Glossary


Browse the glossary using this index

Special | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | ALL

Page:  1  2  (Next)
  ALL

A

academic register

Curriculum/educational language that features a specific vocabulary and way of interacting with text that differs from a standard, everyday language.


C

chunking

A process by which a series of unrelated pieces of information can become linked into a meaningful single unit or whole.


cognition/cognitive processing

Cognition is the umbrella term for the faculties we possess that track happenings in the world and register our feelings, thoughts, and motivations.  These cognitive processes collectively have to determine the significance of all these external and internal sources of information and guide us to make appropriate and effective responses.  Examples of cognitive processes include: "attention, perception, learning, memory, language, problem-solving, reasoning and thinking." (Eysenck & Keane, p.1. 2020).

Reference;

Eysenck, Michael W. and Keane, Mark T. (2020) Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook. 8th edn. London and New York: Psychology Press



cognitive profile

The pattern of cognitive processes that affect how learners interact and perform in learning situations.


consolidation (memory)

Refers to a set of processes that jointly fixes a memory trace (fact, happening etc.) after it has been acquired.


corpus (corpora)

A large collection of English Language texts (spoken and written words) organised along domain of use, text purpose and frequency of linguistic units/features characteristics within a Standard Language, available online for academic enquiry.  These large word banks available for search and research into language use.  Examples are the British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English.


D

deliberate practice

"...a set of conditions where practice had been uniformly associated with improved performance.  Significant improvements in performance were realized when individuals were 1) given a task with a well-defined goal, 2) motivated to improve, 3) provided with feedback, and 4) provided with ample opportunities for repetition and gradual refinements of their performance."

Reference:

Anders Ericsson, K. (2008), Deliberate Practice and Acquisition of Expert Performance: A General Overview. Academic Emergency Medicine, 15: 988-994. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1553-2712.2008.00227.x


G

grapheme

A written or printed letter (or cluster of letters) that corresponds with a specific phoneme.  Examples: <ch>, <t>, <x> etc.


M

morpheme

The smallest unit of meaning in a language.


morphology

The study of the meaning and structure units in a language.


O

opaque orthography

A writing system in which the pronunciation of words is often not directly or consistently predictable from their written form.


orthography

The written form of a language - how speech sounds are standardly represented within a language.


P

phoneme

The smallest unit of sound that changes meaning, such as the element p in “tap,” which separates that word from “tab,” “tag,” and “tan”  Examples: /t/. /ks/, /p/ etc.


place-keeping

The ability to keep track of the position within a string of information between breaks in attention, for example, when looking up and down during copying tasks.


Q

qualitative assessment

In a qualitative assessment, the information (data) collected is usually in the form of words and images.  It is a subjective method of data collection using the observation of performance and interviews etc.  The data is less generalisable, i.e. we can draw fewer general conclusions from findings than we can when using statistical methods.


S

semantic

'Meaningful' - linking to facts and knowledge we have of the world and its contents.


serial information

A string of information - separate bits of information that do not blend together to form meaning units so are processed one at a time.


T

transparent orthography

A writing system in which the pronunciation of words is usually directly or consistently predictable from their written form.


V

visual attention span

The number of orthographic units (letters/symbols) that a person can process at a glance.


visual noise

A situation where the volume of visual information is off-putting or confusing for the person perceiving it.



Page:  1  2  (Next)
  ALL