TKT Glossary Flashcards
Grammatical Forms
These refer to how words are made up and presented in speech or writing.
Noun
A person, place or thing, e.g. elephant, girl, grass, school./u>
Base form of the verb
The base form of the verb is the infinitive form of a verb without ‘to’, e.g.go.
Parts of Speech
A description of the function of a word or a phrase in a sentence, e.g. noun, verb, adjective. It describes how words behave in sentences.
Prefix
A prefix is a meaningful group of letters added to the beginning of a word, e.g. appear – disappear.
Suffix
A suffix is a meaningful group of letters added to the end of a word to make a new word which can be a different part of speech, e.g. care – careful.
Nine parts of speech
Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs, Determiners, Prepositions, Pronouns, Conjunctions, Exclamations
Function
The reason or purpose for communication, e.g. making a suggestion; giving advice.
Grammatical Structure
The arrangement of words into meaningful sentences. A grammatical structure is also a grammatical language item, e.g. present perfect simple.
Affix
A meaningful group of letters added to the beginning or end of a word to make a new word. Affixation is the process of adding a prefix or suffix to word
Grammatical Use
Refer to how grammatical structures are used to convey meaning.
Convey Meaning
To express or communicate meaning. Teachers focus on conveying meaning when they present new language.
Context
The situation in which language is used or presented in the classroom.
The words or phrases before or after a word which help a student to understand that word.
Contractions
A shorter form of a word or words, e.g. you have = you’ve; it is = it’s
Feature
A feature of something is an interesting or important part or characteristic of it.
Skill, Subskill
The four language skills are listening, speaking, reading and writing. Each skill can be divided into smaller subskills that are all part of the main skill, e.g. identifying text organisation (reading); identifying word stress (listening).
Focus on Form
To pay attention to language by identifying and practising it.
Accuracy
The use of correct forms of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. In an accuracy activity, students typically give more attention to correctness. See fluency
Lexis
Individual words or sets of words, e.g. homework, study, whiteboard, get dressed, be on time
Compound
Nouns, verbs, adjectives or prepositions that are made up of two or more words, e.g. assistant office manager, bring back, long-legged, due t
Collocation
Words which are used together regularly, e.g. The teacher made a presentation NOT The teacher performed a presentation.
Chunks
Refers to language that occurs in (semi-) fixed units and that we usually learn as one piece. Have a good trip, I’d like to…, how about…, my name’s….
Idiom
A group of words that are used together, in which the meaning of the whole word group is different from the meaning of each individual word, e.g. She felt under the weather means that she felt ill.
Antonym
The opposite of another word, e.g. hot is the antonym of cold
Synonym
A word which has the same or nearly the same meaning as another word, e.g. nice is a synonym of pleasant.
Lexical Set
A group of words or phrases that are about the same topic, e.g. weather – storm, to rain, wind, cloudy etc
Homophone
A word which sounds the same as another word, but has a different meaning or spelling, e.g. I knew he had won; I bought a new book.
False Friend
A word in the target language which looks or sounds as if it has the same meaning as a similar word in the learners’ first language but does not.
Consolidate
To return to something to understand and remember it more completely. For example, students can consolidate a grammar point by doing extra practice.
Brainstorming
To think of ideas (usually quickly) about a topic (often noting these down). This is often done as preparation before writing or speaking.
Extension task
An activity which give students further practice of the target language or the topic of the lesson.
Highlight
To mark words on paper or on a computer screen using a colour so that they are easier to notice.
To focus on something so that students realise it is important, e.g. to highlight a mistake by underlining it.
Phonology
The study of the sound features used in a language to communicate meaning.
Phoneme
The smallest sound unit which can make a difference to meaning e.g. /p/ in pan, /b/ in ban. Phonemes have their own symbols (phonemic symbols), each of which represents one sound. Words can be presented in phonemic script (usually International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA
Sentence Stress
is where different words in a sentence are stressed. In English these are usually the information-carrying words. In the sentence It was a lovely evening, and the temperature was perfect, the main stress, when spoken, is probably on the word perfect. Stress can therefore be used to show meaning, to emphasise a particular point or feeling./b»/>/b»/>
Word Stress
is the pronunciation of a syllable with more force than the surrounding syllables which are said to be unstressed, e.g. umbrella
Intonation
The way the level of a speaker’s voice changes, often to show how they feel about something, e.g. if they are angry or pleased. Intonation can be rising or falling or both.
Distinguish
Notice or understand the difference between two things
Phonemic Chart
A poster or large diagram of the phonemic symbols.
Voiced Sounds
Spoken using the vibration of our voice e.g. /b/, /d/, /g/
Unvoiced Sounds
Spoken without using the vibration of our voice e.g. /p/, /t/, /k/
Vowels
Sounds made with the mouth partly open and where the air is not stopped by the tongue, lips or teeth
Diphthongs
A movement from one vowel sound to another within a single syllable, e.g. the vowel sound in make /meik/
Consonants
The flow of air is partly blocked by the tongue, lips or teeth when these sounds are made.
Syllable
A part of a word that usually contains a single vowel sound, e.g. pen = one syllable; teacher = two syllables – teach/er; umbrella = three syllables – um/bre/lla.
Content Words
Are nouns, verbs, adverbs or adjectives. Words that give information.
Structural Words
Are prepositions, articles, pronouns or determiners. Words we use to build the grammar of the sentence.
Contrastive Stress
Putting the stress on an unexpected word in a sentence.
Connected Speech
Spoken language in which all the words join to make connected stream of sounds.
Contractions
Shortening in unstressed words and syllables
Weak forms
Unstressed forms or words e.g. can
Rhythm
Pattern of stress of regular speech.
Linking
This happens when one word ends in a consonant sound and the next one starts with a vowel sound.
Word Boundaries
Where one word ends and the next one begins
Function
The reason or purpose for communication, e.g. making a suggestion; giving advice.
Minimal Pair
Two words which are different from each other only by one meaningful sound, and by their meaning, e.g. hear, fear
Confidence
The feeling someone has when they are sure of their ability to do something well. Teachers often do activities that help students to feel more confident about their own ability.
Rhyme
Words that sound the same, e.g. hat, cat.
A song or poem with words that sound the same at the end of each line
Strong/Weak forms
If the word is unstressed, the weak form of vowels may be used, e.g. I can (/kən/) speak Italian, French, English and Spanish. The sound /ə/ is called the schwa. If a word is important, then the strong form is used, and the pronunciation changes, e.g. I can (/kən/) speak a little Spanish in an emergency
