The Alternative English Teaching and Linguistics Jargon Dictionary
l Accuracy – Not making mistakes in a foreign language. A student who is obsessed about having every mistake corrected, often Swiss, is called an Accurist
l Acquisition facilitator- A factor such as needing a good TOEIC for a promotion that will make it easier for a language school to separate a student and his or her money
l Adjacency pairs- the strange connection between students being sat beside each other in the first lesson and forming couples
l Advanced learner- a proficient user of a foreign language, usually one who can correct their teacher once or twice a term and still thinks it is clever to do so. A learner who could do so even more often but has learnt that they are actually there to learn something and move up to the next level is defined as proficiency level.
l Affix- In a rare but not unique example of linguistic jargon being named after a kids’ toy, affixes are named after the plastic model brand Airfix. This is due to sticking affixes onto the front of words (prefixes, mis- etc.) or end of words (suffixes, -ify etc.) being like a nerdy teenager sticks decals onto a badly painted model of a WWII Spitfire fighter plane.
l Affordances- Student decisions on whether a teacher with an MA in Sociolinguistics is worth the extra cash or not
l Agency- In linguistics, having agency means having control over your own language learning. How ironic then that agency is also the name for the companies that sell English courses in the UK etc. abroad by lying through their teeth about likely progress, extra charges, friendliness of host families etc. etc.
l ALR- ape language research-looking into whether it is possible to teach English to West Ham or Birmingham City fans
l ALT (Alien Language Teacher)- a native speaking assistant teacher who helps give lessons in Junior High schools etc. Not to be confused with ALF (Alien Language Friend)- someone who gives informal English conversation lessons in cafes.
l Androgogy- teaching like a girly man
l Anthropological linguists- Studying the feuds and other interactions of linguists as if they were a Papua New Guinea tribe
l Applied Linguistics – A euphemism, from the Latin for “practical use of your tongue”
l Approximants – Sounds that are as close as your students are ever going to get to the real pronunciation of English, e.g. something somewhere between an /r/, /l/ and /w/ but usually identifiable as an attempt at one of these sounds
l Aptitude – your inbuilt ‘talent’ for learning languages. Not to be confused with ‘apitude’, which is your ability to make a realistic bee -like buzzing noise with your mouth.
l ARC- (Authentic, Restricted, Clarification). This more flexible variation on PPP is thought by the cabalist school of English teaching to be the original language teaching method passed on by Noah after the great flood, PPP* being a later corrupted version.
l ARELS – Association of Reasonably good English Language Schools
l Articulators – The special parts of the mouth, nose and throat (e.g. larynx, pharynx, hard palate, alveolar ridge) that are only used when we pronounce articles in English.
l Assimilation – A form of connected speech where a sound in a word is modified by its neighbours, e.g. buying a computer operated sprinkler because everyone else has one
l Attention – the stance with ramrod straight back and eyes directly forward that helps language learners concentrate on the language point being taught and not be distracted by other things. Experienced teachers find that shouting “Attention!” during the important part of a grammar explanation and having their students jump up and line up helps retention.
l Audiolingual method – Literally, the ’sound tongue’ method. Based on behaviourist experiments such as the famously salivating Pavlov’s dog, students would be made to control the panel of a language lab booth using only their tongue in order to help them physically memorize the dialogues on the tape. This method died out when it was found that student errors are in fact contagious, and were being picked up by future students licking the same booth controls (this is also why Japanese students wear face masks on days when they are making many language errors, so as not to pass them on).
l BAAL – The false god of Applied Linguistics
l Back channeling – TEFL euphemism for shirt lifting
l Back-reference – The technical term for bitching about someone when they are not there
l Base form – This rather negative expression for the form ‘be’, ‘do’, ‘have’ etc. comes from a medieval superstition that this verb form was somehow dirty and brought bad luck. It has now been replaced by the more PC expression ‘infinitive with a different relationship to to’.
l 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, or the idea that skills such as speaking another language could be taught in the same way as disciplining a child or teaching a dog how to fetch. It became less popular after the last generation of makers of craft dunce hats in Cornwall died out, and using dog leads and collars in the language classroom is now only a very specialist, if exclusive, market.
l BIELT – The British Institute of English Language Teaching, set up with the goals of establishing a framework of professional qualifications and a professional code of practice. It failed.
l Bilabial – Used to describe someone who will kiss people of either gender, although they’ll only go further with one
l Bilingualism – having two tongues. This is still considered a negative thing in countries such as the USA, but most of us can see the obvious advantages…
l Blended learning – The idea that in order for the attention deficit disorder young people of today to be able to learn a language, everything has to reduced to an easily-digested, computer-generated, un-intellectually-stimulating mush; like making baby food in a blender.
l Bottom-up processing – As an extension on NLP theories of where people look when they are thinking and what that means about their preferred learning style, researchers have found that they direction in which you scan the face and body of good looking people of the other sex is related to how you best process the information in a text. For example, people who start looking at the arse and work their way up (bottom-up processors) tend to do well at noticing the small details of a text but less well in noticing how the information is arranged into paragraphs etc.
l Boundary markers – use of textbooks to stake out territory on a desk
l British National Corpus – the official body responsible for the death of UK society
l BULATS – language testing euphemism for “bollocks”
l CALL (Computer assisted language learning- pronounced /kal/) – An intermediate step on the way to HAL.
l Caretaker talk- “pesky kids”, “ragamuffins”, “no good scoundrels” etc
l CDA – Critical Discourse Analysis – using discourse analysis to slag people off
l Checking moves – watching everyone else dance for half an hour or so before you decide whether you will completely embarrass yourself by joining in
l Chomsky hierarchy (the) – Noam’s at the top, and whoever agrees with him most is in 2nd place
l Chunks – Strings of language that are not digested properly and come out whole when you’ve had too many beers during a language exchange party.
l Classroom pigeon (also “classroom pidgin”) – The kind of lucky classroom distractions that teachers who have started an explanation of a language point they don’t know end up hoping will come and save them
l Clause – Clauses are the largest grammatical unit smaller than a whole sentence. Not to be confused with ‘Klaus’, who is the man with the largest waistline ever to attempt to wear leather shorts.
l CLL- (community language learning- pronounced /cululu/). Based on counselling therapy, students sit in a circle and are helped by the teacher to cooperatively produce a dialogue in English on a tape about their relationship with the local catholic priest.
l Cloze – The practice of making random spelling changes to make a word seem technical or impressive
l CLT – Communicative Language Teaching- The idea that by communicating with your students you can avoid having to teach them
l CMC (Computer-mediated communication) – When everything the teacher says goes through the students’ electronic dictionaries before it is accepted as true
l Cognitive code learning theory – The idea that writing textbooks with everything written in code, such as converting all the letters to numbers, was the best way of stimulating students’ logical-mathematical learning style
l Coherence – The part of a teacher’s classroom language that gets worse as their grading and speaking speed get better
l Cohesion – The tendency of students to get attached to teachers and complain if the teacher changes, even when they know they are learning nothing in his or her classes
l Co-hyponym – Getting students to hypnotize each other to help with vocabulary learning
l Communicative weight- the difficulty of where to look when talking to the obese
l Community Language Learning – The theory that students getting together at break time to bitch about British food and their teacher is the best way of drawing them together and increasing their motivation to learn
l Complexity – How much of a hang up students have about using things like conjunctions and pronouns
l Compound sentence – Being forced to spend 5 years teaching in Saudi Arabia in order to afford to retire
l Compounding – A way of forming words by combining two or more nouns or adjectives. Not to be confused with “pounding“, which is the technical term for when a student makes endless identical failed efforts at pronouncing a word until the teacher screams at them to stop
l Comprehensible input – Teachers making their classroom language understandable by only using terms from the BASIC programming language
l Concord – Another name for agreement, such as agreeing to add an -e onto the end of the supersonic plane name just to make the French shut up for a minute
l Connected speech – When the student who always starts long monologues about random topics manages, by some fluke, to say something perfectly connected to what you want to do in the next part of the lesson
l Connotation – The good, bad, humourous, old-fashioned etc. associations of words and expressions. The word “connotation” is derived from the French word “con”, which is a nice way of saying “foolish” (try it next time you are buying a train ticket in Paris to get rid of the frosty reception you usually get)
l Consciousness-raising – Using obscure grammar questions as a path to enlightenment, similar to the Zen Buddhist use of koan such as “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
l Content words – vocabulary used by happy people
l Content-based approaches- Doing anything that keeps your students happy
l Contrastive analysis – trying to work out what the picture on a bad photocopy is when asked to talk about it in class
l Conversational repairs – the subconscious belief that standing round and talking about fixing something is enough
l Co-ordinate clauses – When two or more clauses of equal rank are linked they are co-ordinate clauses. As well as learning to spot these, students will need the classroom language of talking about them, e.g. “Do you think this clause looks okay with this one?” “It’s a bit last year, why don’t you try it together with this?” “Does my main clause look big with this?” “Oh no, darling, just throw in this conjunction and it is sooooo you”
l Core lexicon – a capsule hidden deep in the earth containing key vocabulary items, to be dug up when (someday soon) the media, politicians and young people become entirely incapable of producing a sentence with meaning
l Corpora – Dead bodies of language
l Corpus linguistics – Cutting up dead bodies to learn about language
l Corrective feedback – Using the squealing sound of an electric guitar brought close to an amplifier as a way of memorably showing students they have made a mistake
l Critical period – when you’ve taught students enough language for them to be able to complain about not learning more
l Deductive grammar teaching – Using “Elementary My Dear Watson” from Communication Games with every class you possibly can
l Deep structure – a classroom grammatical explanation that makes students reconsider the meaning of life
l Deep-end strategy – Saying something really philosophical in the last few seconds of each lesson
l Deterministic grammar rules – ones you are destined never to understand
l Direct Method – Use a special marking code for written work including symbols like “wtf?”, “rotfl” and “bs”, or a system of language learning aimed at making Japanese students say what they really mean
l Discourse markers – waving board pens around to emphasize your point
l Discovery approach (the) – Finding out something your students like talking about by chance and then milking it as much as you can
l Discrete infinity – a black hole that attends a house party without almost anyone noticing
l Disscourse analysis – Analyzing the language students use to slag off their teacher
l Ditransitive – verbs often used with the object “Lady Di”
l DoS – Director of Studies. Often confused with the similar word “dosser”
l Drilling – Popular with Asian students who get stressed with fluency activities, this consists of making a hole in the skull to relieve the pressure
l Dummy operator – An English teacher to very young learners
l EACRP – English for Avoiding Cultural Restrictions Purposes- like Japanese women who can only debate in English because the feminine forms of their own language are so weak it is impossible to compete with men
l EAP – English for Academic Purposes- learning English to seem intellectual
l EAWP – English for Avoiding Work Purposes- coming to class might be the only chance they have for a one hour lunch break
l EBP – English for Babysitting Purposes- taking young kids to English classes so you can go shopping
l EBP – English for Budgetary Purposes- for companies where the only way to give staff training on the cheap is to choose English lessons rather than the IT training they really need
l ECP – English for Chaperone Purposes- for Turkish university students who are only allowed to stay out past the curfew of their halls and meet people of the other sex by signing on for English classes
l EEP – English for Extramarital Purposes
l EFluant – Teachers who have been in the business for more than 10 years without getting a decent job
l EGSP – English for Gaijin Stalking Purposes/English for Giri Stalking Purposes- this one works for women whose list of needs in a relationship are topped by “blond hair” in both Spain and Japan
l Eikaiwa – The Japanese for “English conversation”. This is the mostly frequently used term for the private language school industry as it includes the two crucial factors of “English” (meaning the ability of teachers to look like they a stereotypical Englishman) and “conversation” (meaning the ability to sustain a 45 min conversation with someone who is too shy to speak)
l EKTRP – English for Killing Time after Retirement Purposes
l ELTA – English language teaching assistants- The students you always turn to first when you are trying to elicit something
l ENP – English for Nationalistic Purposes- such as explaining to foreigners why they should never criticise your country
l EOP – English for Occupational Purposes- Studying the language to keep yourself occupied, e.g. after retirement
l Ergative – speech filled with ums and ers
l Error correction – In the same way as it is possible to win an argument with your partner or correct someone’s wrong impression of you just by telling them you are wrong, in TEFL it is possible to stop students making grammar mistakes by pointing out their errors
l ESAP – English for Smart Arse Purposes- such as showing off the latest useless idiom they have learnt
l ETP – English for Therapeutic Purposes- because your GABA teacher is the only person who will listen to your problems
l ETS – The American organisation behind TOEFL and TOEIC. Many researchers are now convinced that these tests were set up in order to hold back the worldwide tendency to learn English that is useful for communication, therefore helping the USA retain its competitive edge
l Evolutionary linguistics – the idea that humans will evolve to the point where linguists are capable of producing truly scientific theories
l Explicit grammar teaching – The use of example sentences on the theme of sex to increase learner motivation and language retention
l Explicit knowledge – Knowing swear words and sexual language
l Exposure – One of the most common reasons for the dismissal of TEFL teachers
l Extended standard theory (the) – a 12 inch remix of a Noam Chomsky lecture by Tall Paul
l Facilitation – Rather than leading the language learning process, teachers aid the students by standing there doing nothing and spouting stuff like “Don’t ask me, you are empowered to control your own learning”.
l Feedback – Based on the similarity with playing an electric guitar, in ELT this term is used to express the teacher’s ability to produce discord and put people on edge with the use of error correction
l Feminist pedagogy – lesbian teachers
l FFI – Form focused instruction- designing your lessons just to get good marks on the categories you know are on the student evaluation and lesson observation forms
l Field of Discourse (the) – the Glastonbury farm where the famous 1969 Discourse Analysis Free Festival was held
l Fillers – breakfast foods suitable for teachers who will be photocopying through their lunch break
l FL- foreign language. Pronounced “fleur”, with as outrageous a French accent as you can manage
l Flaps – Chairs with flaps rather than tables started as a Japanese S&M love hotel accessory, but has now become a standard part of the average language school. Influences that led to this change of purpose include: (a) Suggestopedia teachers patenting the use of comfortable chairs and, (b) Early Humanistic Language Teachers reading in a furniture catalogue that they “help you open up and show your vulnerabilities” and taking its meaning to be metaphorical
l Focus on form – The problem of teachers writing down all the things students tell them during a level check interview and only remembering to notice the language they use during the last few seconds. Often contrasted with focus on forms*
l Focus on forms – A teacher being distracted by the student’s figure during a level check interview and only remembering to notice the language they use in the last few seconds. Often contrasted with Focus on Form*
l Fossilization – The immobile face and blank stare that teachers who have been in the business too long develop
l FOXP2 – phrases kids have learnt from the second season of the Simpsons
l Framing move – undermining the students’ faith in the textbook so you can later blame everything on it rather than you
l Fricatives – polite swear words like “fricking”
l Gap filling – The favourite physical threat of drunk TEFL teachers
l General Service List – General (later Field Marshall) Service’s blacklist of left-leaning linguists
l Grammatical terminology – “all these like little name things” (definition by an English Language Teaching Assistant in Hong Kong, quoted in Teacher Language Awareness pg 157)
l Grice’s four Maxims – his theory of what makes a good lad magazine- quantity (of breasts), quality (ditto), relations (feeling you have really got to know said breasts), and (finding yet another) manner (in which to portray them)
l Headwords – words you can’t get out of your brain, like an annoyingly catchy tune
l Hedging – a variation on cottaging
l Heteroglossia – shiny lipstick for straight guys
l Holistic language teaching – The idea that the lesson and students’ heads are empty spaces that need to be filled somehow
l Homesign – the non-verbal signals that mean you are about to be invited back to her place
l Hybrid language learning – When strong students help weaker ones not just by explaining grammar but by contributing some of their genes with the use of modern classroom cloning technology
l I + 1- As illustrated by the career of Krashen, the fact that you only need to keep banging on about one idea (i + 1) to become famous in linguistics
l IH – International House, the chain of schools formerly known by the less successful name of “Nationalism House”
l Immersion language learning – A way of increasing student motivation to speak. See also waterboarding*
l Implicit knowledge of language – Students hiding the fact that they’ve known that grammar since primary school in order not to seem like a swot or to save the teacher embarrassment
l Inductive approach (the) – Giving students who pause forever before speaking an epidural injection to force delivery
l Inflections – Passed on in the spit of Spanish people trying to pronounce /h/
l Inflexion – warm up exercises for grammarians
l Initiation-response-follow-up- The classic method for getting a date with a student
l Innateness hypothesis – The theory that studying English is inherently boring, so why bother with games. See also “Inaneness hypothesis”*
l Input enhancement – Using a gold plated jack on the classroom tape recorder
l Input – The theory that the language we expose students to should be as carefully chosen as when programming a computer or doing data input, although most experts agree that the metaphor works best if we picture the teacher trying to type with a couple of sledge hammers
l Insertion sequences – the steps before getting laid
l Intercambio de Lenguas – Spanish for “exchanging tongues”, often involving conversation exchange and its more literal translation
l Interface – Also known as “innerface”, the internal cringing of a student who is seemingly happily taking part in a humanistic language teaching* game
l Interlocutor – chained between two people (an S&M thing)
l Juncture – The age of the rule of the Junker class in Germany, who were famous for pausing between each and every word to give them all strong Germanic emphasis
l KAL- Knowledge “About Language”- The absolute minimum you need in order to pass the DELTA, usually gained through only reading the Scott Thornbury book with that title
l Language acquisition device – Language school slang for a credit card
l Language-maven – (v) the past participle of “language mive”
l Learner awareness – Suddenly remembering that you are the teacher and they are the students, despite the fact that due to all your eliciting the students do all the talking and explain all the grammar to each other
l Learner independence – The political philosophy of the short-lived People’s Republic of Oxford Street, set up after the Oxford House revolution of 2001. Slogans of the movement included “A decent CD player for every classroom and a teacher’s book for every student!” and “Headway is the opiate of the masses”
l Lexical density – showing you are thick by your choice of words
l Lexical pattern – wallpaper and lampshades printed with words, available from the COBUILD catalogue
l Lexical priming – Getting round in an American football type huddle before learning vocabulary to give each other encouragement (slapping of arses optional)
l Lexicogrammar – A deadly crossbreed created by the mad geneticist character in the movie “Prepositions from Outer Space”
l Lexis – The singular of Lexus
l Liaison – When an extra sound between a final vowel and the first sound of the next word pass notes back and forward until they get together for some really hot connected speech*
l Linguistics – Literally, ‘the science of the tongue’. This definition is only to be used when someone you are chatting up asks you what you do if you are both very very drunk. Ditto for applied linguistics*.
l McGurk effect (the) – the linguistic name for the retching sound people make they first time they try to finish a Supersized MacDonald’s meal
l Meaning-focused tasks – usually contrasted with “meaningless-focused tasks”
l Mentalist – People who follow mentalism, mainly young language teachers who use illegal substances at all night ‘Chomskian raves’
l Metacognitive – A common misspelling of “megacognitive”, the ability to realize that you’ve just thought of something pretty damn cool
l Mim-mem method (the) – replacing language practice with transcendental meditation
l Minimum adequate speech vocabulary – the words “whatever!”, “I”, “was”, “like”, “yer” and “right!”
l Mode of discourse – fashion for discourse analysts
l MOI – Medium of instruction- A teacher who has developed the supernatural powers necessary to work out what a low level or shy student is trying to say.
l Monitor Model – Krashen’s theory that setting his minions loose to defend his ideas on TEFL forums like a bunch of classroom monitors doing the teacher’s dirty work was the best way to still get mileage out of his few ideas
l Native-speaker fallacy (the) – The tendency of native speakers to make up reasons for why student errors are wrong, when actually all they know is that it doesn’t sound right
l Natural Approach – working your way towards the grammar point of the day without your grammar-hating teenage students realizing it
l Non-finite clause – a non-finite clause is one that contains a non-finite verb, i.e. a verb that is not marked for tense and person such as an infinitive. Not to be confused with a infinite clause, which is what French students produce when trying to do IELTS or CAE writing.
l Non-verbal communication – sentences by students who refuse to use am/is/are
l Non-voiced – Negative feedback to using games in class that doesn’t come out until the end of course feedback because they always seem to be having fun
l Notional syllabus – The vague idea that you should plan and do things in order
l Noun declension – The release of tension when you decide to give learning the different cases in German, Greek etc.
l Old High German – as spoken by aging hippies in Hamburg
l Opening move – students who are wondering about the point of the lesson reaching for their textbooks
l Pairwork – Getting students to work together. The expression “pairwork” is used to illustrate that double (”pair”) the effort (”work”) is needed by the teacher (to explain what he wants the students to do) and students (to understand what the hell is going on) as compared with just doing it as a whole class
l Paralinguistic – speaking like a paratrooper
l Paralinguistic indicators of involvement – students licking their lips
l Peer observations – When your DoS* tries to see what you are up to from outside your classroom without being seen by you
l Placeholder words – “Keep my seat till I get back, can you?”
l Plosive sounds – The sounds students make just before they explode, e.g. the first four sounds in “bu bu bu bu..but I DID DO MY HOMEWORK!!”
l P-marker – Noam Chomsky’s rapper name, used when he hangs out with his posse
l Poverty of stimulus – Chomsky’s description of trying to teach with the textbook Language to Go
l Prefix and suffix- Affixes* that go on the front (sub-, re- etc.) and back (-able, -ly etc.) of words, named after Asterix characters that always wandered into battle at the front of the phalanx not knowing how much trouble they were getting into (Prefix) or cowered at the back until Obelix found them (Suffix).
l Pre-linguistic – not yet knowing that you’ll have to take an MA to get a decent TEFL job
l Prepositional complement – flattering your good looking students without looking too unprofessional by using unfinished sentences finishing with prepositions, “You are very dressed up tonight, I’d don’t suppose you’d like to…” or “My dream is to enter a club on the arm of a beautiful woman, someone like…”
l Product-oriented talk – chatting about brands
l Psychotypology- Analysing personality from people’s position over the keyboard
l Reeferents – stoners
l Reflective teacher – one who is taking mirroring of body language too far
l Relevance theory – the idea that TEFL books can only have relevance to your lessons or be based on theory, not both
l Revised extended standard theory (the) – the idea that ELT publishers can best serve their customers by releasing a New Headway New Edition with lots of expensive extras that will all have to be thrown away in two years when Brand Spanking New Headway Shiny Edition comes out
l Scaffolding – Interactional support from the teacher during a speaking activity. Teachers who specialize in this kind of instruction are called “scaffolders”, because real scaffolders are such well mannered, well dressed and well educated model employees
l Schema – The back stabbing ADoS who will eventually fight their way up to School Manager
l School Principal – In a school where the DoS* only has responsibility for academic matters, “School Principal” is often used as the title of the school’s business manager. Please note from the spelling of “principal” that the duties of this job should not be confused with “school manager with principles”, an outdated concept that died out in the early 90s
l Sensei – This Japanese word was originally only used for martial arts teachers such as the one in the movie Karate Kid, but was ironically extended to include Eikaiwa* teachers in order to illustrate (a) Japanese students ability to unquestioningly do years of seemingly pointless “wax on/wax off” type exercises (b) that Japanese students think that the chances of communicating successfully in English is about the same of kicking someone in the face when you are supporting yourself on your only uninjured leg
l Silent period – Krashen suggested that students, especially East Asians, should be given a silent period of 5 or 10 minutes to respond to each question
l Silent Way (The) – A largely unsuccessful attempt to teach a language by spending the whole lesson standing at the front of the class with your arms crossed staring angrily at the students like your school teacher when he’d given up on yelling as a way of making the class shut up. As with its original inspiration, the only things a Silent Way teacher was allowed to say were “I can wait all day”, “It’s not my time you’re wasting, it’s your own” and “Whenever you’re ready, gentlemen”. Other even less successful attempts to turn school teacher disciplinary tricks into entire language learning methodologies include the Hysterical Hissy Fit Way, the Throwing the Board Eraser Way and the Throat-clearing Way, or – A method originating with Gattegno and widely adopted in Asia in which the teacher keeps nattering on to cover the uncomfortable silence left by the students’ incomprehension of the game and unwillingness to speak
l SLA – Second Language Acquisition- The theory that you are guaranteed to learn a language if you just spend enough money on it
l Sociolinguist – Abbreviation of “sociopathological linguist”, responsible for the worst academic feuds
l Speech act theory – the idea that talking about it is better than doing anything
l Stance – the way people show their personal attitude to what they are hearing or reading. As the word originally comes from how people stand, in linguistics stance language is divided into categories based on body language, e.g. ‘hands on hip stance language’ and ‘I’m a little tea pot stance language’.
l STT – Stupid Talking Time- How long you should let a student talk after you realize they’ve got completely the wrong idea of what you are trying to elicit or the topic of conversation.
l Suggestopedia – This method of putting language learners into a hypnotic state through comfortable chairs and relaxing music was discredited in the late eighties when the teacher scripts were discovered to consist mainly of repeated phrases like “You will not get stressed about learning nothing” and “You can increase your TOEIC score by buying your teacher a drink”
l Surface structure – skimming over a grammatical explanation in class, moving onto the speaking exercise quickly before the students spot the exceptions
l Sylvian fissure – a long groove in each hemisphere of the cortex that is needed for normally acquired language and to realise that the 80s band Japan and their lead singer are crap
l Syntactic nut – someone whose enthusiasm for Chomsky has driven them insane
l Syntax – A swear box for grammar mistakes
l Target language- A specialization of English for Sporting Purposes
l TBLT – Task Based Lettuce and Tomato The “strong form of TBLT” includes English mustard, while the “weak form of TBLT” only has mayonnaise
l Teachability hypothesis – Pienemann’s theory that you need to soften a student up with humiliation for a while in order to make them malleable enough for instruction
l Teacher as facilitator – seeing the role of an educator as providing oversimplifications and endless meaningless encouraging noises
l TEI – Teacher Effectiveness Index- Often confused with TIE (Teacher Index Effectiveness), which is a number to represent a teacher’s ability to put book in the teachers’ room back in order.
l Tenor of Discourse (the) – the first and only discourse analysis opera
l Threshold Level – The level at which students can join the conversation with the teacher at the pub after lessons, usually indicated by the fact that they are part of the circle rather than looking over other people’s shoulders
l TLA – In his book “Teacher Language Awareness”, Stephen Andrews controversially claims that “in order to do their jobs well, teacher must be aware that there are languages”(pg.1729), to which the famous repost on the Humanizing Language Teaching website was “Hey Stevie man, chill out! Fascist!”
l TOEFL – Test of English with Fluency Lacking – A test of English in which you can get full marks without speaking one word. Originally developed only for people who have physical problems with their voice box, eventually having been through an East Asian education system was accepted as a disability and it soon became one of the leading tests in Japan, China and Korea
l TPR – Total Physical Response- The reaction from students to mention of a test or extra homework
l TPRA (Total Physical Response for Adults) – using activities like the song “YMCA” with actions with classes such as Business English. This ultimate proof of English teaching technique is often used near the end of a TEFL career.
l Transformation – the evangelical zeal that comes over some people when they convert to Chomskianism
l TTT – Teacher Talking Time. According to modern SLA* theories, the amount of TTT should be reduced, preferably at the same rate as TEFL wages are going down. This is so that the amount of effort you put in per pound remains stable.
l Universal Grammar – formerly “Miss Universal Grammar”
l Vague language – a common misspelling of “Vogue Language”
l Vague tags – unhelpful things to hang on your luggage, such as “Property of John”
l Vernacular grammar – as spoken by your Uncle Vern
l Vocabulary item – a must-have piece of vocab
l Vocal tract position – a less stubborn version of a “vocal intractable position”
l Vocatives – the functions on a karaoke machine
l Vowels – Sounds that are made without any significant obstruction or constriction. The word is derived by shortening the phrase “v(ery loose b)owels”
l Vygotskyan sociocultural theory of learning – The idea that if you tell students your classes are “Vygotskyan” and manage to pronounce and spell it right, they will trust everything you do from then, even if you and they have no idea what it means
l Warmer – An activity that fulfills the role of classroom heating, such as star jumps, group hugs or burning vocabulary lists they have learnt
l Washback effect – The build up of spit in the mouth by Spanish speaking students trying to pronounce /h/ properly
l Weak interface position – A Japanese handshake, or the idea that pointing out how much contempt it gets could result in them learning a decent grip
l Word families – households in which all members are pedants
l Word Frequency Counts – the aristocrats of corpus linguistics
l Zero article – This is the ‘invisible’ article used instead of ‘a’/’an’ or ‘the’ when you are referring to something general using a plural or uncountable noun, e.g. “- apples grow on trees”. Native speakers use a tiny, almost unnoticeable hiccupping movement of the diaphragm to mark the zero article. You can develop this skill in students by having them cough or hiccup loudly when they use a zero article and then gradually reduce the noise as they go up in language level.
l ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) – The short period of time during which it is acceptable to ask a student out on a date