show on a rating scalewhether they think they use a given word or
structure never, sometimes, or often. Word familiarity has been used as a
way of selecting vocabulary for language teaching.faux amis n
another term for false cognate
FCE
abbreviation for Cambridge ESOL First Certificate in English
see Cambridge exams
feature n
a property of a linguistic item which helps to mark it in certain ways, either
singling it out from similar items or classifying it into a group with others.
For example, the English phoneme /b/ has the feature voice, it is a voiced
stop. By this feature it can be distinguished from /p/, an unvoiced stop, or
classified together with /d/ and /g/, other voiced stops.
Features can be used in all levels of linguistic analysis, e.g. phonetics,
morphology, syntax. They can even form the basis of linguistic theories.
see distinctive feature, componential analysis
feedback n
any information that provides information on the result of behaviour.
For example, in phonetics, feedback is both air- and bone-conducted.
This is why we do not sound to ourselves as we sound to others and find
tape-recordings of our own voices to be odd and often embarrassing.
In discourse analysis, feedback given while someone is speaking is some-
times called back channelling, for example comments such as uh, yeah,
really, smiles, headshakes, and grunts that indicate success or failure in
communication.
In teaching, feedback refers to comments or other information that learners
receive concerning their success on learning tasks or tests, either from the
teacher or other persons.
see also auditory feedback, evidence, error correction, kinesthetic
feedback, proprioceptive feedback, recast
feeding order n
see bleeding order
felicity conditions n
(in speech act theory) the conditions which must be fulfilled for a speech
act to be satisfactorily performed or realized. For example, the sentence
felicity conditions