TEFL Glossary

See ISE exams.

It is a lesson which requires students to use all four skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking).

Intensive reading or listening is when we read closely to find detailed information and reach a thorough understanding of a text.

Extensive reading and listening refers to approaching longer texts, which are read more rapidly for a more general global understanding.

Extensive reading in language learning is when students read texts for pleasure and for developing their general reading skills; they are not required to do tasks.

Classroom reading and listening lessons usually involve intensive reading/listening, which means reading closely to complete specific tasks.

Extensive reading  and listening are probably the best ways of improving comprehension and expanding vocabulary. It is useful for teachers to find ways of encouraging students to read and listen extensively as well as intensively.

See intensive.

See intensive.

This refers to who is talking to whom during the lesson, e.g., T-class, st-st, etc.

Lesson plans usually include a column in which planned interactions are recorded.

According to this theory of language acquisition, children learn language because they naturally want to communicate. Language therefore emerges from social interaction. As children's language ability develops though communication, it will be strongly affected by their environment.

Interactive listening requires the listener to respond - conversation. Listening which does not require a response (e.g., listening to the radio) is non-interactive. Arguably all listening is in some way interactive because even if you do not need to make a response, there will be some kind of emotional or intellectual response to what you hear.

It is a sound formed by putting the tongue between the teeth (/θ/ and /ð/).

An interjection is some kind of exclamation or hesitation word or noise (Oh! Ugh, er...) that tells us something about the speaker's attitude towards what he or she is saying (e.g., pleasure, disgust, uncertainty, etc.).