Appendix A. Glossary of Frequently Used Terms

ACCULTURATION

The process of adjusting to and becoming comfortable with the ways of thinking, beliefs, values, and emotions of a culture different from one's own.

BICS

Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills. Mastery of listening and speaking skills in a second language which usually takes about two years to accomplish.

BICULTURALISM

The ability of a person to feel comfortable with the beliefs, values, and ways of thinking of two different cultures.

BILINGUALISM

Effective communication in two languages.

CALP

Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency. Academic language skills, such as processing information, reading, knowledge of sophisticated content-area vocabulary, and writing. Acquisition of CALP may require five to seven years.

CLDE CHILD

Culturally and linguistically different exceptional child. This child has special needs or handicaps which may require special education. He also has needs specific to his or her cultural and linguistic background. Often this child is also limited in English proficiency.

CLOZE PROCEDURE

An informal strategy for teaching and assessing understanding and use of language. This procedure may be oral or written, but involves leaving out a word systematically from a reading or oral passage. The student's task is to use context clues to select a word which fits into the passage and “makes sense.”.

COGNITIVE STYLES/LEARNING STYLES

This term describes how people prefer to process information, the way they organize and control the demands of complex situations and tasks.

CRITERION-REFERENCED TESTS (CRT)

Provides information which is useful in classroom instruction. Criterion-referenced measures are used to ascertain an individual's status against some criteria or performance standard.

FIELD-INDEPENDENT

People who are field-independent tend to prefer individual and independent types of activities. They use a reflective, abstract, analytic style in processing information.

FIELD-DEPENDENT

Those who use a field-dependent style tend to place more emphasis on people and their environment, learn best from demonstration and concrete and active participation. They process information globally, seeing how parts fit into a whole.

CULTURE

A total way of life of a people that gives meaning to all human activity.

DIFFERENCE:

Contrasted with a disorder (or handicap), the assumption is made that many behaviors are the result of background and experience.

ECOLOGICAL MODEL OF ASSESSMENT:

Gathering information about the child's functioning in all environments (home, school, etc.) and noting the interaction between the child and his environment.

ESOL:

English for Speakers of Other Languages program, similar to ESL (English as a second language).

FLUENCY:

The ability to speak and\or write easily and smoothly.

LANGUAGE DOMINANCE:

The assumption that a bilingual person is more proficient in one of his languages than the other.

L1:

The first language learned, the native language of a person.

L2:

The second language learned by a person.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY:

Competence in a language. This may be oral, written, reading, or listening competence and in L1 or L2.

LANGUAGE SAMPLE:

A sample of the speech or writing or a person which is collected and systematically analyzed to determine the proficiency of the individual.

L.E.P.:

Limited English Proficient. A person may be limited in all language skill areas (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) or in only one of these.

 

 

LOCUS OF CONTROL:

A construct from the study of social learning theory often viewed as a dimension of personality. Students with an external locus of control perceive outside forces of chance, luck, and fate as powerful controlling forces in their lives. People with an internal locus of control see themselves as in control of what happens to them in life.

MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAM:

A team of educators and specialists with a wide variety of skills from their different backgrounds. They have responsibility as a team to consider a student's problems, devise a plan for intervention and\or assessment, implement that plan, and make decisions for further intervention or placement in special education, based on interpretation of information collected.

NATIVE LANGUAGE:

Also called mother tongue or home language, this is generally thought of as the first language learned.

NONBIASED ASSESSMENT:

A systematic procedure whereby the evaluator examines tests and testing situations for possible linguistic or cultural bias which may distort the assessment results.

PHONOLOGY:

Pronunciation of the sounds of a language.

PRAGMATICS:

the study of how linguistic signs are used and interpreted by speakers of natural languages in specific contexts of use, e.g., the relationship in English between the words, “I promise” and a speaker's intentions to perform a future action or a hearer's expectations that the action will be performed.

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION (SLA):

The process of learning a second language after the basics have been learned in a first language.

SEMANTICS:

the study of how linguistic signs behave in relation to the objects or concepts they refer to (their denotations) or their senses (their connotations), e.g., the relationship between the English word star and the numerous and earthly objects to which it may refer and the several senses it may have.

STANDARDIZED ASSESSMENT:

A set of consistent procedures for constructing, administering, and scoring an assessment. The goal of standardization is to ensure that all students are assessed under uniform conditions so that interpretation of their performance is comparable and not influenced by differing conditions.

SYNTACTICS:

The study of how linguistic signs, or symbols, behave in relation to each other, e.g., the formal relationship that obtains between active and passive verb forms in English.

SYNTAX:

The grammar and structure of a language.