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Sunday, 8 February 2026, 8:47 PM
Site: The TEFL Academy e-Learning
Course: The TEFL Academy e-Learning (e-learning)
Glossary: TEFL Glossary
C

Certificate of Proficiency in English

See CPE.

child-directed speech

See caregiver speech.

choral drilling

Drilling is when students repeat a word or phrase modelled by the teacher to practise pronunciation or help memorise structure. Choral drilling is the whole class or a group repeating together (in chorus).

chunks of language

A large proportion of the language we produce seems to be memorised 'chunks of language', rather than original creations generated through combining our grammatical and lexical knowledge. Examples are the _____er, the _________er (as in the bigger, the better), you must be joking, to cut a long story short.


See the Lexical Approach.

Clap

A physical action used to demonstrate syllable stress; often used in teaching to help students recognise stressed syllables.

classroom contract

An agreement, negotiated with students, on how students should behave.

Clause

A group of words that contains a subject and a verb. It can be independent (able to stand alone) or dependent (cannot stand alone).

CLIL

See Content and Language Integrated Learning.

CLL

See Community Language Learning.

closed pairs

This is when all the students in a class  work in pairs at the same time (compare with open pairs).