Assam TET LP flashcards

31 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Zone of Proximal Development

Vygotsky's term for the gap between what a learner can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance from a more capable adult or peer. Instruction is most effective inside this zone.

Conservation (Piaget)

The understanding that quantity, mass, or volume stays the same despite changes in appearance or container shape. It typically develops in the concrete operational stage, around seven to eleven years.

Egocentrism

In Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's inability to take another person's viewpoint, shown in inability to see a scene from another position or to understand that others hold different information.

Operant conditioning

Skinner's learning principle that behaviour is shaped by its consequences: reinforcement increases the likelihood of repetition, while punishment and non-reinforcement decrease it. Extinction follows removal of the reinforcing consequence.

Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation arises from interest, curiosity, or satisfaction in the activity itself. Extrinsic motivation comes from external rewards or pressure such as marks, prizes, or fear of punishment.

Inclusive education

An approach in which schools and curricula adapt to accommodate all learners, including those with disabilities or diverse backgrounds, rather than segregating or excluding them. It requires differentiated teaching and support services.

Formative assessment

Assessment conducted during teaching to monitor learning and adjust instruction. It is diagnostic and feedback-oriented, contrasting with summative assessment, which judges achievement at the end of a unit or course.

Multiple intelligences (Gardner)

Howard Gardner's theory proposing several relatively independent intelligences, including linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic abilities, rather than a single general intelligence.

Language Acquisition Device

Chomsky's hypothesised innate mental faculty that enables children to acquire grammar rapidly from limited exposure. It underpins nativist theory and contrasts with behaviourist imitation and reinforcement explanations.

Phoneme and morpheme

A phoneme is the smallest sound unit that distinguishes meaning, such as /p/ and /b/ in pat and bat. A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit, such as un- or -ed.

Receptive and productive skills

Listening and reading are receptive skills, where the learner receives and decodes language. Speaking and writing are productive skills. Receptive competence normally develops before productive competence in language learning.

Cloze test

A reading assessment in which words are deleted from a passage at regular intervals and the learner supplies them using context. It measures comprehension and grammatical prediction rather than isolated vocabulary.

Bottom-up reading model

A model in which the reader builds meaning from letters to words to sentences to text. It emphasises decoding and phonics, and contrasts with top-down models driven by prediction and prior knowledge.

Alliteration

A figure of speech in which the same initial consonant sound is repeated in nearby words, as in 'sweet silent streams'. It is a sound device common in poetry and slogans.

Simile and metaphor

A simile compares two things using like or as, as in 'brave as a lion'. A metaphor states the comparison directly without like or as, as in 'he is a lion in battle'.

Assamese script

The script used for Assamese, derived from the Brahmi lineage and sharing the Eastern Nagari form with Bengali. It has distinctive letters such as ৰ and ৱ and is written left to right.

Error versus mistake

An error is a systematic deviation reflecting an incomplete or incorrect rule in the learner's developing language system. A mistake is a performance slip that the learner can identify and self-correct.

Present perfect tense

Formed with has or have plus the past participle. It expresses a past action with present relevance or an action continuing to now, as in 'She has finished her homework'.

Passive voice formation

Move the object to subject position, use the correct form of be plus the past participle, and add the agent after 'by' if needed. Only transitive verbs can be made passive.

Reported speech tense shift

When the reporting verb is in the past, the reported verb usually shifts one step back: present to past, past to past perfect, will to would. Pronouns and time words also adjust.

Third conditional

Formed with if plus past perfect in the condition and would have plus past participle in the result, as in 'If I had studied, I would have passed'. It describes an unreal past situation.

Definite and indefinite articles

The definite article 'the' marks a specific or already-mentioned referent. Indefinite 'a' precedes consonant sounds and 'an' precedes vowel sounds, introducing one non-specific item.

Modal verbs rule

Modal verbs such as can, may, must, should, and might are followed by the bare infinitive without 'to'. They are not inflected for person or number and express ability, permission, obligation, or possibility.

Communicative Language Teaching

An approach emphasising meaningful interaction, fluency, and authentic tasks over rule memorisation and translation. Grammar is taught in context, and learners use language for real communicative purposes.

Collocation

A habitual combination of words that native speakers use together, such as 'make a decision' or 'heavy rain'. Teaching collocations improves naturalness and fluency in second-language writing and speech.

Area of a triangle

The area equals half the base multiplied by the perpendicular height, written A = ½ × b × h. The height must be measured perpendicular to the chosen base, not along a sloping side.

LCM and HCF relation

For two positive integers, the product of their LCM and HCF equals the product of the two numbers. This relation allows one value to be found when the other three are known.

Simple interest formula

Simple interest equals principal × rate × time divided by 100, written I = PRT/100, with rate as an annual percentage and time in years. Interest is calculated only on the original principal.

Divisibility by 3 and 9

A number is divisible by 3 if its digit sum is divisible by 3, and by 9 if its digit sum is divisible by 9. Both tests rely on place-value remainders rather than the last digit.

Food chain and trophic levels

A sequence from producers through herbivores to carnivores and decomposers, showing energy transfer. Energy decreases at each successive trophic level, so chains rarely exceed four or five links.

Water cycle

The continuous movement of water through evaporation, transpiration, condensation, precipitation, and collection. Solar energy drives evaporation, and condensation in cooler air forms clouds and rainfall.