Content-based ESL

A model of language education that integrates language and content instruction in the second language classroom; a second language learning approach where second language teachers use instructional materials, learning tasks, and classroom techniques from academic content areas as the vehicle for developing second language, content, cognitive and study skills.

Context

1. The situation in which language is used or presented, e.g. a story about a holiday experience could be used as the context to present and practise past tenses. Photographs can help to provide a context for a magazine article. 2. The words or phrases before or after a word in discourse which help someone to understand that word. See deduce meaning from context.

Correction / Echo correction

When learners make a mistake, the teacher repeats the mistake with rising intonation encouraging learners to correct themselves, e.g. Learner: He don’t like it. Teacher: Don’t? Learner: He doesn’t like it. Finger correction is a way of drawing attention to where a learner has made a mistake. The teacher counts out the words a learner has said on her fingers. The fingers represent words and the teacher can show clearly in which word (finger) the mistake was made. A teacher may use her fingers to show that a mistake has been made with word or sentence stress, word order, grammar, pronunciation of sounds etc. Self-correction - When learners correct language mistakes they have made, perhaps with some help from the teacher. See ignore (errors); feedback.

Correction code

A series of symbols a teacher may use to mark learners’ writing so that they can correct mistakes by themselves, e.g. P = punctuation mistake, T = tense mistake.

Coursebook

A textbook which provides the core materials for a course. It aims to provide as much as possible 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. See book.

Criterion-referenced test

A test that measures how well a student has learned a specific body of knowledge and skills. The goal is typically to have every student attain a passing mark, not to compare students to each other. See norm-referenced assessment.