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C

Cognate

A word having the same derivation in two languages and that is similar in both languages, not only in meaning, but also in spelling and pronunciation; “information” is a cognate of the Spanish word “información”.

Collocations

Words that tend to be associated with each other, or co-occur in sentences, such as salt and pepper, up and down, wedding vows, etc. Collocates are important in EFL because they help to explain why some learner language is grammatically correct and the meaning is apparent, yet the utterance seems strange and not something natives usually say.

Communicative Approach

A set of principles about teaching where the focus is on meaningful communication not structure.

Communicative Competence

Understanding and using language effectively (e.g., the student listens actively, initiates conversation, and maintains speech with peers) in an authentic school or social situation.

Communicative Output

Output-based tasks (e.g., role play activities or paragraph-writing tasks) in a lesson that requires the use of target language.

Community Language Learning

A teaching approach focusing on student-to-student and student-to-teacher relationships to establish a healthy language learning environment.

Comprehensible Input

A hypothesis that learners will acquire language best when the material is comprehensible to them. The input should be accessible so that they can understand it, but it should be just beyond their level of competence. Input will lead to acquisition so long as the input is challenging, yet easy enough to understand without conscious effort at learning. If the learner is at level i, then input should come at level i+1. I+1 means that material is comprehensible with a few new forms for students to naturally acquire.

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