Glossary
Course vocabulary. Use these meanings consistently.
REFERENCE · ENGLISH LANGUAGE SYSTEM
Language
- Collocation
- Words that conventionally occur together, such as reach a decision. Correct grammar does not guarantee natural collocation.
- Phrase frame
- A reusable sequence with a slot, such as “The main reason is …”. Stored as one retrieval unit.
- Paraphrase
- Expressing the same meaning with different language while preserving scope and certainty.
- Complex sentence
- An independent clause plus at least one dependent clause. Complexity is a relationship between ideas, not sentence length.
- Cohesion
- Visible links among sentences: reference words, repetition, substitution, and connectors.
- Coherence
- The reader or listener can follow the ideas as one logical whole.
- Register
- Language choices suited to situation, relationship, and purpose: informal, neutral, formal, technical, or diplomatic.
- Auxiliary verb
- A helping verb used for tense, aspect, voice, negation, questions, or emphasis: be, have, do and modal verbs.
- Finite verb
- The verb element marked for tense or modality and linked to the clause subject.
- Aspect
- How an event is viewed: simple as fact or whole, continuous as unfolding, perfect as prior to a reference point.
- Determiner
- A word introducing a noun phrase and constraining reference or quantity: a, the, this, some, each.
- Modality
- Language expressing stance toward possibility, certainty, necessity, permission, ability, willingness, or obligation.
- Relative clause
- A clause modifying a noun, often introduced by who, which, that, whose, where, or no marker.
- Phrasal verb
- A verb plus particle functioning as one lexical unit, such as look into or put off.
- Connotation
- Evaluative or emotional associations carried beyond a word’s core denotation.
Speech
- Word stress
- The syllable given greatest prominence inside a word.
- Sentence stress
- Prominence placed on message-carrying words or a word being contrasted.
- Weak form
- A reduced pronunciation of a grammar word in unstressed speech, often containing schwa /ə/.
- Connected speech
- Sound changes across word boundaries, including linking, intrusion, assimilation, and elision.
- Repair
- An action that restores shared meaning after trouble: clarify, paraphrase, correct, or confirm.
- Thought unit
- A short group of words spoken as one meaningful chunk, usually with one main stress.
Assessment
- Bottleneck
- The repeated weakness currently causing the largest performance loss.
- Descriptor
- An observable statement of what performance at a level looks like.
- Language gap
- A recurring failure in form, meaning, collocation, register, pronunciation, or comprehension shown by real output.
- Lexical depth
- Knowledge of a word’s senses, forms, grammar, collocations, connotations, register, and contrasts.
- Retrieval practice
- Reconstructing knowledge without looking before checking the answer.
Grammar terms follow Cambridge Grammar Today; communicative terms align with the CEFR Companion Volume.