Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition

CILT Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research.
Address: 20 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1.
cloze test I procedure Consists of a written passage in which, after the
first, introductory paragraph, every fifth (or sixth…or twelfth)
word is left out for the student to supply. Used to measure the
readability of texts, reading and listening comprehension, and
general proficiency in English.
code (1) The inventory of signs and rules in a system. Refers to systems like
traffic-lights and visual communications or to the formal aspects of human
language. (2) In sociolinguistics. See elaborated code and restricted code,
code switching The usually unconscious movement from one language to
another in the course of one utterance or even sentence. Also the
changing of style or dialect within an utterance in one language.
cognitive code learning Emphasises the conscious learning of new items by
deliberate attention to ‘rules’ rather than by the stimulus-response
training of behaviourism.
coherence The relationship between illocutionary acts in discourse.
There may be no obvious link between utterances as in:
A: There’s the doorbell.
B: I’m making dinner.
Their coherence depends on their communicative value in context
as request and excuse:

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A: There’s the doorbell. (Can you answer it please?)
B: I’m making dinner. (So I can’t answer it.)
cohesion The overt signalling by means of formal links of syntax and
semantics between sentences and their parts indicating the relationship
between them. E.g. reference as in ‘The man walked down the street.
He was dressed in black.’
collocation The tendency for words to occur predictably with others; e.g.
solve/problem. Fixed collations are very predictable; e.g. hearth and
home; hop, skip and jump. See Idiom.
common core Administratively the central part of a course, programme or
syllabus which must be followed by everyone. The elements of the
language essential to any language teaching programme.
communicative language teaching A teaching approach relating the
teaching techniques (e.g. pair and group work), language content and
materials (e.g. authentic material) to the communication needs of the
students outside the classroom.
community language learning see counselling learning. Derived from
counselling learning, it places the principles of learning above those of
teaching in emphasising the security of the learner in the ‘investment’
phase and the discussion of the experience in the ‘reflections’ phase.
The ‘teacher’ creates an atmosphere of permissiveness, warmth and
acceptance and has the role of counsellor and informant.
competence An idealised speaker-listener’s perfect knowledge of his own
language in a completely homogeneous speech community. Contrasted
with ‘performance’: all aspects of language use which are not accounted
for by the concept ‘competence’. These include mis-pronunciations,
slips, and variation according to situation of language use. The
distinction was first technically made by Chomsky.
componental analysis The analysis of word meaning into distinctive
semantic features. E.g. boy=+human,+male,-adult.
content word A word with a full lexical meaning of its own, i.e. nouns,
main verbs, adjectives and most adverbs. Cf. function words.
contextualisation Placing by the teacher or materials writer of an item to
be learnt in a realistic and meaningful situation in order to facilitate its
learning.
contrastive analysis Comparison of two languages at phonological,
grammatical, lexical and cultural levels. Until recently, a syllabus was
often based on contrasts between mother tongue and target language.
Considered today to be useful to explain learners’ errors rather than a
predictive procedure for syllabus design. See interference.