activity A single task, exercise or game for students to work on, usually set by

the teacher.

aims Things that you hope will be achieved during a lesson or sequence of
lessons. NB Some teachers now use the term objectives to refer to lesson
goals and reserve the term aims for the long-term goals of a language
course or programme.

assimilation When phonemes change their sound in connected speech. For example
the sound /d/ in the word red often assimilates to /b/ when the word
paint follows: red paint /reb/.

authentic exposure Exposure to language when it is being used fairly naturally.

authentic output Students speaking or writing using the full range of language at their
disposal.The language used has not been restricted in any way (eg not
by your instructions, by the coursebook writer, etc).

backchaining A technique for helping students say a difficult sentence by breaking it

down into smaller parts and practising saying those pieces, slowly
building up again to the complete sentence; for example: 'n't you?'
'aren't you?"thirty, aren't you?"You're thirty, aren't you?'

blended learning A course made up of a combination of both face-to-face and online

elements.

Cf.! I. Content and Language Integrated Learning.The teaching of subject

content through a language that is not the first language of the learners
(eg Thai children studying physics at school, with all lessons and
materials in English).The hope is that the language will be learnt
through engagement with the subject matter and that both content and
language will be learnt equally well.

CLL Community Language Learning. A method that employs use of LI and

L2 to allow students to communicate real messages to each other.

CLT Communicative LanguageTeaching. A broad description of current

language teaching in which the need to use language in successful
communication is seen as more important than having a purely
theoretical knowledge of how language works.