Acronyms and Initialisms
BICS
What is Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills, the everyday conversational language that typically develops within 1 to 3 years?
This technique has students repeating words or phrases together in unison to build oral fluency and pronunciation skills.
What is Choral Response?
This 1974 law requires schools to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that prevent ELLs from fully participating in education.
What is the Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA)?
This branch of linguistics studies the structure of words, including prefixes, suffixes, and root formations.
What is Morphology?
This teaching strategy provides temporary support, such as sentence frames or modeling, to help students perform tasks until they can do them independently.
What is Scaffolding?
CALP
What is Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency, the language skills needed for academic success, which take 5 to 7 years to develop?
In this strategy, the teacher models fluent reading while engaging students through discussion, questioning, and active participation.
What is Interactive Read-Aloud?
Later replaced by the "Every Student Succeed Act" in 2015, this 2001 law required annual testing of ELLs in reading and math and held schools accountable for English language proficiency progress.
What is the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)?
This linguistic field focuses on meaning in language, including word meanings, sentence meanings, and context-based meanings.
What is Semantics?
Some ELLs go through this stage where they listen and absorb language but are not yet speaking.
What is the Silent Period?
LTEL
What is Long-Term English Learner, a student who has been classified as an ELL for six or more years but has not yet reached English proficiency?
This teaching method involves students responding to verbal commands with physical movement, helping reinforce language learning through action.
What is Total Physical Response (TPR)?
This 1982 Supreme Court case ruled that states cannot deny public education to undocumented immigrant children.
What is Plyler v. Doe?
This aspect of language refers to how context influences meaning, including implied meanings, social rules, and conversational norms.
What is Pragmatics?
This instructional approach makes academic content more understandable for ELLs by adapting language, using visuals, and incorporating hands-on activities.
What is Sheltered Instruction?
SIOP
What is the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, a widely used instructional model that helps ELLs access grade-level content while developing English proficiency?
This classroom strategy displays key vocabulary in an organized flowchart format, is student-generated, and helps reinforce language development through visual connections.
What is a Word Wall?
This 1974 Supreme Court case ruled that providing the same education to ELLs and native English speakers is not equitable if ELLs cannot understand the instruction.
What is Lau vs Nichols?
This phenomenon occurs when bilingual speakers switch between two languages within a single conversation, sentence, or phrase.
What is Code-Switching?
This concept, developed by Vygotsky, describes the range of tasks a learner can do with guidance but not yet independently.
What is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)?
TBE
What is Transitional Bilingual Education, a program that provides instruction in both a student’s native language and English, gradually shifting to full English instruction?
This strategy, central to Krashen’s theories, refers to language that is slightly above a learner’s current proficiency level but still understandable with the help of context, visuals, or prior knowledge.
What is Comprehensible Input?
This 1981 case established a three-part test requiring ELL programs to be based on sound theory, effectively implemented, and evaluated for success.
What is Castañeda v. Pickard?
This term describes how knowledge of a first language influences the learning of a second language, either positively or negatively.
What is Language Transfer?
The unique, evolving language system that learners create as they acquire a second language. It includes elements of both their first language (L1) and the target language (L2), along with rules that may not exist in either. It is temporary and changes as proficiency grows.
What is interlanguage?