Interaction patterns

The different ways learners and the teacher work together in class, e.g. learner to learner, in pairs or groups or teacher to learner, in open class, in plenary. When teachers plan lessons, they think about interaction patterns and write them on their plan.

Interference

Interference happens when the learner’s mother tongue affects performance in the target language, especially in pronunciation, lexis or grammar. For example, a learner may make a grammatical mistake because they apply the same grammatical pattern as they use in their mother tongue to what they want to say in the target language, but the L1grammatical pattern is not appropriate in L2.

Interlanguage

~ is the language produced by an individual learner in the process of learning a foreign language. This idiosyncratic variety will differ from standard forms of the target language and is likely to contain errors, simplification, negative transfer etc. It is the learners’ own version of the second language which they speak as they learn. Interlanguage is constantly changing and developing as learners learn more of the second language.

Intermediate

At this level a student will have a working vocabulary of between 1500 and 2000 words and should be able to cope easily in most everyday situations. There should be an ability to express needs, thoughts and feelings in a reasonably clear way.

Intrinsic motivation

Motivation that comes from within the individual.

Introductory activity

An activity which takes place at the beginning of a lesson. Introductory activities often include warmers and lead-ins.

Item

1. A piece of language, e.g. a vocabulary or a grammar item. 2. The questions (items) in a testto which a learner has to respond.

Jigsaw listening/reading

A text is divided into two or more different parts. Learners listen to or read their part only, then share their information with other learners so that in the end everyone knows all the information. In this way, the text is made into an information-gap activity.

Jumbled letters/paragraphs/pictures/sentences/words

A word in which the letters are not in the correct order, a sentence in which the words are not in the correct order, a text in which the paragraphs or sentences are not in the correct order, or a series of pictures that are not in the correct order. The learners put the letters, words, text or pictures into the correct order.

First language / the mother tongue.

Second language.