Connoisseur Connoisseur (noun) /ˌkɒn.əˈsɜːʳ/ an expert in a particular field, such as art, food, music, etc. – specialist – enthusiast – professional – authority: He’s a music connoisseur. To be more precise, he’s a violin virtuoso. Emily, a renowned connoisseur of classical music, was frequently invited to prestigious concerts and recitals around the world. Her …
Traditional Instructional Theory Traditional instructional theory assumes that knowledge and skill can be analysed into component parts that function in the same way no matter where they are used. Psychological theories of the 1920s assumed that learning of complex competencies could be broken down into discrete skills learnt separately, through developing individual stimulus-response bonds (Gipps, …
Empiricism Empiricism Locke, Berkeley and Hume were the founders of empiricism in the 17th century. Knowledge is derived from experience of the outside world. Information is copied by sensations and images, remembered, associated with other stored information. Complex ideas result from associating simple ideas. Infant is born as a ‘tabula rasa’, i.e. a blank or …
Declarative Knowledge Declarative knowledge is the same as explicit or controlled knowledge, whereas procedural knowledge is the same is implicit or uncontrolled knowledge. Internalised rules and memorised chunks of the language constitute the ‘what’ of the learner’s system or declarative knowledge (McLaughlin, 1987). Ellis believes that declarative rules can have top-down influences on perception, in …
Functionalist Theories of SLA Functionalist theories of L2 acquisition share a number of concerns with variability theories. For example, both are concerned not just with how linguistic knowledge is represented in the mind of the learner, but also with how this knowledge is used in discourse. Also, both types assume that syntax cannot be considered …
Test Specifications Test specifications – usually called ‘specs’ – are generative explanatory documents for the creation of test tasks. Specs tell us the nuts and bolts of how to phrase the test items, how to structure the test layout, how to locate the passage, and how to make a host of difficult choices as we …
Evidence-Centered Design Evidence-centered Design was developed by Mislevy. It is important that we see the tasks or items that we design for tests as part of a larger picture, and one approach to doing this in a systematic way is ECD, a methodology for test design and construction developed at Educational Testing Service (ETS). ECD is …
Cognitive Psychology Cognitive Psychology The subject matter of cognitive psychology consists of the main internal psychological processes that are involved in making sense of the environment and deciding what action might be appropriate. These processes include attention, perception, learning and memory, language, problem solving, reasoning and thinking. Contemporary cognitive psychology has built on the very …
Constructivism Constructivism The main underlying assumption of constructivism is that individuals are actively involved right from birth in constructing personal meaning, that is, their own personal understanding from their experience (Williams & Burden, 1997). In other words, everyone makes their own sense of the world and the experiences that surround them. In this way, the …
Language Faculty Language Faculty We may assume that the linguistic theory of the language faculty is a theory of the cognitive architecture for language knowledge and acquisition. Chomsky postulated that there is a language organ, which is part of a human’s biological endowment and which houses the universal principles and parameters without which a child …