TEFL Glossary

In testing, reliability means that a test effectively measures what it is intended to measure.

See controlled practice.

The verb to revise has two meanings

1. (Mainly used in education) To re-read earlier work to improve one's knowledge and understanding of a subject. Often implies memorising for an examination.

2. Examine and make corrections or alterations to (written or printed matter).
"the book was published in 1960 and revised in 1968"

The first meaning is used in British English, but not American English, and is used throughout this course.

Noun form of the verb to revise, which has two meanings

1. (Mainly used in education) To re-read earlier work to improve one's knowledge and understanding of a subject. Often implies memorising for an examination.

2. Examine and make corrections or alterations to (written or printed matter).
"the book was published in 1960 and revised in 1968"

The first meaning is used in British English, but not American English, and is used throughout this course.

See word family.

RP stands for Received Pronunciation - a particular British English accent. Being sometimes also called BBC English or Oxford English, RP is a class accent rather than a regional accent and is associated with higher social classes and educated speakers. The 'standard' pronunciation given in British English dictionaries is RP, and British English language teaching course books present (mainly) this accent. It is often erroneously regarded as more 'correct' than other accents.

It is also called team dictation. It is a dictation activity in which the class is divided into teams, and the dictation is done as a race. Team members take it in turns to run up to a text, read a section of it, run back and dictate it to another student who is acting as the 'scribe'. The next team member then runs to read the next section.

Scan reading or scanning is when we look through a text quickly to find specific information. For example, looking at a bus or train timetable, then looking down quickly until you find the name of the town you are travelling to, and then across the different times until you find the time of day you are interested in.

Schwa is a name given for the most common sound in English . The word derives from a Hebrew word for a diacritic indicating a neutral vowel sound.

Also referred to as L2A. It is the process by which a second language is acquired. It is a field of study in linguistics.