Glossary
Language Education: A Glossary of Terms
Academic language — High level spoken and written language that includes professional vocabulary.
Bilingual – Using or able to use two languages with equal or near-equal fluency.
Bilingual education – An umbrella term for classroom approaches that use the native languages of English-language learners (ELLs – see below) for instruction. Goals may include: teaching English, acculturating immigrants to a new society, preserving a minority group’s linguistic and cultural heritage, enabling English speakers to learn a second language, developing national language resources, or any combination of the above.
Biliterate – Able to read and write in two languages.
Dual immersion – An umbrella term for approaches to education in which students are taught literacy and content in two languages. Often used interchangeably with “bilingual education.” Dual immersion encompasses both one-way and two-way immersion programs.
ELL (English-Language Learner) – A person who is in the process of acquiring English and has a first language other than English.
ESL (English as a Second Language) – An educational approach in which ELL students are instructed in the use of the English language. Instruction typically involves little or no use of the native language and is usually taught during specific school periods. For the rest of the school day, students may be placed in mainstream classrooms, an immersion program, or a bilingual program.
Fluent – Capable of using a language easily and accurately.
Heritage speaker – A student who is exposed to a language other than English at home. Heritage speakers include students who have full oral fluency and literacy in the home language; students with full oral fluency and partial written literacy because they were schooled in English; and students – typically third- or fourth-generation – who can understand and speak to a limited degree but cannot express themselves on a wide range of topics.
Immersion education – An approach to second language instruction in which the usual curricular activities are conducted in a foreign language. The new language is the medium of instruction as well as the object of instruction. Immersion students acquire the necessary language skills to understand and communicate about the subject matter set out in the school’s program of instruction. They follow the same curricula, and, in some instances, use the same materials (translated into the target language) as those used in the non-immersion schools of their district.
L1 — the first language students speak.
L2— the second language students learn to speak.
Majority speaker – An individual who speaks the primary language of the country in which he or she resides. For example, a person whose first language is English and lives in the United States is referred to as a language majority speaker.
Minority speaker – A person who speaks a language other than English as the first, home, or dominant language. ELL students are a subset of all language minority students. For example, a person living in the United States whose first language is not English is referred to as a language minority speaker.
Native Language – The first language a person learns to speak.
Native Speaker — Someone speaking in their first language.
One-way immersion – An eduational program where all the students learn core curriculum in a language that is not their first language. e.g. Educational programs where native English speaking students learn in a non-English language, or English educational programs where all the students are native speakers of a non-English language.
Partial immersion — educational programs where at least 50% of instruction is the immersion language, In the U.S. most partial immersion programs serve a student population of primarily English-language speakers with limited or no proficiency in the immersion language.
TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) – A professional association of educators who teach English to non-native speakers.
Two-way immersion (TWI) – Programs where the student population consists of a mix of majority language speakers and minority language speakers.. Instruction is in both the majority and minority languages (in a 50:50, 80:20, or 90:10 ratio). The goal is to have the students learn from and with each other in both languages. Often implemented in communities with large populations of English-language learners (ELLs), to promote cultural understanding and integration among linguistic groups. Research suggests the idea studio make up in TWI is 30% native English speakers, 30% native minority language speakers, and 30% who are already bilingual.
Total immersion — educational programs where 100% of instruction is in the immersion language. e.g. Students learning English in an English-only classroom are in total immersion.
