Language education

Language education is the teaching and learning of languages, developing abilities such as speaking, listening, reading, and writing. It includes first-language literacy, additional-language learning, and formal or informal instruction.

Communicative language teaching: A language-teaching approach that develops communicative ability through meaningful interaction and language use. It makes purposeful communication, rather than isolated rule practice, the organizing principle of instruction.
Second-language acquisition: The processes through which people learn a language after acquiring their first language. It provides a research framework for understanding additional-language learning.
Foreign language education: The teaching and learning of a language not commonly used in the surrounding community. It is a distinct setting where classroom instruction may provide most access to the language.
Grammar-translation method: A language-teaching method emphasizing explicit grammar study and translation between languages. It contrasts with approaches centered on spontaneous communication and interaction.
Translanguaging: The flexible use of a multilingual speaker’s linguistic resources to make meaning and communicate. It raises questions about whether instruction should separate languages or draw on them together.
Task-based language teaching: A language-teaching approach organized around tasks that require learners to understand or convey meaning. Its real-world tasks give learners a concrete reason to use the language.
Language proficiency: A person’s ability to use a language across skills, settings, and communicative purposes. Instruction often aims to develop proficiency beyond knowledge of individual rules.
Heritage language education: Instruction for learners with family or community ties to a language that may be less developed than their dominant language. It addresses language maintenance and growth alongside learners’ existing community knowledge.
Direct method: A language-teaching method that teaches through the target language, emphasizing speech and avoiding translation. Its target-language-only principle differs from methods that rely on learners’ first language.
Language policy: Rules and practices that shape which languages are used, taught, or supported in institutions and communities. Policy decisions determine whose languages receive classroom time, status, and resources.

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