TNTET Paper 2 flashcards

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

Zone of Proximal Development

Vygotsky's concept describing the distance between what a learner can do unaided and what the learner can achieve with guidance from a more capable peer or adult; instruction should target this range.

Conservation (Piaget)

The understanding that quantity, mass or volume remains unchanged when appearance or arrangement changes; it appears in the concrete operational stage, roughly ages 7 to 11.

Intelligence quotient formula

IQ = (mental age ÷ chronological age) × 100; a 10-year-old with a mental age of 12 scores 120, placing the child above the average band of 90 to 110.

RTE Act 2009

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 guarantees free elementary schooling for ages 6 to 14, bans capitation fees and screening, and fixes teacher qualifications and pupil-teacher ratios.

Formative assessment

Assessment carried out during teaching to diagnose gaps and adjust instruction; it is continuous, low-stakes and feedback-oriented, unlike summative assessment conducted at the end of a unit.

Dyscalculia

A specific learning disability affecting number sense, place value and computation despite adequate intelligence and teaching; it is not caused by low general ability or poor attendance.

Conventional morality

Kohlberg's second level, where right and wrong are judged by social expectations and rules; it includes good-boy/good-girl (stage 3) and law-and-order (stage 4) reasoning.

Operant conditioning

Skinner's principle that behaviour is shaped by its consequences: reinforcement increases and punishment decreases the likelihood that a given response will be repeated.

Uyirmei letters

The 216 Tamil compound letters formed by combining each of the 12 vowels (uyir) with each of the 18 consonants (mei); 12 × 18 = 216.

Vetrumai case markers

Tamil's eight cases are marked by urubugal such as ஐ (accusative), ஆல் (instrumental), கு (dative), இன் (ablative), அது (genitive) and இல் (locative), with the vocative as the eighth.

Thogai nilai thodar

Six Tamil compound-phrase types: வேற்றுமைத்தொகை, வினைத்தொகை, பண்புத்தொகை, உவமைத்தொகை, அன்மொழித்தொகை and உம்மைத்தொகை, each formed by fusing words into one unit.

Eight Sangam anthologies

The எட்டுத்தொகை comprises நற்றிணை, குறுந்தொகை, ஐங்குறுநூறு, பதிற்றுப்பத்து, பரிபாடல், கலித்தொகை, அகநானூறு and புறநானூறு, the classical Tamil Sangam poetry collections.

Communicative Language Teaching

An approach whose aim is communicative competence; lessons use information-gap, role-play and pair work, and grammar is taught to support real use rather than isolated drilling.

LSRW sequence

Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing, the natural order of language skill development; listening and reading are receptive skills while speaking and writing are productive skills.

Morpheme

The smallest meaningful unit of a language; free morphemes stand alone as words such as book, while bound morphemes must attach to a base, as in un- or -s.

Diagnostic test

A test administered before remediation to locate specific learning difficulties in a skill area; it identifies error patterns rather than awarding grades or ranks.

Skimming

Rapid reading to grasp the gist or general idea of a text, such as previewing a chapter; it differs from scanning, which searches for specific details.

Cloze test

A test in which words are deleted from a passage at regular intervals and the learner supplies them using grammatical and semantic cues; it measures comprehension and language proficiency.

Passive voice formation

Formed by making the object the subject, using be in the same tense plus the past participle, and optionally adding by + agent; the original tense is preserved.

Reported speech backshift

When the reporting verb is past, present tenses shift to past and present perfect to past perfect; universal truths and habitual facts normally remain unchanged.

Subject-verb concord

The verb agrees with its subject in number and person; phrases between them do not affect agreement, and each, every, either and neither take singular verbs.

Articles a, an, the

A and an are indefinite articles chosen by initial sound rather than spelling (an hour, a university); the is definite, used for unique or already mentioned nouns.

Top-down processing

A reading model in which the learner uses prior knowledge, context and expectations to predict meaning, moving from whole text to individual words, contrasted with bottom-up decoding.

HCF and LCM relation

For two positive integers a and b, HCF(a, b) × LCM(a, b) = a × b; knowing the HCF gives the LCM as (a × b) ÷ HCF.

Pythagorean triple

Three positive integers satisfying a² + b² = c², such as 3-4-5, 5-12-13 and 8-15-17; each is a scaled right triangle used in mensuration problems.

Mean, median and mode

Mean is the sum divided by the number of observations; median is the middle value of ordered data; mode is the most frequent value, and data may have no mode.

Newton's second law

The net force acting on a body equals its mass times its acceleration (F = ma); force is measured in newtons, where 1 N = 1 kg m/s².

Photosynthesis equation

6CO₂ + 6H₂O → C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂, occurring in chloroplasts with chlorophyll and sunlight; light energy is converted into chemical energy stored in glucose.

pH scale

A 0 to 14 scale of hydrogen-ion concentration: below 7 is acidic, 7 neutral and above 7 basic; each unit represents a tenfold change in H⁺ concentration.

73rd Constitutional Amendment

The 1992 amendment giving constitutional status to Panchayati Raj institutions, mandating a three-tier rural structure, regular elections and reservations for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women.

Tropic of Cancer in India

The 23.5°N latitude passes through eight Indian states: Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Tripura and Mizoram.

Dandi March

Gandhi's 1930 march of about 385 km from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi to make salt and defy the salt law, beginning the Civil Disobedience Movement.