An alternative dictionary of ELT Part 16
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 - Getting students to hypnotize each other to help with vocabulary learning
communicative weight- the difficulty of where to look when talking to the obese
feminist pedagogy- lesbian teachers
heteroglossia- shiny lipstick for straight guys
lexical priming - Getting round in an American football type huddle before learning vocabulary to give each other encouragement (slapping of arses optional)
psychotypology- Analysing personality from people’s position over the keyboard
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
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
syntax- A swear box for grammar mistakes
target language- A specialization of English for Sporting Purposes
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
If you can stand any more, I have updated the page with the rest of the dictionary on it to include all the ones so far, and have added more links to the real meanings so you can actually occasionally learn something from this blog…
Tags: ELT jargon, Humour, Lists, Youtube