Multilingual glossary of key terms in language education

Refers to language or knowledge that is tailored to or assumes familiarity with a particular cultural, social, or situational context. Background-specific language often relies on shared assumptions or references that may be unclear to those without the relevant background knowledge.

Approach to course design where a teacher develops the assessment tasks based on the learning objectives and then develops tasks and activities for teaching and learning in line with the learning objectives and the assessment. (Richards, 2013)

A detailed description of a specific level of student performance, often represented by samples of student work; used as a point of reference for decisions regarding students’ educational attainment.

Building up a common understanding of qualitative levels of performance through discussion and the comparison of work samples in relation to standardised definitions and examples (benchmarks). (See, for example, the CoE Manual, Supplement D.)

“The acronyms BICS and CALP refer to a distinction introduced by Cummins (1979) between basic interpersonal communicative skills and cognitive academic language proficiency. The distinction was intended to draw attention to the very different time periods typically required by immigrant children to acquire conversational fluency in their second language as compared to grade-appropriate academic proficiency in that language. Conversational fluency is often acquired to a functional level within about two years of initial exposure to the second language whereas at least five years is usually required to catch up to native speakers in academic aspects of the second language.”

“The coexistence of two languages within a community or a person.”

“A bilingual person is not two monolinguals, but a whole person with a particular linguistic competence, who should be analyzed as such.” (Grosjean, 1993, p. 16)

An individual’s capacity to communicate in two languages, at whatever level of proficiency.

This might contain: a record of language courses, self-directed learning, formative self-assessment, visits and exchanges undertaken, literary and other written texts read in a non-native language, spoken and audio-visual texts listened to or watched, a ‘language learning diary’, setting down the results of self-observation or reflection on experience.

A familiar term referring to both learning and management styles. Where it applies to learning, it denotes an exploration and discovery approach in which the learner arrives autonomously at knowledge and understanding and then interacts with the teacher to confirm and consolidate these. It can also denote an implementation process in which teachers are the driving force in innovation, rather than inspectors or advisers. (See Top down)

An opportunity for classroom practitioners to make changes and enhance practice on the ground. Action research is an example of a bottom-up approach. It stands in opposition to top-down approaches where changes to practice are decided on by people in positions of power, i.e. management.

Starting with one’s own professional values, developing his/her research question and then testing and developing it further.