This is a book for teachers of English as a foreign or second language. It is for those who are involved in training or development, whether pre-service or in-service, and whether informal or as part of a certificated training course. Training and development involves not just the acquisition of new skills and techniques but also a specialized language to talk about them and to make sense of how other professionals talk about them. Specialized language - called jargon by outsiders, but terminology by those who use it - is the discourse of any particular group of professionals. It facilitates communication within the group, and it identifies individuals as belonging to the group. Professional training and development, therefore, means becoming a member of a discourse community, and becoming comfortable with its language. This book aims to help you to do that. Learning the terminology of language teaching also means understanding the concepts represented by these terms and understanding how they are interrelated. So, this book is more than just a glossary or a dictionary. It is also an encyclopaedia, where each entry provides a short summary of the major issues, debates and practical implications associated with each concept, as well as making connections between related concepts. You can check the meaning of terms that are new to you. You can also gain a more wide-ranging understanding of a specific topic of interest by reading around a topic and following up its network of cross-references. The topic areas covered in this book are those that inform the professional skills of a language teacher. These divide into three main fields: language, learning and teaching. This means that you will find an entry on modal verbs alongside an entry on motivation alongside one on mixed ability. For convenience, these fields have been subdivided into the following categories:
