Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition

appropriacy The fitting of an utterance into the development of a
discourse as a whole, so as to achieve a communicative purpose.
Usually contrasted with formal ‘correctness’, where the aim is to
produce correct sentences.
approximative systems A learner’s transitional knowledge at any point
moving towards his competence in the target language; cf.
interlanguage.
ARELS Association of Recognised English Language Schools; i.e.
recognised by the Department of Education and Science. Address: 125
High Holborn, London WC1.
aspect With tense and mood, one of the grammatical categories of the
verb. Refers to the way in which the action of the verb is experienced or
regarded, mainly used to distinguish forms like ‘I break’ from forms
like ‘I am breaking’ and ‘I have broken’.
audio-lingual A development of the mimicry-memorisation method. See
mim-mem. An approach to teaching where oral imitation,
memorisation and drilling precede spontaneous speech, extensively
using recorded dialogues and drills. Derived from structuralism and
now much less common than in the 1950s and ’60s.
audio-visual As for audio-lingual but with the added extensive use of
visual materials. Audio-visual aids include tape recorder, OHP, films
and slides. Classic examples of audio-visual programmes have been
developed by CREDIF (q.v.).
authentic materials Spoken or written materials not specially written for
classroom use but taken from the media or real life.
autonomous learning Learning in which the learner becomes independent
of the teacher, working with his own momentum.
AVA Audio-visual aids.
BAAL British Association for Applied Linguistics. Address: c/o CILT, 20
Carlton House Terrace, London SW1.
behaviourism A psychological theory emphasising the importance, in
studying human behaviour in general and language in particular, of
verifiable facts from measurable data. Much in vogue in the 1940s, ’50s
and ’60s. Cf. mentalism; S-R.
bilingual education/schooling This is where two languages are used in the
school and some, at least, of the content teaching, e.g. Mathematics,
Geography, is in the less familiar one.
bilingualism Having command of two languages. Until recently the impli-
cation was that both languages were spoken with equal proficiency.

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Glossary
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black English A variety of English associated with black communities in
the USA with its own characteristic phonology, grammar and lexis.
body language The largely unconscious communication between people
by non-verbal means, such as posture and gesture. See para-language;
kinesics; proxemics.
CAL Centre for Applied Linguistics.
Address: 1717 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington DC 20036, USA.
cardinal vowels A system of eight vowel sounds which does not describe
any particular language; cardinal in that it specifies fixed points which
serve as a standard of comparison within a language and between
different languages.
case grammar A generative theory of grammar on a semantic rather than
syntactic base, proposed by Fillmore in the late 1960s. The name comes
from the use of ‘deep’ semantic cases such as agentive, instrumental,
locative, etc. See deep structure,
chaining In drilling, the linking of one response to the next round the class.
‘Back-chaining’ refers to the pronunciation drill which works back
through the sentence, e.g.:
Teacher: Tomorrow
Class: Tomorrow
Teacher: Go there tomorrow
Class: Go there tomorrow
Teacher: He’d go there tomorrow
Class: He’d go there tomorrow