Articles
Read articles written by expert teachers and English language professionals about a wide range of current English language teaching topics and issues. All of our articles feature ideas and suggestions about how you can develop your teaching and bring new ideas into your English language classroom.
Natural order
The natural order hypothesis is the idea that children learning their first language acquire grammatical structures in a pre-determined, 'natural’ order, and that some are acquired earlier than others.
Naturalistic intelligence
Naturalistic intelligence is one of the many types of intelligence described in multiple intelligence theory, although not as widely accepted as other types.
Needs analysis
Needs analysis involves doing some kind of activity with a learner in order to find out what their learning needs are.
Negotiation of meaning
Negotiation of meaning is a process that speakers go through to reach a clear understanding of each other.
Neologisms
Neologisms are words or phrases that are invented to describe either new things or to give a new name to an old idea.
Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP)
Neuro-linguistic Programming is based on a model of communication and psychotherapy.
Non-gradable adjectives
Non-gradable adjectives are adjectives that cannot be expressed in degrees and so cannot be graded.
Non-verbal communication
Non-verbal communication is communication that does not involve a verbal element.
Norm-referenced test
A norm-referenced test measures a candidate’s mark against what other people are achieving in the same test.
Noticing
When learners "notice" new language, they pay special attention to its form, use and meaning.