculum. The teacher's choice of tasks determines learning goals, how learning is to take place, and how the results of learning will be demonstrated. In second language teaching, the use of a variety of different kinds of tasks is said to make teaching more communicative (see COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH) since it provides a purpose for a classroom activity which goes beyond the practice of language for its own sake.

task-based language teaching
Teaching approaches based on the use of communicative and interactive tasks as the central units for the planning and delivery of instruction. Such tasks are said to provide an effective basis for language learning since they involve:

• a. meaningful communication and interaction
• b. negotiation
• c. enable the learners to acquire grammar as a result of engaging in authentic language use

Task-based language teaching is an extension of the principles of Communicative Language Teaching and an attempt by its proponents to apply principles of second language learning to teaching.

teacher belief systems
In language teaching, ideas and theories that teachers hold about themselves, teaching, language, learning and their students. Teachers' beliefs are thought to be stable constructs derived from their experience, observations, training and other sources and serve as a source of reference when teacher encounter new ideas, sometimes impeding the acceptance of new ideas or practices. Beliefs also serve as the source of teachers' classroom practices. Beliefs form a system or network that may be difficult to change. In teacher education a focus on belief systems is considered important since teacher development involves both the development of skills and knowledge as well as the development or modification of belief systems.

theory
1. a statement of a general principle or set of propositions, based upon reasoned argument and supported by evidence, that is intended to explain a particular fact, event, or phenomenon. One view of the difference between a theory and a HYPOTHESIS is that a theory is more strongly supported by evidence than a hypothesis. Another view is that the distinction is related to breadth of coverage, a theory being broader than a hypothesis.
2. the part of a science or art that deals with general principles and methods as opposed to practice: A set of rules or principles of the study of a subject.