The tefl.ai glossary of TEFL teaching methods, classroom techniques, assessment concepts and second-language-acquisition terms.
The affective filter is a hypothesised emotional barrier that stops language input from being absorbed. Proposed by Stephen Krashen in 1982, it holds that anxiety, low motivation and low self-confidence raise the filter, so a learner hears comprehensible English without acquiring it.
TEFL teaching methods are the overall frameworks that shape how a language course is taught, such as communicative language teaching, task-based learning and the lexical approach, while classroom techniques are the specific moves a teacher makes inside a lesson, such as scaffolding, drilling and eliciting. This glossary defines the twenty terms that recur most often in TEFL training and classroom observation.
