GTLE English Subject Specialism cheat sheet

A sentence needs a subject and a finite verb; a clause containing one finite verb is a main clause, and any further finite verb marks a second clause (compound or complex).

The eight word classes: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, determiner; interjections sit outside clause structure.

Count nouns take plural inflection and a/an; mass nouns resist both but allow quantifiers (much, little, a great deal of).

Present perfect (have + past participle) links a past event to present relevance and rejects definite past-time adverbials such as 'yesterday'.

Passive voice requires a transitive verb and promotes the object; the by-phrase is optional and omitted when the agent is unknown or unimportant.

Restrictive relative clauses take no comma and allow 'that'; non-restrictive clauses take commas and reject 'that'.

Subject-verb agreement is resolved by the head noun, not by intervening prepositional phrases: 'The list of items is long'.

Modals carry no third-person -s and no non-finite forms; they express possibility (may), obligation (must), or ability (can).

Coordination joins units of equal rank with and/but/or; subordination embeds one clause inside another using because, although, if, when.

Transactional talk aims at information exchange; interactional talk maintains social relations - the two demand different turn-taking and politeness strategies.

Adjacency pairs are two-part sequences (greeting/greeting, question/answer, invitation/acceptance or refusal); the second part is conditionally relevant.

Preference organisation: acceptances are structurally unmarked and immediate; refusals are dispreferred and typically delayed with a pause, hedge, or account.

Repair: self-initiated self-repair is preferred in conversation; other-initiation appears as a clarification question or a partial repeat.

Backchannels (mm, yeah, right) signal listenership without claiming a full turn; they are not interruptions.

Turn-constructional units end at transition-relevance places, where speaker change is licensed but not obligatory.

Filled pauses and discourse markers (well, you know, I mean) manage planning time and mark stance rather than signalling ignorance.

Prosodic cues - falling tone for statements, rising for yes/no questions, and stress for focus - carry meaning that lexis alone does not supply.

English has 44 phonemes in Received Pronunciation: 24 consonants and 20 vowels (12 monophthongs, 8 diphthongs).

Voicing distinguishes pairs such as /p b/, /t d/, /k g/, /f v/, /s z/, /ʃ ʒ/, /tʃ dʒ/, /θ ð/.

Place of articulation runs bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, post-alveolar, palatal, velar, glottal; manner covers plosive, fricative, affricate, nasal, lateral, approximant.

Aspiration of voiceless plosives occurs syllable-initially before a stressed vowel: 'pin' [pʰɪn] versus 'spin' [spɪn].

Minimal pairs (ship/sheep, bit/beat) establish phoneme status; complementary distribution establishes allophony.

Syllable structure is (onset) + nucleus + (coda); the nucleus is normally a vowel, and English permits clusters such as /str/ and /ŋks/.

Stress placement in nouns versus verbs shifts with word class: 'record (noun) versus re'cord (verb).

Connected speech processes: elision (next day → /neks deɪ/), assimilation (ten bikes → /tem baɪks/), and liaison or intrusive /r/ in non-rhotic accents.

Intonation contours: fall for completeness, rise for continuation or yes/no questions, fall-rise for reservation or contrast.

Receptive knowledge (recognising a word in reading) precedes productive knowledge (using it in speech or writing); teaching targets differ for each.

Nation's framework: form (spoken, written, word parts), meaning (concept, associations), and use (grammatical functions, collocations, constraints).

High-frequency words cover roughly 2,000 word families and account for about 80% of running text; academic vocabulary adds a further layer of coverage.

A word family groups a headword with its inflections and regular derivations; a lemma excludes derived forms.

Depth versus breadth: breadth counts how many words a learner knows, depth measures how well each is known.

Lexical chunks (in spite of, take into account) are stored and retrieved whole, reducing processing load.

Synonymy is rarely complete; near-synonyms differ in connotation, collocation, and register (begin/commence, buy/purchase).

Spaced retrieval with expanding intervals produces stronger retention than massed repetition of the same list.

Sense relations: synonymy (same sense), antonymy (gradable, complementary, or converse), hyponymy (kind of), meronymy (part of).

Polysemy is one lexeme with several related senses; homonymy is distinct lexemes that happen to share a form, as 'bank' (river) and 'bank' (finance).

Componential analysis breaks meaning into features [+human], [+male], [+adult], separating 'man', 'boy', 'woman'.

Connotation is the evaluative or emotive shading a word carries; denotation is its core referential meaning.

Prototype theory: category membership is graded, so a robin is a better example of bird than a penguin.

Presupposition is meaning assumed rather than asserted: 'Have you stopped smoking?' presupposes prior smoking.

Entailment is a truth relation: if A entails B, then whenever A is true B must be true.

Semantic field and lexical set group words by shared meaning domain; collocation restricts which words co-occur naturally.

Skimming extracts gist at speed; scanning locates specific detail; intensive reading builds close understanding of a short text.

Top-down processing uses schema and prediction; bottom-up processing decodes letters, words, and syntax; fluent readers integrate both.

Main idea sits at the text or paragraph level; supporting details illustrate or prove it, and distractors often promote a detail to main idea.

Inference questions require a conclusion licensed by the text, not by general knowledge; the answer must be defensible from stated evidence.

Cohesive devices: reference (pronouns), substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion through repetition and synonymy.

Critical reading separates claim from evidence and asks who the writer is, who the audience is, and what purpose the text serves.

Fact versus opinion: verifiable statements can be checked; evaluative statements carry the writer's judgement and often include modal or attitudinal lexis.

Bias is detectable through loaded lexis, selective quotation, omission of counter-evidence, and framing of the headline or opening.

Narrative point of view: first person, second person, third-person limited, third-person omniscient, and free indirect discourse.

Prose fiction analysis covers plot, characterisation (direct and indirect), setting, narrative voice, and structure (chronology, flashback, frame).

Poetic metre counts feet per line: iamb (˘ /), trochee (/ ˘), anapaest (˘ ˘ /), dactyl (/ ˘ ˘); pentameter has five feet.

Rhyme schemes are lettered by line (abab quatrain, abba enclosed, aabb couplets); blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Sound devices: alliteration (initial consonants), assonance (vowels), consonance (final consonants), onomatopoeia (imitative sound).

Figurative language: metaphor (implied comparison), simile (overt comparison with like/as), personification, metonymy (attribute for whole), synecdoche (part for whole).

Dramatic terms: soliloquy (alone on stage), aside (to audience, unheard by others), dramatic irony (audience knows more than the character).

Tragic structure after Aristotle: hamartia, peripeteia (reversal), anagnorisis (recognition), and catharsis in the audience.

Historical periods: Old English, Middle English, Renaissance, Restoration, Romantic, Victorian, Modernist, Postmodern - each with characteristic form and preoccupation.

Paragraph architecture: topic sentence, supporting evidence, commentary, and a closing or linking sentence.

Essay modes: narration, description, exposition (compare-contrast, cause-effect, process, definition), and argumentation.

Thesis statement is a single arguable claim; a topic alone ('pollution is bad') is not a thesis because it cannot be contested.

Rhetorical appeals: ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion), logos (reason); effective argument usually combines all three.

Cohesion is surface linkage through connectives and reference; coherence is the underlying logical unity a reader perceives.

Register must match audience and purpose: formal written English avoids contractions, slang, and first-person anecdote in academic argument.

Common faults: comma splice, run-on sentence, dangling modifier, faulty parallelism, and pronoun with unclear antecedent.

The writing process: prewriting, drafting, revising for structure, editing for sentence-level accuracy, proofreading for mechanics.

Citation and attribution distinguish a writer's own claim from borrowed evidence; unattributed borrowing is plagiarism.

Communicative Language Teaching prioritises meaningful interaction, authentic tasks, and fluency alongside accuracy.

Presentation-Practice-Production moves from controlled to free use; Task-Based Learning reverses this, starting with a task and treating language focus as post-task.

The PPP/TBL contrast maps onto deductive teaching (rule first) versus inductive teaching (learners discover the rule from examples).

Scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development: support is withdrawn progressively as competence grows.

Four skills integration: receptive skills (listening, reading) supply input; productive skills (speaking, writing) require output and feedback.

Lesson staging: lead-in, presentation or exposure, controlled practice, freer practice, production, and review - each with a stated aim.

Learner-centred planning starts from needs analysis and sets measurable objectives rather than covering textbook pages.

Content and Language Integrated Learning teaches subject content through English, with dual objectives for content and language.

Error correction choices: immediate versus delayed, explicit versus recast, and self- versus peer-correction each suit different stages.

Validity asks whether a test measures what it claims; reliability asks whether it produces consistent results across occasions and raters.

Washback is the effect of testing on teaching and learning; high-stakes tests produce strong washback, positive or negative.

Formative assessment informs learning during a course; summative assessment certifies achievement at its end.

Norm-referenced tests rank candidates against each other; criterion-referenced tests measure against a defined standard.

Test item types: multiple choice, cloze, gap-fill, matching, short answer, and productive tasks scored with an analytic or holistic rubric.

A distractor should be plausible to a weak candidate but clearly wrong to a strong one; implausible options lower discrimination.

Interference errors arise from the first language (L1 transfer); developmental errors reflect an incomplete rule system and occur regardless of L1.

Error versus mistake: an error is systematic and self-uncorrectable, a mistake is a performance slip the learner can repair.

Interlanguage is the learner's evolving rule system, subject to fossilisation when errors persist despite exposure and instruction.

Sociolect varies with social class or group; idiolect is an individual's distinctive usage; dialect differs in lexis, grammar, and pronunciation.

Register is determined by field (topic), tenor (relationship), and mode (spoken or written) in Hallidayan terms.

Standard English is a variety defined by grammar and lexis, not accent; Received Pronunciation is an accent, not a language variety.

Pidgin is a contact language with no native speakers; a creole arises when a pidgin becomes the first language of a community.

Code-switching alternates between varieties within a conversation and can index identity, solidarity, or topic change.

Linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf) claims language shapes thought; the strong determinist version is not supported by evidence.

Politeness theory: positive face seeks approval, negative face seeks freedom from imposition; face-threatening acts require mitigation.

Professional genres - report, memo, proposal, email - follow conventions for structure, tone, and level of formality.

Language change is driven by contact, technology, and analogy; prescriptive rules often lag behind attested usage.