An ELT Glossary Construct validity

• Definition : A quality of an effective test. If a language test has construct validity, it reflects an accepted theory of language use and tests only the subskills/competencies that would naturally be involved.

• Example : Dictation as a test of listening comprehension lacks construct validity as a) it involves a number of skills not generally needed when listening - ie the ability to retain the exact words used, the ability to write and to spell; b) it is generally carried out under conditions which are quite different to those generally required when listening - the words being dictated are repeated more than once,; they are pronounced clearly and slowly; they are delivered in short chunks etc. This is quite different from the normal listening situation where the listener has to decode the stream of speech in real time, hears it once only etc

• Other types of validity important for EFL testing include content validity (whether the test focuses on what has been taught), predictive validity (whether the test identifies accurately whether the learner would be able to cope linguistically with a real life situation), concurrent validity (whether the results obtained agree with those obtained by another test already considered to be valid), and face validity (whether the test users believe that it is a "good" test).

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An ELT Glossary Backwash Washback

Definition : Backwash (also called washback) is the effect that knowledge of the contents of a test may have on the course which precedes it. It may be positive or negative.

Example : If students are working towards an exam where all of the test items focus on grammatical accuracy, the teacher (possibly at the students instigation) may spend much of the preceding course focusing on this area - and possibly neglecting other areas that they will need outside the course such as spoken fluency or listening. Thus the test would have negative backwash - it pushed the teacher into "teaching for the test" rather than providing a balanced course which dealt with all the students needs and developed other areas of competence than just grammatical knowledge.

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An ELT Glossary Open and Closed Pairwork

Pairwork can be done either in open pairs, where two students do an activity in front of the class while the others listen, or in closed pairs - when all the students are working on an activity in pairs at the same time.

Open pairwork is a useful way to start some activities - it checks that students have understood what they have to do and provides them with a model. For example, the T might set up a What do you say? activity on polite requests in the following way. The students have the prompt situations in their books :

T : OK everyone - look at situation number 1: Youre trying to study but your flatmate is playing music very loudly and its disturbing you. Maria, what do you say, and Paolo, what do you reply?
M : Sorry Paolo. Can you turn the music down? Im trying to study.
P :  Oh OK, sorry.
T  : OK, great. All right, now can you all continue with your partners. Decide what you say in those ten situations.

Having elicited the example in open pairs, the teacher now asks the students to continue the activity in closed pairs, which maximises student involvement and ensures they get as much practice as possible. S/he will probably monitor them while they are working, but in a large class wont be able to hear what everybody says for every situation. So at the end s/he may follow-up the activity by going through all the situations again in open pairs, confirming or correcting their answers, and giving them the chance to ask questions about any alternatives they came up with.

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An ELT Glossary Ergative verbs

An ergative verb is one which can be used both transitively (with an object) and intransitively (without an object), and whose object when the transitive construction is used is the same as the subject of the intransitive construction. For example:

Ann closed the door. (Subject Verb Object - transitive)
The door closed. (Subject Verb - intransitive)

I boiled some water for tea. (Subject Verb Object - transitive)
The water boiled. (Subject Verb - intransitive)

David stopped the car. (Subject Verb Object - transitive)
The car stopped. (Subject Verb - intransitive)

In all of these examples, the object of the transitive construction becomes the subject in the intransitive construction.

This means that it is only in the transitive construction that the subject is also the agent - ie the person/thing etc that performs the action. The intransitive construction thus allows us to avoid mentioning the agent. There  a number of cases where this may be useful - for example:

1. If the agent is irrelevant, obvious or expected - eg  The lesson ended  / The snow melted / The plane landed - rather than The teacher ended the lesson / The sun melted the snow / The pilot landed the plane.
2. To create suspense - for example, in a thriller when the writer doesnt want the reader to find out exactly who or what causes the action - eg Suddenly the door opened and ...
3. The speaker/writer wants to focus on a result rather than its cause, possibly because there are too many contributing causes to name - eg The level of inflation increased during May. 

Common ergative verbs include :

a) Verbs describing the start and finish of something  : eg begin  end  finish  start  stop -

     He ended the conversation / The conversation ended.

b) Verbs connected with heating and cooling : eg bake  boil  cook  defrost  freeze  fry 
     melt  roast -    I defrosted the fridge this morning / The fridge defrosted this morning 
     when the power went off.

c) Verbs connected to movement :  eg back  close  crash  drive  fly  open  reverse  run  sail     shut -    John was driving the car at 90 mph / The car was driving at 90 mph

d) Verbs expressing some other type of improvement or damage : eg break  crack  improve       tear   worsen  -    The government has worsened the situation / The situation has worsened

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An ELT Glossary Pre listening and Pre reading Activities

• Definition : Activities used before a listening or reading text in order to set the scene, activate schemata, provoke interest, provide scaffolding by eg pre-teaching vocabulary etc

• Example : Before a listening on eg free time activities, students might be asked to discuss what they do in their free time and/or given a profile of the person talking on the recording and asked to predict what they think they do in their free time. 

• Other stages of the listening activity may be While listening and Post-listening.

• Pre-text activities which activate schemata help top-down processing in the While Listening stage.

• An activity such as the prediction activity above generates its own gist listening task, as the learners can then listen to check their predictions.

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An ELT Glossary Scanning

• Definition : Looking rapidly through a text in order to locate a word, phrase or predictably formulated piece of information known to be included in that text.

• Example : looking up a phone number in a telephone directory, or searching for the word "hyponomy" in the index section of a book on teaching lexis.

• When scanning, the eye moves rapidly over the text until the form of the required item is recognised.

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An ELT Glossary Connected Speech Sandhi Variations

Do you want one?

Uttered slowly and carefully, with every word said in isolation, the pronunciation of this sentence would be : 

/du: ju: wɒnt wʌn/

However, in connected speech - that is pronounced at normal speed in conversation - varoius changes would occur to the pronunciation in order to make the words easier to say rapidly.

These changes - known as sandhi variations - include assimilation, consonant lenition,  C-V catenation,  elision, epenthesis, gemination, vowel reduction,  V-V liaison, and yod coalescence. Click on the links for a detailed explanation of each.

The changes that occur often have a "knock-on" effect - that is, a small initial change causes another - and sometimes yet another so that the final utterance may be quite different from the citation form of the words.

This can be seen in the sentence cited above. What might happen there?

First of all, Do and you, being  unstressed grammatical words, would be likely to be affected by vowel reduction, in both cases the /u:/ changing to the schwa /ə/  : /də jə/. However, with only the weak vowel between them, the /d/ and /j/ sounds would be likely to blend into an affricate (yod coalescence), eliding the first /ə/ completely : /ʤə/.

want one might show a similar chain of changes. There might very well be a change to the /t/ first of all so that it was either elided completely - /wɒn wʌn/  or replaced with a glottal stop (consonant lenition) :  /wɒnʔ wʌn/

In the case that /t/ is elided completely, this will leave  an alveolar nasal consonant (/n/) next to a bilabial sound (/w/). To make the transition easier, the /n/ may be assimilated to the bilabial nasal /m/ (regressive assimilation of place). However, as this means that the lips must first be closed to allow air to pass out of the nose before being partially reopened to form /w/, the result would be a sudden release of the air remaining in the mouth - and therefore the production of an epethentic bilabial plosive /p/ :  /wɒmp wʌn/

This means that our original /du: ju: wɒnt wʌn/ could potentially become /ʤə wɒmp wʌn/.

Notice that these changes are only possibilities. Some are more likely than others, but in many cases its a matter of "either this or that". Whether they are used and which is used will depend on both the situation and the speaker. In some situations we may naturally speak more slowly and carefully than in others - when giving a speech as opposed to conversational chat for example. and individual speakers will not only speak at different rates naturally, but will also have different accents , which may affect the changes made or not made.  A higher rate of consonant lenition involving  /h/  becoming  [ʔ]  might be expected in London English, for instance than in some other varieties of British English. This means that the final realisation of our example sentence could be any of the following, or indeed or any other combination of the features  : 
/ʤu: wɒn wʌn/  /ʤə wɒnʔ wʌn/  /də ju: wɒmp wʌn/ etc

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An ELT Glossary Collocation

Definition : The tendency of words to co-occur regularly and form "partnerships" in ways not fully explained by semantic compatibility (or lack of it).


Examples :  you can have a "bad cold" or a "heavy cold". You can have a "bad headache" but not a "heavy headache".

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An ELT Glossary Face validity

Face validity concerns the extent to which a test appears valid - ie appears to be "a good test" to the people using it - the learners taking the test, their parents, the teachers and institutions putting them in for the test etc.

As these people may not be testing experts, they may of course not fully understand what is involved. As an example: if you look at the example given under construct validity, you will see that there are various reasons why dictation is not a valid test of listening comprehension. Yet many learners (and teachers) who are used to it as an activity type may accept quite happily that listening ability should be tested in this way, and make no objection to a test which includes it.

This means that a test which has face validity is not necessarily a good test - and similarly a test which does not have face validity is not necessarily a bad test. However, despite this, it is an important quality for a test to have. If a test, which may possess every other quality required - other forms of validity, reliability, practicality or whatever - does not have face validity, then learners are not going to want to take the test or be happy that its results are a fair assessment of their language competence.

Related terms : validity, content validity, predictive validity, 

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An ELT Glossary Colligation

Definition : The tendency of certain linguistic items to occur in specific syntactic contexts and not in others.

Example : Much and many + noun phrase tend not to occur in object position in affirmative sentences Eg:  There are many trees in my garden/ She has much money. with alternative expressions such as a lot of being preferred. They do however occur in the equivalent negative sentences (There arent many trees in my garden / She doesnt have much money), or in subject position : Many people have argued that.... / Much fuss has been made about ...

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An ELT Glossary Realia

Definition : Realia are real objects brought into the classroom to help teach and practise language.

Example : The teacher wants to introduce the names of different vegetables and so takes into the class some actual examples of carrots, courgettes, broccoli,  onions, beans etc. S/he uses them to present the vocabulary, and then puts them back into a shopping bag and sets up a chain drill :

S1 reaches into the bag, pulls out a pack of the vegetables and says I went to the supermarket and bought some carrots. She puts the carrots on the desk in front of her and passes the bag on.
S2 does the same and says : Sofia went to the supermarket and bought some carrots. I went to the supermarket and bought some potatoes.  He passes the bag to the third student ...
S3 ... who continues :  Sofia went to the supermarket and bought some carrots. Jaime went to the supermarket and bought some potatoes. And I went to the supermarket and bought some beans.
and so on round the class.

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An ELT Glossary Distractors

Definition : The incorrect alternatives in a multiple choice test. 

Example :  a,c and d in :

Thanks for .... me about it.

a) tell

b) telling

c) told

d) you tell

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An ELT Glossary Fricative consonants

Definition : Fricative consonants are formed when the two articulators move close together leaving only a small passage through which the airflow is forced, causing the air molecules to "bump together", thus creating audible friction. 

Examples from English: 

• /f/ as in feet /fi:t/ : unvoiced labiodental fricative
• /v/ and in very /veri:/ : voiced labiodental fricative
• /θ/as in think /θɪŋk/: unvoiced dental fricative  
• /ð/ as in that /ðæt/: voiced dental fricative
• /s/ as in sew /səʊ/: unvoiced alveolar fricative
• /z/ as in was /wɒz/: voiced alveolar fricative
• /ʃ/ as in wash /wɒʃ/: unvoiced palato-alveolar fricative
• /ʒ/ as in treasure /treʒə/: voiced palato-alveolar fricative

Fricatives are continuant sounds, ie sounds which can be made without stopping (until your lung air runs out). 

More reading from An ELT Notebook : English Consonant Sounds

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Produk acer tablet android harga dibawah 1jt an

Belum reda dengan tekonologi yang di tawarkan oleh pabrikan yang berasal dari taiwan ini acer mau meluncurkan product tablet dengan oprating system Android, sebelum nya Acer mengenalkan ke pangsa pasar indonesia dengan product Acer Inconia PC tablet dengan windows 8, dengan product acer inconia mempunyai nilai tersendiri bagi acer karena pertama dan satu satunya acer tablet menggunakan oprating system yang berjalan di PC/laptop dan tidak hanya itu Acer inconia w510 bisa di gunakan sebagai notebook dengan penambahan keyboard docking, apa kah product acer tablet android ini akan mengikuti jejak acer inconia,

 Seperti di lansir oleh The Wall Street Journal, informasi ini berasal dari sebuah sumber anomim yang berhubungan langsung dengan projek tablet murah tersebut. jika kabar ini benar akan menjadi pesaing tablet tablet yang sebelum sebelumnya yang di produksi di cina, dan menjadi pesaing berat pada tablet tablet yang tidak bermerek yang ada saat ini.

 Tablet ini yang rencana nya di berinama Acer Inconia B1 layar sebesar 7 inci dengan resolusi 1024x600 piksel. Dengan ukuran layar ini, Iconia B1 akan menyerupai tablet Amazon Kindle Fire dan Asus Google Nexus 7. Spersifikasi yang di berikan oleh Inconia B1 rencana nya menggunakan MediaTek dual core 1,2 GHz dengan kartu grafis PowerVR SGX 531, RAM sebesar 512 MB, storage internal 8GB, slot microSD, GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, dan sudah menggunakan Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. dengan spesifikasi yang tertera di atas kemungkinan akan menggebrak pangsa pasar gadget untuk 2013 ini dan menjadikan suatu icon dan trade mark pada penghujung tahun ini, "Beberapa bulan lalu, kami telah membuat peta proyek perubahan sebagai respons perubahan besar di pasar tablet.

Peluncuran Nexus 10 telah mengubah prediksi mengenai kompetisi harga," sebut narasumber Acer itu. Selain Iconia B1, Acer juga dikabarkan sedang menyiapkan tablet murah berbasis prosesor Intel dan Windows 8 setelah tablet serupa sebelumnya dianggap terlalu mahal.

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An ELT Glossary Manner of Articulation

Definition : The way that speech sounds are formed. Manner of articulation is one of the three descriptors used to describe consonants, the others being voicing and place of articulation. 

In English the following types of manner of articulation are most important for consonant formation:

• plosive/stop consonants : when a plosive is formed the two articulators briefly block the passage of air from the lungs completely. The air builds up behind the articulators, and is then suddenly released. Examples : /p/ /b/ /t/ /d/ /k/ /g/

• fricative consonants : the two articulators move close together leaving only a small passage through which the airflow is forced, causing the air molecules to "bump together" and creating audible friction. Examples: /s/ /z/ /ʃ/ /ʒ/

• affricates : an affricate consists of a homorganic plosive and africative - ie a plosive followed immediately by a fricative made in the same place. Examples: /ʧ/ /ʤ/

• laterals : when a lateral is made, the centre of the tongue meets the roof of the mouth but air is allowed to pass along the sides. Example : /l/

• nasal consonants: a nasal consonant is formed by blocking the passage of air out of the mouth, but allowing it to pass through the nose. Examples : /m/ /n/ /ŋ/

• approximants/semi-vowels : These, as their alternative names imply, are sounds which are neither fully vowels nor consonants. From the point of view of manner of articulation, they are similar to vowels in that there is almost no restriction of the airflow as it passes through the mouth. Examples : /w/ /r/ /j/ /l/

In certain varieties of English, other categories of manner of articulation may be used. For example, many speakers of American English use a flap (or tap) consonant rather than a plosive in forming the /t/ phoneme. Flap sounds are similar to plosives, but the articulators meet too briefly to allow a build up of air. In the alveolar flap [ɾ] that serves as the /t/ allophone, the tongue is raised to hit the alveolar ridge very quickly. 

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An ELT Glossary Jumbled text activities

In a jumbled text activity, learners see sections of a text - eg the paragraphs or the individual sentences - out of order, and have to reconstruct it by putting the sections in a logical order, eg by noting indicators of cohesion and coherence, or by making logical inferences based on their knowledge of the world. For example, to reconstruct ...

1. He sat down and picked up a magazine.
2. John walked into the waiting room.

...they would need to understand :

• that He refers anaphorically to John, 
• that in the waiting room is elided but understood after He sat down, 
• that John can sit down after walking in but not vice versa, 
• that magazines  are often found in waiting rooms etc. 

so that sentence 2 must logically come before sentence 1.

Jumbled text activities can therefore be used in the classroom to practise various comprehension subskills.


NB : Not to be confused with Jigsaw Activities

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