TESOL Certificate cheat sheet

Received Pronunciation has 24 consonant phonemes and 20 vowel phonemes; vowel inventories differ across varieties, so any count must be labelled by variety.

A minimal pair (ship/sheep, pat/bat) establishes phonemic status; a minimal set extends the same test to three or more items.

Consonants are described by voicing, place of articulation and manner; vowels by tongue height, tongue backness, lip rounding and length.

English is stress-timed: stressed syllables fall at roughly regular intervals and unstressed vowels reduce towards /ə/ or /ɪ/.

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit; free morphemes stand alone, bound morphemes must attach, inflectional affixes keep word class and derivational affixes usually change it.

English marks only present and past tense through verb inflection; perfect and progressive are aspect, built with auxiliaries.

Cohesion is surface linking (reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, lexical chains); coherence is the underlying logical unity a reader or listener infers.

Collocation is habitual co-occurrence, as in 'make a decision' or 'heavy rain'; it is a lexical restriction rather than a grammatical rule.

End-weight and end-focus place long or new information late in the clause, with given information typically preceding it.

Krashen's five hypotheses are acquisition-learning, monitor, natural order, input (i+1) and affective filter.

Interlanguage (Selinker) is systematic, dynamic and permeable; learner errors are evidence of rule construction, not random failure.

Interlingual errors derive from first-language transfer; intralingual errors derive from overgeneralisation and incomplete rule learning inside the target language.

Contrastive analysis predicts difficulty from L1-L2 differences, but its strong predictive form is largely discredited because transfer is selective.

Long's interaction hypothesis holds that negotiation of meaning supplies modified input and negative evidence that support acquisition.

Swain's output hypothesis holds that producing the target language forces syntactic processing and exposes gaps that comprehension can mask.

Pienemann's teachability hypothesis states that instruction cannot move learners past a developmental stage for which they are not ready.

The critical period hypothesis links declining ultimate attainment, especially in pronunciation, to later age of onset; older learners often progress faster initially but plateau sooner.

Cummins distinguishes BICS (conversational fluency, roughly two years) from CALP (academic language proficiency, roughly five to seven years).

Grammar-translation uses the first language as the medium of instruction and prioritises translation and written accuracy over oral work.

Audiolingualism draws on behaviourism: habit formation through repetition and substitution drills, errors prevented, and contrastive analysis feeding the syllabus.

The Direct Method uses only the target language, teaches inductively and avoids translation.

PPP is linear and form-first; test-teach-test and task-based teaching delay explicit attention to form until after learners have used the language.

A task-based lesson shape is pre-task, task cycle (task, planning, report), then language focus.

Communicative language teaching targets communicative competence: grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic components (Canale and Swain).

Total Physical Response (Asher) pairs imperative commands with physical action and permits a silent period before production is required.

The lexical approach (Lewis) organises the syllabus around chunks and collocations rather than grammatical structures.

Scaffolding operationalises Vygotsky's zone of proximal development: support is contingent, temporary and withdrawn as competence grows.

A plan states one main aim, supporting subsidiary aims, and separate personal aims for the teacher.

Aims describe learner outcomes ('learners will be able to...'), not teacher activity ('I will explain...').

A standard stage sequence is lead-in, contextualisation or presentation, controlled practice, freer practice, then review.

Plan for roughly 80 per cent of available time and hold one flexible stage in reserve for overflow or early finishers.

Grading the task rather than the text allows authentic material to be used with lower-level classes.

McDonough and Shaw's adaptation options are add, delete, modify, simplify and reorder.

Backward design (Wiggins and McTighe) sequences planning as desired results, then acceptable evidence, then learning activities.

Anticipated problems are only usable when each is paired with a planned solution in the plan itself.

Concept-checking questions test meaning through short yes/no or either/or answers; timelines display time reference and aspect visually.

Interaction patterns - whole class, pair, group, individual - set the ceiling on student talking time, with pair and group work raising it most.

The IRF exchange (initiation, response, feedback) is the default classroom sequence; extending the F move into elaboration raises cognitive demand.

Wait time of three to five seconds after a question increases response length and the number of volunteers.

Instructions are most effective when sequenced, demonstrated and checked with instruction-checking questions rather than 'Do you understand?'.

Teacher echo of learner answers lowers peer attention; directing a reformulation to a named learner keeps the interaction alive.

Seating shapes interaction: horseshoes and clusters support pair and group talk, rows support teacher-fronted whole-class work.

Low-key interventions for off-task behaviour - proximity, eye contact, name use, planned ignoring - avoid breaking lesson flow.

Judicious first-language use for clarification differs from habitual first-language use, which reduces target-language exposure and practice.

Delayed correction during fluency work protects meaning negotiation; immediate correction suits controlled accuracy practice.

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

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

Washback is a test's influence on teaching; high-stakes tests tend to narrow instruction towards tested formats.

Criterion-referenced tests compare performance with a standard; norm-referenced tests rank candidates against one another.

Test types by purpose: placement, diagnostic, progress or achievement, and proficiency.

An error is systematic and reflects a gap in competence; a mistake is a performance slip the learner can self-correct once attention is drawn to it.

Lyster and Ranta's six feedback moves are explicit correction, recast, clarification request, metalinguistic clue, elicitation and repetition.

Recasts are frequent but often unnoticed; prompts such as elicitation and clarification requests push learners towards self-repair, known as uptake.

Analytic rubrics score criteria separately and yield diagnostic profiles; holistic scales give a single band quickly but with less detail.

Kolb's experiential learning cycle runs concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation, active experimentation.

Schön distinguishes reflection-in-action, while teaching, from reflection-on-action, afterwards.

Gibbs' structured cycle is description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, action plan.

Action research is cyclical - plan, act, observe, reflect - and begins from a puzzle in the teacher's own classroom.

Peer observation works best with an agreed focus, a pre-observation meeting and non-judgemental, evidence-based feedback afterwards.

A teaching journal or critical-incident log converts tacit classroom decisions into analysable data over time.

Exploratory practice (Allwright) treats puzzling about classroom life as itself a form of professional development.

Common CPD routes include workshops, conferences, reading research journals, mentoring, observation and formal qualifications such as CELTA and DELTA.

A continuing professional development portfolio documents evidence against stated teaching standards and supports appraisal.