Glossary of Language Teaching Terms and Ideas

I recently updated my book Teach and Learn: Reflections on Communicative Language Teaching  and posted it on Kindle. To take a look, please click here. 

It's also available as an inexpensive paperback.

Here is the glossary from the original.


• Accuracy: Producing language with few errors.
• Achievement test: A test to measure what students have learned or achieved from a program of study; should be part of every language program and be specific to the goals and objectives of a specific language course. These tests must be flexible to respond to the particular goals and needs of the students in a language program.
• Activate: The phase in a lesson where students have the opportunity to practice language forms. See “controlled practice”, “guided practice”, and “free practice”.
• Active listening: A technique whereby the listener repeats (often in other words) what the speaker has said to demonstrate his or her understanding. Active listening is an especially useful alternative to directly correcting a student error.
• Active vocabulary: Vocabulary that students actually use in speaking and writing.
• Active: Related to student engagement and participation. For example, listening is perceived to be a passive skill, but is actually active because it involves students in decoding meaning.
• Alphabet: A complete standardized set of letters – basic written symbols – each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. English uses the Roman or Latin alphabet, which consists of vowels and consonants.
o Vowel: A sound in spoken language characterized by an open configuration of the voice tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure above the vocal chords. The Roman vowels include the letters “a”, “e”, “i”, “o”, “u” and sometimes “y”. In all languages, vowels form the nucleus of a syllable. A vowel also completes a syllable.
o Semivowel: A sound that is much like the vowel, but is not the key (nuclear) sound in a syllable. Examples: the opening sounds in the words “yet” and “wet”.

o Consonant: An alphabetic character which represents a sound created by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract.
Consonants form the onset or end of a syllable, or both.
• Aptitude: The rate at which a student can learn a language, based on raw talent. Aptitude does not seem to be related to attitude; a gifted student can have a poor attitude.
• Attitude: A complex mental state involving beliefs, feelings, values and dispositions to act in certain ways. Attitude affects a student’s ability to learn, but is unrelated to aptitude.
• Audiolingualism: A form of language learning based on behaviourist psychology. It stresses the following: listening and speaking before reading and writing; activities such as dialogues and drills, formation of good habits and automatic language use through much repetition; use of target language only in the classroom.
• Audio-visual aids: Teaching aids such as audio, video, overhead projection, posters, and various other displays of pictures and graphics.
• Aural: Related to listening.
• Authentic text: Natural or real teaching material; often this material is taken from newspapers, magazines, radio, TV or podcasts.
• Automaticity: A learner’s ability to recover a word automatically, without straining to fetch it from memory.
• Behavioural psychology: Also called behaviourism, the belief that learning should be based on psychological study of observable and measurable psychology only; psychological theory based on stimulus-response influenced audiolingualism.
• Bottom-up information processing: Students learn partially through bottom-up information processing, or processing based on information present in the language presented. For example, in reading bottom-up processing involves understanding letters, words, and sentence structure rather than making use of the students’ previous knowledge.
• Brainstorming: A group activity where students freely contribute their ideas to a topic to generate ideas.
• Burn-out: Fatigue usually based on either the stress of overwork or boredom with the same task.
• Chomsky, Noam: The ideas of the great American linguistic theorist Noam Chomsky can be very abstract, while communicative language teaching is wildly practical. Chomsky’s theories of knowledge of language and language acquisition relate as much to the study of human nature as to language teaching. As Steven Pinker explains,
Chomsky’s claim that…all humans speak a single language is based on the discovery that the same symbol-manipulating machinery, without exception, underlies the world’s languages. Linguists have long known that the basic design features of language are found everywhere… A common grammatical code, neutral between production and comprehension, allows speakers to produce any linguistic message they can understand, and vice versa. Words have stable meanings, linked to them by arbitrary convention….Languages can convey meanings that are abstract and remote in time or space from the speaker, (and) linguistic forms are infinite in number.
Please see “Chomsky’s Black Box”.
• Chorus: Speaking together as a group; used in choral speaking and jazz chants.
• Classroom climate: Environment created in the classroom by factors such as the physical environment and also the interrelationship between the teacher and the students, and among the students.
• Classroom management: The management of classroom processes such as haw the teacher sets up the classroom and organizes teaching and learning to facilitate instruction. Includes classroom procedures, groupings, how instructions for activities are given, and management of student behaviour.
• Cloze: A technique usually used to assess students’ reading comprehension. Cloze can also be used as a practice activity. Teacher blanks out certain words from a written text and students fill in the missing words based on their understanding from context.
• Collocation: The way words are often used together. For example, “do the dishes” and “do homework”, but “make the bed” and “make noise”.
• Colloquialism: A word or phrase used in conversation – usually in small regions of the English-speaking world – but not in formal speech or writing: “Like, this dude came onto her real bad.”
• Communicative Competence: The role of language learning is to achieve communicative competence. Communicative competence has four parts, which we call language competencies.
1. Grammatical competence is how well a person has learned that features and rules of the language. This includes vocabulary, pronunciation, and sentence formation. The main question is: How well does a person understand English grammar?
2. Sociolinguistic competence is how well a person speaks and is understood in various social contexts. This depends on factors such as status of those speaking to each other, the purpose of the interaction, and the expectations of the interaction. The main question is: how socially acceptable is the person’s use of English in different settings?
3. Discourse competence is how well a person can combine grammatical forms and meanings to achieve different types (genres) of speaking or writing. The main question is: How well does one properly combine all the languages elements to speak or write in English?
4. Strategic competence is how well the person uses both verbal forms and non-verbal communication to compensate for lack of knowledge in the other three competencies. The main question is: Can a person find ways to communicate when he or she is lacking some knowledge of English?
• Communicative Language Teaching: Communicative language teaching (CLT) is an approach to foreign or second language learning which emphasizes that the goal of language learning is communicative competence. The communicative approach has been developed particularly by British applied linguists as a reaction away from grammar-based approaches such as the aural-oral (audio-lingual) approach. Teaching materials used with a communicative approach teach the language needed to express and understand different kinds of functions, such as requesting, describing, expressing likes and dislikes, etc. Also, they emphasize the processes of communication, such as using language appropriately in different types of situations; using language to perform different kinds of tasks, e.g. to solve puzzles, to get information, etc.; using language for social interaction with other people.
• Competence learning model: Especially when we take specialized courses, learning seems to take place in four stages. We begin with unconscious incompetence: we do not know how much we do not know. Once we begin our course of studies, we become consciously incompetent: we know how much we do not know. From there we proceed to conscious competence: we have functional knowledge and can perform competently, but we have to think about what we are doing. Finally, after we have had enough experience, we become unconsciously competent: we know it and we can do it, and we do not much have to think about it. This model applies to a great deal of language learning, to TEFL training and to many other areas of study.
• Comprehensible input: Language that is understandable to learners.
• Content words: Words that carry meaning; usually nouns, verbs and sometimes adjectives and adverbs.
• Context clues: Clues used when guessing word meanings; clues that provide students with meaning or comprehension based on the environment in which a word is found.
• Contrastive analysis: Comparing two languages to predict where learning will be facilitated and hindered.
• Controlled practice: Practice of language forms in a way that is controlled by the teacher.
• Creative construction hypothesis: Hypothesis in language acquisition which states that learners gradually develop their own rule systems for language.
• Culture: The sum of the beliefs, attitudes, behaviours, habits and customs of a group of people.
• Deductive teaching: Also known as deduction, from the verb “to deduce”; a teaching technique in which the teacher presents language rules and the students then practice those rules in activities. Deductive teaching is usually based on grammar-based methodology and proceeds from generalizations about the language to specifics. (See “Inductive teaching”.)
• Delayed copying: The teacher writes a short familiar sentence on the board, gives students time to look at it, erases it, and then they see if they can write it.
• Descriptive grammar: Grammar that is described in terms of what people actually say or write, rather than what grammar books say tho grammar of the language should be. See “prescriptive grammar”.
• Diagnostic test: A test to diagnose or discover what language students know and what they need to develop to improve their language abilities; may be used before a course of study and combined with placement test.
• Dictation: A technique in which the teacher reads a short passage out loud and students write down what the teacher reads; the teacher reads phrases slowly, giving students time to write what they hear; the technique is used for practice as well as testing.
• Discourse: See “communicative competence”.
• Facilitator: A concept related to a teacher’s approach to interaction with students. Particularly in communicative classrooms, teachers tend to work in partnership with students to develop their language skills. A teacher who is a facilitator tends to be more student-centred and less dominant in the classroom than in other approaches. The facilitator may also take the role of mentor or coach rather than director.
• Feedback: Reporting back or giving information back, usually to the teacher; feedback can be verbal, written or nonverbal in the form of facial expressions, gestures, behaviours; teachers can use feedback to discover whether a student understands, is learning, and likes an activity.
• Fluency: Natural, normal, native-like speech characterized by appropriate pauses, intonation, stress, register, word choice, interjections and interruptions.
• Form-focused instruction: The teaching of specific language content (lexis, structure, phonology). See “language content”.
• Free practice: Practice activities that involve progressively less control by the teacher.
• Function words: Also known as form words, empty words, structure or structural words and grammar words; these words connect content words grammatically; function words have little or no meaning by themselves. Examples include articles, prepositions and conjunctions.
• Functional syllabus: Syllabus based on communicative acts such as making introductions, making requests, expressing opinions, requesting information, refusing, apologising, giving advice, persuading; this type of syllabus is often used in communicative language teaching.
• Gesture: A facial or body movement that communicates meaning; examples include a smile, a frown, a shrug, a shake or no of the head. Gestures often accompany verbal communication.
• Grammar: See “descriptive grammar” and “prescriptive grammar”. Also, see “communicative competence”.
• Graded reader: Reading material that has been simplified for language students. The readers are usually graded according to difficulty of grammar, vocabulary, or amount of information presented.
• Grammar translation: A method of language teaching characterized by translation and the study of grammar rules. Involves presentation of grammatical rules, vocabulary lists, and translation. Emphasizes reading rather than communicative competence.
• Grammatical syllabus: A syllabus based on the grammar or structure of a language; often part of the grammar translation method.
• Guided practice: Intermediate step in teaching between controlled and free practice activities; there is still some teacher guidance at this stage.
• Idiom: A group of words whose meaning is different from the meanings of the individual words: “She let the cat out of the bag” or “He was caught red-handed.”
• Inductive teaching: Also known as induction, from the verb “to induce”; a facilitative, student-centred teaching technique where the students discover language rules through extensive use of the language and exposure to many examples. This is the preferred technique in communicative language teaching. (See “ Deductive teaching”.)
• Input hypothesis: Hypothesis that states that learners learn language through exposure to language that is just beyond their level of comprehension. See “Krashen, Stephen”.
• Interference: A phenomenon in language learning where the first language interferes with learning the target or foreign language.
• Interlanguage: The language a learner uses before mastering the foreign language; it may contain features of the first language and the target language as well as non-standard features.
• Interlocutor: In a conversation, this refers to the person you are speaking to.
• Intonation: How we change the pitch and sound of our voice when speaking. See “language content”.
• Krashen, Stephen: Krashen’s Theory of Second Language Acquisition is a highly practical theory for communicative language learning. This notion of second language acquisition consists of five main hypotheses: the Acquisition-Learning hypothesis; the Monitor hypothesis; the Natural Order hypothesis; the Input hypothesis; and the Affective Filter hypothesis. These hypotheses represent practical interpretations of what happens in language acquisition, and they form the basis of a system of language teaching called “The Natural Method.” Please see “The Krashen Revolution”.
• Language Content: Language has three components, which are commonly taught as language items.
1. “Structural items” are grammatical points about the language. CL teachers frequently introduce these as examples or model sentences, and they are often called “patterns”.
2. “Phonological items” are features of the sound system of the language, including intonation, word stress, rhythm and register. A common way to teach phonology is simply to have students repeat vocabulary using proper stress and pronunciation.
3. A “lexical item” is a new bit of vocabulary. It is sometimes difficult to decide whether an item is structural or lexical. For example, the teacher could teach phrasal verbs like “chop down” and “stand up” as lexis or structure.
• Language experience approach: An approach based on teaching first language reading to young children, but adapted for use with adults. Students use vocabulary and concepts already learned to tell a story or describe an event. The teacher writes down the information they provide, and then uses the account to teach language, especially to develop reading skills.
• Language learning requirements: To learn language, students have four needs: They must be exposed to the language. They must understand its meaning and structure. And they must practice it. Teachers should hold their students as able. They should not over-explain or make things too easy. Learning comes through discovery.
• Language skills: In language teaching, this refers to the mode or manner in which language is used. Listening, speaking, reading and writing are generally called the four language skills. Speaking and writing are the productive skills, while reading and listening are the receptive skills. Often the skills are divided into sub-skills, such as discriminating sounds in connected speech, or understanding relationships within a sentence.
• Learning burden: These are the features of the word that the teacher actually needs to be taught, and can differ dramatically from word to word. Especially in lexis, the teacher needs to reduce learning burden by, for example, reducing the number of definitions and uses presented.
• Learning factors: For EFL teachers, four factors outside aptitude and attitude affect the rate at which a student learns a second language. These are (1) the student’s motivation, including whether it is instrumental or integrative; (2) the amount of time the student spends in class and practicing the language outside class; (3) the teacher’s approach to teaching; and (4) the teacher’s effectiveness and teaching style. The most important of these motivators are the first two, which are also the two the teacher has least control over. See also “aptitude”, “attitude” and “TEFL vs. TEFL”.
• Lesson plan: An outline or plan that guides teaching of a lesson; includes the following: pre-assessment of class; aims and objectives; warm-up and review; engagement, study, activation of language (controlled, guided and free practice); and assessment of lesson. A good lesson plan describes procedures for student motivation and practice activities, and includes alternative ideas in case the lesson is not long enough or is too difficult. It also notes materials needed.
• Lexis: See “language content”, and “vocabulary”.
• Listening: See “language skills”.
• Look and say: Also called the whole-word method, a method to teach reading to children, usually in their first language; has been adapted for second-language reading; words are taught in association with visuals or objects; students must always say the word so the teacher can monitor and correct pronunciation.
• Metalanguage: Language used to describe, analyse or explain another language. Metalanguage includes, for example, grammatical terms and the rules of syntax. The term is sometimes used to mean the language used in class to give instructions, explain things, etc. – in essence, to refer to all teacher talk that does not specifically include the “target language”.
• Model/modelling: To teach by example; for example, a teacher who wants students to do an activity may first demonstrate the activity, often with a student volunteer.
• Motivation: In language instruction, the desire to learn. See “TEFL vs. TESL”.
• Motivation paradox: Students’ main motivators are factors the teacher has little control over (integrated vs. instrumental motivation, which heavily influence time on task), yet motivation is critical to learning.
• Native speakers: Those who speak English as their mother tongue.
• Needs assessment: Measurement of what students need in order to learn language and achieve their language learning goals; also may include consideration of the school syllabus.
• Non-native speakers: Those who speak English as an additional language. English is not their mother tongue.
• Objectives: Also called lesson objectives or aims; statements of student learning outcomes based on student needs; objectives state specifically what the students will be able to do in a specified time period; objectives are measurable and therefore involve specific and discrete language skills.
• Oral: Related to speaking.
• Over-correction: Correcting so much that students become reluctant to try out what they have learned.
• Paradox of language acquisition: The limited amount of comprehensible input that children receive is mathematically insufficient for them to determine grammatical principles, yet somehow they are still able to do so.
• Passive vocabulary: Vocabulary that students have heard and can understand, but do not necessarily use when they speak or write.
• Passive: Opposite of active; the false assumption that the language skills of reading and listening do not involve students in doing anything but receiving information.
• Peer correction: Also known as peer review, peer editing, or peer feedback; in writing, an activity whereby students help each other with the editing of a composition by giving each other feedback, making comments or suggestions; can be done in pairs or small groups.
• Phonemic awareness: Awareness of the sounds of English and their correspondence to written forms.
• Phonology: See “language content”.
• Placement tests: Tests used to place students in a specific language program; such tests should reflect program levels and expectations for students at each proficiency level offered by the language program.
• Prescriptive grammar: Grammar that is described in terms of grammar rules of what is considered the best usage, often by grammarians; prescriptive grammar may not agree with what people actually say or write.
• Proficiency level: Describes how well a student can use the language (often categorized as beginner, intermediate or advanced).
• Proficiency tests: General tests that provide overall information on a student’s language proficiency level or ability; can be used to determine entry and exit levels of a language program or to adjust the curriculum according to the abilities of the students.
• Rapport: Relationship, usually a harmonious one, established within a classroom between teacher and students and among students.
• Realia: Real or actual objects used as teaching aids to make learning more natural; can include forms, pictures, tickets, schedules, souvenirs, advertisements and articles from English magazines or newspapers, and so on.
• Recycling or spiralling: Sometimes called the cyclical approach; the purpose is to repeat language items throughout the syllabus; each time a language item is encountered more detail about it is added; this allows students to build on prior knowledge.
• Register: Level of formality in speech with others; register depends on the situation, location, topic discussed, and other factors.
• Scan: To read quickly for specific information; a reading stratagem.
• Skim: To read quickly for main idea or general information; a reading stratagem.
• Social context: The environment in which meanings are exchanged; can be analysed in terms of the field of discourse, which refers to what is happening, including what is being talked about; the tenor of discourse, which refers to the participants taking part in the exchange of meaning, including who they are and their relationships with each other (for example, teacher and students); and the mode of discourse, which refers to what part the language is playing in the particular situation and what “channel” (writing, speaking or a combination of the two) is being used.
• Sociolinguistics: Aspects of culture that affect communication with others; examples: social class, education level, age, gender, ethnicity. Also, see “communicative competence”.
• Strategic competence: See “communicative competence”.
• Student and teacher: Teachers have eight roles in the classroom. They are authorities and sources of knowledge; entertainers; caregivers; role models; counsellors and sometimes friends; classroom disciplinarians; directors and managers; facilitators, coaches and guides.
The most important person in the classroom is the student. The teacher’s primary focus must be on effective ways to have the student practice using his or her language. Classes should be planned so they enable the student to use just a little more language than they are comfortable with. This is known as “i+1” – an idea popularized by Stephen Krashen. This formula is short for “comprehensible input plus one.” Comprehensible input is language the students can understand.
• Student feedback: Information solicited from students by the teacher to assess the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process.
• Student-centred: Also called learner-centred, a way of teaching that centres on the goals, needs, interests and existing knowledge of the students. Students actively participate in such classrooms and may even be involved in setting learning outcomes. Teachers in student-centred classrooms ask students for input on their goals, needs and interests and on wat they know before providing them with study topics or answers to questions (for example, grammar rules). They may also ask students to generate (help produce) materials. The teacher is seen more as a facilitator or helper than the dominant figure in the classroom.
• Structure: See “language content”.
• Student-generated material: Teaching material to which the students have made a major contribution; the language experience approach, for example, uses student-generated material.
• Survey: To quickly read the headlines, subheads, opening and closing paragraphs, photo captions, pull quotes and other key materials in an article to get a sense of meaning; a reading stratagem.
• Syllabus or curriculum: The longer-term teaching plan; includes topics that will be covered and the order in which they will be covered in a course or program of studies.
• Syntax: Sometimes called word order; how words combine to form sentences and the rules governing sentence formation.
• Tape script: A written text which accompanies listening material; may be used to make cloze passages or for student review.
• Task-based syllabus: A syllabus organized around a sect of real, purposeful tasks that students are expected to carry out; tasks may include telephone use, making charts or maps, following instructions, and so on; task-based learning is purposeful and a natural way to learn language.
• Teachable moments: Times in a language class in which the teacher realizes that a point of information not in the lesson plan will help students understand a language point; teachable moments digress for a brief time from the lesson plan and can be valuable in helping student learning and keeping students engaged.
• Teacher talk: The language teachers use when teaching; involves simplifying speech for students; it may be detrimental to learning if it is childish or not close to the natural production of the target language.
• TEFL vs. TESL: TEFL is an acronym for Teaching English as a Foreign Language; TESL, for Teaching English as a Second Language. TEFL usually takes place in non-English-speaking countries, while TESL takes place in the English-speaking world.
When we speak of English as a foreign language (EFL), we are referring to the role of English for learners in a country where English is not spoken by the majority. English as a second language (ESL) refers to the role of English for learners in an English-speaking country. This difference is very important, because it strongly affects student motivation. In particular, it affects their motivation to learn.

In non-English speaking countries, students have instrumental motivation, the desire to learn English to accomplish a goal. They may want to improve their job prospects, for example, or to speak to tourists. They
1. Attend English classes with other non-native speakers.
2. Can find reasonable work without English; have less economic incentive to learn English.
3. Do not need English in daily life.
4. Have both primary and secondary support networks that function in their native language.
5. Have fewer opportunities to practice using their English.
They are learning, and their instructors are teaching, English as a foreign language.

In English-speaking countries, they have integrative motivation, the desire to learn the language to fit into an English-language culture. They are more likely to want to integrate because they
1. Generally have more friends and family with English language skills.
2. Have immediate financial and economic incentives to learn English.
3. Have more opportunities to practice English.
4. Need it in daily life; often require it for work.
5. Often attend English classes with students who speak a wide range of mother tongues.
They are learning, and their instructors are teaching, English as a second language.
• Technique: A way of presenting language.
• Thematic syllabus: Syllabus based on themes or topics of interest to the students.
• Top-down information processing: Students learn partially through top-down information processing, or processing based on how students make sense of language input – for example, through using students’ previous knowledge or schema.
• Uninterrupted sustained silent writing: A technique in writing whereby a specified, relatively short period of time is set aside in class for students to practice their writing without being interrupted. This helps build writing fluency.
• Vocabulary, importance of: Core vocabulary (the most common 2000-3000 English words) needs to be heavily stressed in language teaching. There is no point in presenting exotic vocabulary until students have mastered basic, high-frequency words. Learners should be tested on high-frequency word lists for passive knowledge, active production and listening comprehension. Learners cannot comprehend or speak at a high level without these words as a foundation.
Learners need to spend time practicing these words until they are automatic; this is known as building automaticity. Since there is often not enough class time for much word practice, teachers need to present their students with strategies for developing automaticity outside the classroom.
• Vocabulary-based syllabus: Syllabus built around vocabulary; often associated with the grammatical syllabus and the grammar translation method.
• Worksheets: Teacher-developed, paper-based activities to help students comprehend, use, and learn language; can be used in association with all skill levels and in individual and group work.

The Value of Testing

I recently updated my book, Teach and Leorn: Reflections on Communicative Language Teaching, from which this is a chapter, and made it available on Kindle and as an inexpensive book. To enjoy a read, please click here.

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

Students hate tests, and so do teachers. For the student, they are a pain to study for and a worry to take. For the teacher, they are a nuisance to give and a bother to grade. But research shows that failing to give tests is bad educational practice. This is because if you test your students, they will probably better retain the material you are presenting. And oddly enough, they can do so without studying more or harder.

The Testing Effect: The journal Psychological Science noted this outcome in a 2006 report. According to the researchers, “Taking a memory test not only assesses what one knows, but also enhances later retention, a phenomenon known as the testing effect.” They added, “Testing is a powerful means of improving learning, not just assessing.”

Oddly enough, tested students can actually do better with less study. According to a media report,

….students who relied on repeated study alone frequently developed a false sense of confidence about their mastery of the materials even while their grasp of important detail was sliding away. By comparison, students who were either tested repeatedly or tested themselves while revising scored dramatically higher marks. A group of students who read a piece of text 14 times, for example, recalled less than a self-testing group who had read the piece only three or four times.

Now, let’s move from the immediate findings of this research to the realm of common sense. Teachers have long known that testing plays a key role in teaching and learning.

Self-tests in language promote retention, while process-focused tests (for example, writing a journal or preparing to give an oral presentation) activate language. Testing has many other uses. Through testing, both teacher and learner get a better sense of the student’s progress. They encourage students to self-evaluate and they promote autonomy in learning. We can use them to provide a sense of closure to a unit or a course of study. They can give your students a better sense of where their competence has improved, and they can give you feedback on how effective you are as a teacher.

Traditional and Alternative Assessments: Traditional forms of testing fall into four basic categories. (1) Proficiency tests give general information on student language proficiency level. They are not specific to any particular program. (2) Placement tests are designed to be appropriate for a specific program. These tests should reflect the goals and ability levels in the program and help you place students within the program. (3) Achievement tests, which should be part of every language curriculum, should be specific to the goals and objectives of a specific language course. (4) Finally, diagnostic tests focus on individual student’s strengths and weaknesses. You can use information from diagnostic tests to help your students improve in particular areas of weakness.

There are many ways to create standard tests for language students. They are commercially available, and many schools have files of hoary old tests you can borrow or emulate. A frequently raised concern about these tests is the question of whether they have validity (they measure what they are supposed to measure); reliability (the tests are consistent); and objectivity (the assessment is unbiased). In terms of this discussion, those are issues for another day.

From the communicative language teaching perspective, a more pressing weakness of traditional testing is that it is neither communicative nor authentic. Given the importance of assessment as a teaching aid, however, it is worth looking at alternative ways to test foreign language students. For language learners more than for other learners, perhaps, alternatives are particularly important.

There are four obvious forms of alternative assessment. Observe your students, writing notes in student records. Meet with them. Have them write journals. And have them create portfolios of their work. These are just a sample, however, and they are not systematic. For system, consider a review by Jo-Ellen Tannenbaum.

The Alternatives: The American educator wrote a commentary on alternative assessment. She pictures the landscape in these words:

Many educators have come to recognize that alternative assessments are an important means of gaining a dynamic picture of students' academic and linguistic development. “Alternative assessment refers to procedures and techniques which can be used within the context of instruction and can be easily incorporated into the daily activities of the school or classroom”. It is particularly useful with (language) students because it employs strategies that ask students to show what they can do. In contrast to traditional testing, “students are evaluated on what they integrate and produce rather than on what they are able to recall and reproduce”. Although there is no single definition of alternative assessment, the main goal is to “gather evidence about how students are approaching, processing, and completing real-life tasks in a particular domain”.

Alternative assessments, she added, generally meet the following criteria:
• Focus is on documenting individual student growth over time, rather than comparing students with one another.
• Emphasis is on students' strengths (what they know), rather than weaknesses (what they don't know).
• Consideration is given to the learning styles, language proficiencies, cultural and educational backgrounds, and grade levels of students.

In her thoughtful article, Tannenbaum puts alternative assessments into five categories. The first she calls “non-verbal assessment strategies”, in which students use physical demonstration or pictures, for example, to illustrate their comprehension.

A second is the KWL chart. The initials refer to “what I know/what I want to know/what I've learned”, and she advocates using this tool to begin and end a unit of study. In an EFL class, you might begin by surveying students on their course expectations. At various points in the course, you could then assess what they know and what they are learning. At the end of the unit, you can work with the students to determine how much they have learned of what they wanted to know.

Tannenbaum also suggests oral performances or presentations as alternative forms of testing. “Performance-based assessments include interviews, oral reports, role plays, describing, explaining, summarizing, retelling, paraphrasing stories or text material, and so on.” Other possibilities include role play and oral presentations. She adds that oral assessments should be conducted regularly so you can monitor your students’ comprehension and thinking skills.

A fourth cluster of alternatives includes what she calls “oral and written products.” She suggests that the teacher can assess student progress include “content area thinking and learning logs, reading response logs, writing assignments (both structured and creative), dialogue journals, and audio or video cassettes.”

Finally, she advocates the portfolio of student work, collected over time to track student development. She suggests that portfolios should include a variety of materials -- audio- and videotaped recordings of readings or oral presentations, for example; writing samples and assignments; conference or interview notes and anecdotal records; and tests and quizzes.

Individualized assessment can be a time-consuming task, and it will drift into the realm of the virtually impossible if you ever find yourself with, for example, several large classes of university students. However, the case for assessment is compelling. After all, your responsibility as a teacher is to promote learning among your students, and the much-hated practice of testing can be one of the great tools toward achieving that goal.

A Beginning, a Middle and an End

I recently updated my book, Teach and Leorn: Reflections on Communicative Language Teaching, from which this is a chapter, and made it available on Kindle and as an inexpensive book. To enjoy a read, please click here.

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

Whichever language skill you are teaching, each component of your lesson should comprise beginning, middle and end. On the surface, this sounds obvious. But in language teaching, nothing is as it seems – or so it seems.

A better way to describe this issue is to talk about pre-skill, skill and post-skill activities. The three sections of a lesson segment should include an introduction that activates any schema the learners may need to succeed in the activity; the activity itself; and a review of the activity. To use reading as an example, the moving parts of a good teaching activity should include pre-reading, reading and post-reading components.

In the balance of this discussion, we will use reading and writing activities to illustrate this general idea. However, you can equally apply it to instruction in listening and speaking.

The communicative language teacher’s main responsibilities are to choose class materials and activities and to set class standards; in many ways, the choices are the hardest part. CL teachers should adapt readings to the level and interest of their students. All else being equal, students learn best when they read items that interest them. When you are presenting a text to students, there are a number of steps you should take to help your students get the most from their reading.

These include pre-teaching essential vocabulary and engaging the students by having them try to predict the content before they actually do the reading. If you have a class full of young adults, for example, you might begin the section with the observation, “We are about to read a short love story. What do you think will happen?” These kinds of pre-reading activities promote comprehension. In turn, this encourages your students to react personally to what they are reading.

You should base a sequence of classroom activities on your reading text. In this way, you can integrate better reading with improvements in one or more of the other skills – listening, speaking and writing.

Student Generated Reading Materials: Sometimes, of course, you won’t want to provide your students with canned material. You may opt instead to have them generate their own reading material.

You can have intermediate or advanced students choose their own research topic and find their own study materials in the newspaper or on the Internet. Once they have chosen their reading materials, you can put them through pre-reading, reading and post-reading exercises. This kind of project will extend over several classes, or even several weeks.

If you have lower-level students, you can use the “language experience approach” to help a class of beginners extend their spoken language into reading and writing activities. Begin by discussing a shared experience in class. Then lead the students in telling you a story. Write words and phrases on the board. Gradually develop their language contributions into a story, prompting revisions as you go. Read and reread the story together. Depending on the language skills of your students, use “repeat after me” or “choral reading” approaches. You may want to extend the story by having the students illustrate it.

After it is complete, you can further exploit this exercise by preparing flash cards that give brief cues to the story. Then erase the board, and have each student tell the story using only these cues. You will probably want your learners to tell these stories in small groups, so they get maximum language practice.

Make student-generated material go a long way, by pointing out elements such as punctuation and repetitive grammatical forms. Point out parts of speech, and use readings as springboards for speaking, listening, and writing. Finally, post student-generated writings on the wall to remind students of what they have learned.

Also, after you isolate a word, phrase or sentence, put it back into context so you can re-establish “syntax.” Syntax is the teacher’s word for the rules we use to combine words into phrases and sentences.

Reading Skills: Of course, in reading lessons it is also important to present strategies for effective comprehension. Here are three key skills.

• Skimming is used to quickly identify the main ideas of a text. When you read the newspaper, you're probably not reading it word-by-word; instead you're skimming the text. Skimming is done at a speed three to four times faster than normal reading.
• Scanning is a technique you often use when looking up a word in the telephone book or dictionary. You search for key words or ideas. In most cases, you know what you're looking for, so you're concentrating on finding a particular answer. Scanning involves moving your eyes quickly down the page seeking specific words and phrases.
• Surveying a text involves beginning a reading by examining some of its parts. Read the headlines and sub-heads, the first and last paragraphs, captions, charts and tables and other graphic materials. These will give you the main ideas of an article or brochure before you begin more intensive reading.

Teaching these learning strategies can greatly improve your learner’s reading comprehension.You can learn about other strategies to improve reading in teachers’ books and on many Internet sites.

Teaching Writing: Writing reinforces general language development and helps develop language proficiency, but it is also a valuable form of self-expression. CLT gives listening and speaking skills a certain primacy, but students do not always have to speak before they can write. (Of course, when you are working with students who have not yet learned the Roman alphabet, writing is usually a long time coming!)

The well-known applied linguist Doug (H. Douglas) Brown lists six principles for designing good writing lessons.

First, he says we should teach our students what good writers do. What do good writers do? Well, they focus on the main idea. They consider their audience. They constantly revise their writing. They follow a general outline as they write. And they get feedback on their writing from others. Build these practices into your writing lessons.

Brown also talks about balancing process and product. When you work with your students on process, you are inwardly focused, on the writer. You help your learners understand what the writer must do to generate ideas and so on. A focus on the writing product is outwardly directed. Who are the audience and what are they willing to read? What form should the piece of writing take? You also need to explain why correctness is so vital.

Another of Brown’s principles is to show differences between writing in English and writing in the first language. The focus here is style rather than language. For overseas teachers who cannot speak the local language or read the local script, this is impossible, of course.

His fourth principle is to connect reading and writing activities. This follows the general principle that CL teachers should wring as much as they can from a given task, stopping well short of boredom.

Also, he says, make writing as realistic as possible. Have students write for a real purpose. There are many varieties of writing that you can teach, and they exist for just about every student level. A few writing schema your students will be familiar with include email, letters, postcards, stories and newspaper articles. Forms they may be less familiar with include essays, poetry and business letters. As you begin a writing exercise, you should be sure your students understand the form (schema) they will be working on. Once they understand the form, the rest will be easier.

Finally, Brown says, teach writing in three stages.

• Generating content is the first. He calls this prewriting, and it involves research, brainstorming and other techniques for idea formation.
• Planning, organizing and preparing the first draft make up the second stage. At higher levels, for example, common planning and organizing techniques include writing a thesis statement, preparing outlines and developing topic sentences.
• Revision and editing come last. Except in special cases (for example, advanced students), it is not helpful to correct all the mistakes you can find in your students’ writing assignments. Like the other aspects of language, the development of writing is a gradual process. However, you should encourage your students to get feedback on their writing from other students by peer review. Also, your students should have opportunities to rewrite their work after you (or their peers) have corrected it.

And this, of course, takes us back to the beginning. Good activities for teaching language skills comprise beginning, middle and end.

Reading, Writing and Arithmetic

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

Little in the last ten thousand years has altered our mental lives as much as the creation of reading, writing and arithmetic. These developments sprang directly out of the first agrarian revolution, which about 10,000 years ago began to transform humankind from hunter-gatherer to farmer. The adoption of crop cultivation techniques and the domestication of animals led to major social changes. These included denser populations, hierarchical societies with ecclesiastics in the top echelons, and the development of non-agricultural crafts.

Of particular importance to this discussion is that early economic surpluses spurred the creation of barter and trade. This is significant because business requires accounts, and the need for accurate accounts led to the creation of reading, writing and arithmetic. Here’s how that happened.

In an interesting but challenging paper, four academics dispute the common notion that you need to read, write and do math to create an accounting system. In their lengthy article, they note that the Sumerians “had developed a prehistoric form of accounting, complete with debits and credits, to track physical flows of goods and social obligations to pay for them. By 3500 BC, before people knew how to read, write or count, they were making kiln-fired tokens that represented resources such as cows, goats and wheat.”

Each token was an account representing an asset – a cow, for example. One cow-token equaled one cow. When five cow-tokens were deposited in a clay urn, the urn served as a crude balance sheet. Just before the tokens were dropped into the urn, they were pressed on their soft, clay surface. The visible impressions that were left identified the owner of the cows and thus were an early example of disclosure. According to Thornton and his colleagues, “This accounting system relied on a one-to-one correspondence between the accounting sign and the physical/social referent that it tracked. Such a correspondence was necessary because counting, as we now know it, had not been invented.” Neither had writing or reading.

Some technology historians take this argument further. In effect, they suggest, accounting led to the creation of the literacy and numeracy that became foundation stones of later civilizations. According to one noted thinker, Jared Diamond, “The independent invention that we can trace in greatest detail is history’s oldest writing system, Sumerian cuneiform....In the last centuries before 3000 B.C., developments in accounting technology, format, and signs rapidly led to the first system of writing.” Thus, the creation of wealth (grain, livestock) in antiquity’s Fertile Crescent led to accounting, which in turn led to the development of writing and arithmetic. The earliest known texts are inventories – in this instance, lists of livestock and agricultural equipment. These come from the city of Uruk, Babylonia, and are dated about 3100 BC.

All of the alphabets that originated in western Eurasia descended from cuneiform. And even after religious and secular literature began to develop, accounting remained a far more important use of the technology. The same was true, but more so, for the use of numbers.

The written word is now considered a sacred gift in many societies and many religions. Yet in the beginning, it was entirely associated with vulgar commerce. For example, after Buddha died his words were considered too sacred to entrust to writing, which was a tool of the marketplace. Instead, his early followers used the practice of communal chanting to consign his teachings to memory. It was hundreds of years before the religious changed their attitudes to writing, and his thoughts were transcribed as written texts.

Few inventions since civilization began have transformed the operations of our minds more thoroughly than writing, reading and mathematics. And accounting was the source of all three. For many, the idea that accountants taught us how to read and write is the gist and substance of an early accountant joke.

A Study in Thai

I recently updated my book, Teach and Learn: Reflections on Communicative Language Teaching, from which this is a chapter, and made it available on Kindle and as an inexpensive paperback. To enjoy a read, please click here.

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

Many of the characteristic errors Thais make in English are directly related to interference from their own language and culture. “Contrastive analysis” is the process of understanding learner errors by comparing the make-up of a second language with the learner’s native tongue. In these notes, we make a start.

Thai society is highly stratified, and differences in social status are reflected in Thai grammar. The royal family has its own set of pronouns and word uses, used exclusively by its members and those who work for them. So does the Buddhist establishment. Thus, there are four major “registers” – subsets of language used in particular social settings – in Thai speech. These are royal, ecclesiastical, polite and vernacular.

Besides being stratified, Thailand has brought together diverse groups of people over a very short period of time, and the country’s borders with it neighbours are porous. As a result, Thai is one of many languages spoken in the country. Others include Khmer, along the border with Cambodia, and a variety of Burmese and tribal languages in the north and along the Thai/Myanmar border.

Thais speak four main dialects. The central dialect, which is the official language of Thailand, is spoken in Bangkok and environs. This dialect is known as klang. The other three major dialects are khammauang, spoken in the north; lao, which is used in the northeast, and tâi, which is the southern dialect.

Grammar: Thai is a flexible language which has no prefixes or suffixes, no genders for nouns, no articles, no plurals and no verb conjugations. It is a high-context language, which means it conveys much information through context rather than through linguistic rules.

On the other hand, it has at least 49 pronouns, including at least 17 for “I” and 19 for “you.” The choice of pronoun indicates the gender of the speaker: for instance, põm means “I” for a male; diichán means “I” for a female. The other pronouns indicate the degree of familiarity you have with the person you are addressing, the nature of the conversation (for example, personal or business), and the level of respect you wish to show. Personal pronouns do not change, regardless of their place within a sentence. There are no possessive pronouns in Thai.

To complicate matters further – from an English speaker’s perspective, – Thais will frequently use nouns (including proper nouns) as pronouns. For example, young girls and sometimes even young women use the Thai word for mouse as the personal pronoun “I.” Women especially, but also men, also sometimes use their personal names instead of the pronoun “I”. When talking to or about foreigners, Thais will occasionally substitute faràng (Thai for “foreigner”) for “you, him, her or them.”

Thai uses particles as polite “closing” words, or to indicate degree of familiarity between the speakers. These one-syllable words are always found at the end of a clause or sentence. Since a single sentence may have several clauses, it may also repeat the same particle several times. The most common particles are khâ (used by women) and khráp (used by men.) These particles literally mean “yes” in polite Thai, and can be used scores of times in a single conversation. Particles suggest courtesy and power relationships. Thais will sometimes explain that sentences without particles are “not beautiful.”

The main Thai dialect has five tones. Thai writing therefore requires four tone markers. These tone markers represent the high tone, the low tone, the falling tone and the rising tone. The mid-tone – also called the common tone – does not require a tone marker.

The word order in a simple Thai sentence is subject-verb-direct object. If there is an indirect object, the word order is subject-verb-direct object-indirect object. Adjectives and adverbs follow the word they modify. Numbers precede the noun.

In Thai sentence structure, you don’t use intransitive verbs when you describe Thai nouns. You say “She beautiful,” or “Computer expensive very.” In Thai, these are complete sentences. They do not require a verb.

Thai suggests plurals with the use of noun classifiers, of which there are many. In effect, Thais say “I have pen, four item” rather than “I have four pens.” Parallel structures exist in English, but they are rare – for example, “50 head of cattle.”

Thai/English Phonology: English has many features that cause difficulties for native-speakers of Thai. This summary reviews pronunciation problems that Thai learners frequently have with English pronunciation.

English has six consonant sounds that do not exist in Thai: /v, th (voiced and unvoiced), z, sh, zh/. Also, the Thai /r/ is quite different from the English retroflex /r/, and Thai speakers frequently pronounce this sound as /l/, even in their own language.

For Thais, many consonant clusters are difficult to pronounce. There are several reasons for this. For one, only two consonants maximum are permitted at the beginnings of words in Thai. In addition, there are no consonant clusters in Thai word endings. Only eight consonants – /n, m, ng, pb, dt, g, y, w/ – are allowed to occur in that position.

While English pronunciation is heavily dependent on consonants, Thai pronunciation is heavily dependent on vowels. Thai has many more vowel sounds than English, and in Thai it is important to pronounce vowels distinctly.

In English, the vowels of unstressed syllables in content words and the vowels of function words are generally reduced or even dropped. English speakers often reduce vowels to schwa (the unstressed sound “uh”); this can make them almost inaudible to the Thai ear.

English function words, which are generally unstressed, are often dramatically reduced. English speech is stress-timed rather than syllable-timed.

The Writing System: Thai uses an alphabet related to that of Sanskrit. Most native-English speakers accustomed to the relative simplicity of the Roman alphabet find it difficult to learn. The system is phonetically quite precise, however. There are few irregular spellings, and to native-Thai speakers the rules of composition are quite natural.

The Thai writing system has 44 consonants that represent only 21 distinct sounds. (Two consonants are obsolete and 12 rarely used. A number of consonants are redundant in the sense that they convey the same sound as other consonants. Part of the reason for this redundancy is that consonants are grouped into three groups – high-tone consonants, middle-tone consonants and low-tone consonants. This approach is used to enable the writer to convey tones.

Each consonant has a character name to help when spelling it out loud. For example, the first consonant in the alphabet is gaw-gài. The first syllable suggests the consonant sound, while the second represents a word (in this case gài or “chicken”) with which to associate the letter.

There are 21 vowels, which are used in various combinations to create 32 different vowel sounds – either long or short vowels. While tone markers are consistently placed above the letters of the alphabet, different vowels are placed in front of, above, behind, under or around the consonants.

The following text illustrates the main features of the Thai writing system. In addition to the placement of vowels and tone markers, note that that written Thai uses no punctuation. There are no capital letters. Full stops, question marks and exclamation marks do not end Thai sentences. Neither does the system use the complex Western arrangement of commas, colons, dashes and other characters used in European punctuation. Also, there are no spaces between words except in the case of Arabic numbers, which writers separate from the Thai text.

ในวันที่ 25 พฤษภาคม 2549 ในหลวงได้รับการถวายรางวัลจากองค์การสหประชาติในความสำเร็จทางด้านการพัฒนาความเป็นอยู่ของมนุษยชาติซึ่งนายโคฟีอันนันเลขาธิการสหประชาชาติได้นำมาถวายด้วยตัวเอง

The text refers to the Human Development Lifetime Achievement Award presented to the King by UN Secretary General Kofi Anan on behalf of the United Nations Development Programme. The award was presented on May 25, 2006 (2549 on the Buddhist calendar).

To Sum up: As this brief discussion illustrates, studying the contrasts between Thai and English can shed light on the errors your Thai students make. Enabling teachers to better understand the linguistic features of another language provides insights into the subtleties of language itself. This should help you become better at the job of teaching English.

The Gift of Tongues and The Written Word

I recently updated my book, Teach and Learn: Reflections on Communicative Language Teaching, and made it available on Kindle and as an inexpensive paperback. To enjoy a read, please click here.

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

In the beginning, there were only two language skills: listening and speaking. Language began as an aural/oral process. It has always been associated with visual cues, however (consider the pervasive importance of body language in human encounters}, and those visual cues eventually led to the language skills of reading and writing.

In the West, that process began in ancient Sumer, about 3500 BCE. Oddly enough, reading, writing and arithmetic developed out of early accounting systems, rather than the other way around. Reading and writing extended language in quite an extraordinary way. From a function restricted to ear and mouth, they turned it into one that can also be conveyed by eye and hand.

The gradual development of widespread literacy led to many changes in the human condition. Most notably, it liberated language from the immediacy of the spoken word. Both reading and writing require more time than the aural-oral skills, and they tend to encourage thought. The following lists compare spoken and written language, with item #1 in the first group mirroring item #1 in the second group, and so on.

Listening and Speaking

1. Listening and speaking involve impromptu, informal, colloquial language.
2. Unfamiliar national and regional accents and pronunciation problems cause difficulties in comprehension.
3. Meaning is conveyed by word stress, intonation and body language.
4. Gestures and expressions aid understanding.
5. Speakers speak in real time; listeners participate immediately.
6. People easily develop native-language listening and speaking skills.
7. Speech is essentially impermanent.

Reading and Writing

1. Reading texts tend to be organized, formal and stylized.
2. Alphabets and ideographic-style writing systems (think Chinese writing) vary greatly in complexity and approach.
3. English orthography (spelling) is highly idiosyncratic.
4. Meaning is enhanced through punctuation and writing style.
5. Writers have time for corrections; readers can puzzle out meaning.
6. Learning to read and write requires conscious effort.
7. The printed word is documentation.

To read and write, we need six things. In the balance of this commentary, I will review them, and consider their implications for the English teacher.

The Roman Alphabet: English-language learners need to recognize the letters of the Roman (also called the Latin) alphabet. It is very difficult to understate the impact of this hoary old alphabet on western civilization. According to some theorists, this alphabet uses so few letters to represent words that it helped Westerners become highly analytical, and thus had a huge impact on the western mind and outlook.

The Roman alphabet is the dominant writing system in most of the world. The primary alternatives are the Cyrillic alphabet (used in the former Soviet Union), the Arabic alphabet, the Brahmic alphabets of India and parts of Southeast Asia, and the ideographic systems of China, Korea and Japan. The latter are not alphabets.

Phonics: Also known as the phonetic method, this is a system of teaching children to read. It is commonly used to teach young learners to read in their mother tongue. In this system learners are taught the sounds which the letters represent, and then try to build up the sound of a new or unfamiliar word by saying it one sound at a time.

Phonics can be used for older learners that use either ideographic or non-Latin alphabets. The main difference is that older learners have probably already learned their own writing system, so they will bring to the learning process strategies based on that experience. A useful embellishment on phonics is to have the students spell words out loud as they encounter them in writing. Thus, “ant” is “ay en tee.” This helps develop the students’ ability to remember and recognize the word.

Handwriting and Keyboards: Remember that the printed word is essentially speech produced through our hands. Until recently, the normal progression of things was that we would first learn to write, then move on to cursive writing (rounded script). In recent years, however, cursive has been given short shrift in the West, as youngsters increasingly used keyboards.

Does this matter? According to one observer,

The loss of handwriting … may be a cognitive opportunity missed. The neurological process that directs thought, through fingers, into written symbols is a highly sophisticated one. Several academic studies have found that good handwriting skills at a young age can help children express their thoughts better

Whatever the case, most teachers in Western countries do not spend a great deal of time on cursive writing. EFL teachers are less likely to spend time with their students working on it, except in unusual circumstances. In most cases, to be able to print in English is enough.

It is essential that English-language learners acquire as soon as possible the ability to recognize and produce written words. And since the computer is not going to go away, it is often useful (it depends on class assessment and the nature of the assignment) to insist on typewritten work.

Orthography: Orthography is the fancy work for spelling, and English spelling is more irregular than any other on the planet. As the table below illustrates, the letter combination “ou” can be pronounced in eleven ways, while we can create the “long e” sound with eleven different spellings.
Letters “ou”

tough, tour, dough, famous, bought, you, should,
journey, loud, flour, cough.

Sound “ee”

paediatric, me, seat, seem, ceiling, people, chimney,
machine, siege, phoenix, lazy.

When you teach vocabulary, it is critical that you point out irregular spellings. Because of the oddities of accepted English spelling (think “straight” and “protégé”), it is often quite difficult for students – especially those who speak non-European languages – to develop quick word recognition. This requires frequent practice. However, as the following passage illustrates, native speakers with sophisticated language skills can recognize words with great efficiency.

The phaomnneil pweor of the hmuan mnid
Aoccdrnig to rsreeach at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Asbouellty amzanig huh?

Punctuation: What stress and pronunciation do to the melody and rhythm of speech, punctuation does for the written word. Punctuation skills are to reading and writing what phonology is to listening and speaking.

English punctuation is highly sophisticated, and it is difficult to teach. However, consistently and from the beginning you should stress the basics: capitalize the first letter in a sentence, the pronoun “I” and proper names; put a full stop at the end of every sentence; indent paragraphs. The more sophisticated functions (commas, semicolons, colons, dashes, writing schema and so on) come much later.

Inflections and sentence structure: Good writing requires good grammar. In spoken English, fluency is mostly more important than accuracy. In written English, the opposite is true. Good writing requires good grammar. Because readers have time to study and analyse written English, they are more aware of errors in inflection (he walks, he walked), and other features of language structures than when they are in aural/oral mode. The same applies to spelling. Also, grammatically correct structures enable readers to identify parts of speech, and this aids them in their understanding.

A brilliant illustration of the importance of structure in written English can be found in Lewis Carrol’s famous nonsense rhyme, “Jabberwocky.” The story begins,

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,/ And the mome raths outgrabe.

In this poem, all of the content words are meaningless. Yet because Carrol’s grammatical structure is flawless, we have no trouble identifying the parts of speech and the inflections of these nonsense words.

“Toves,” “borogoves” and “raths,” for example, are all plural nouns. The other nonsense words are either adjectives or verbs; indeed, "outgrabe" is clearly an irregular verb in the simple past tense. The one ambiguity in this stanza is the word “brillig”. We don’t know whether it is an adjective or a noun, but in terms of sentence structure it is clearly a complement.

Because of the importance of structure in the written word, when you teach writing you must stress strategies – pre-writing activities, revision, dictionary use, spell-checking and peer review, for example – to help students get their work up to an acceptable standard. You must also, of course, let them know what that standard is.