functionThis word is annoyingly and confusingly used with different meanings in English language teaching. 1. Language functions (also called pragmatic functions) are the things we do with language, such as promising, inviting, giving advice, asking for permission, etc. Exponents are the actual pieces of language used to express that function. 2. When looking at a particular grammatical form which can be used in different ways with different meanings, these different meanings or uses are also called functions. It is very common for tenses to have multiple functions, for example: a) He will get up early when I am trying to have a lie in. b) He will get up early tomorrow because he has to catch a train at 7.30. c) I expect he will get up early tomorrow because he's so excited. In these examples, the future simple: He will get up serves the functions of expressing a) annoying habit/insistence b) future as fact c) prediction. 3. Grammatical function can refer to either the grammatical category a word in a sentence belongs to (See Unit 4, Part 1 Parts of speech): Smoking is bad for you. - Smoking is a noun We had a party on the beach. On is a preposition. |
genre/'ʒɒnrə/ /ˈʒɒ̃rə/ The type and style of discourse (spoken or written), e.g., a letter of complaint, a romantic novel, a business email, newspaper article, promotional material, etc. |
gerundA gerund is the -ing form of a verb when it acts as a noun as in 'I love dancing,' and 'Studying grammar is enormously good fun.' |
Getting-to-know-you activitiesThese activities are used at the start of a course to help the students and teacher get to know about each other. They are also called icebreakers. |
gistIt is the general meaning of a text. |
glottal stopThis sound /ʔ/ is common in spoken English though it is not included in the phonetic chart used in English language teaching. Most obviously it is used when /t/ sounds are 'dropped' in words, such as 'bottle' or 'what,' but also occurs in other locations, e.g., something /'sʌʔmθɪŋ/. |
gradingSee language grading. |
grammarGrammar refers to the rules which govern the way the words in a language change and how they are combined with other words in sentences. |
Grammar-translationIt is a traditional approach to language teaching which focuses on learning grammar rules and applying them in order to translate texts from one language to another. |
grammatical categoriesAlso referred to a parts of speech. These are the names for the different classes to which words are assigned depending on their function in a sentence. The parts of speech in English are the verb, noun, adjective, adverb, determiner, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. |