Essential Teaching Terminology: A Comprehensive Glossary

C: Collaborative to Curriculum

• Collaborative writing: Writing done together in pairs or groups.
• Communicative approach / Communicative language teaching: Method focused on using language for real communication.
• Communicative speaking activities: Tasks where students use language to communicate meaningfully.
• Comprehensible input: Language that learners can understand, slightly above their level.
• Continuous assessment: Ongoing evaluation of students’ progress during a course.
• Controlled practice: Activities with limited language choices to practise accuracy.
• Controller: Teacher role where the teacher directs and manages the class.
• Cross-curricular: Connecting different subjects in learning.
• Cue: A prompt that helps students respond or produce language.
• Cue-response drill: Drill where students respond to prompts with correct language.
• Curriculum: Overall plan of what is taught, including goals, content, and evaluation.

D: DEAR to Drilling

• DEAR (Drop Everything And Read): Time in class where students stop and read for pleasure.
• Deep-end strategy: Teaching approach where students try to use language first, then receive instruction.
• Developmental stage: Level of cognitive and emotional development of a learner.
• Diagnostic tests: Tests used to find students’ level and identify strengths and weaknesses.
• Dictogloss: Students listen, take notes, and reconstruct a text together.
• Differentiation: Adapting teaching to meet different students’ needs.
• Disappearing dialogue: Dialogue gradually removed from the board as students memorise it.
• Discipline: Classroom management to maintain order and good behaviour.
• Discovering: Learning by finding information or rules independently.
• Discovery learning: Approach where students learn by identifying rules themselves.
• Distractors: Incorrect options in multiple-choice questions.
• Draft: First version of a written text.
• Drilling: Repetitive practice of language to improve accuracy.
• Drills: Exercises based on repetition of language patterns.

E: Eclecticism

• Eclecticism: Using a mix of different teaching methods depending on the context and students’ needs.