for control over different aspects of teaching and are hence sometimes
preferred to the use of real teaching experiences.laboratory research n
research that takes places under controlled conditions as in a laboratory.
The complexity of school-based or formal second language learning and
teaching cannot always be investigated in real classrooms. In order to test
hypotheses or theories about teaching and learning, experiments are some-
times conducted in which the independent variablesare carefully defined,
precise measurements are undertaken and other influences are excluded as
far as possible.
LAD n
an abbreviation for language acquisition device
laminal adj
describes a speech sound (a consonant)which is produced by the front
upper surface of the tongue (the blade or lamina) touching the upper teeth
or the gum ridge behind the upper teeth (the alveolar ridge).
In English, the /à/ in /àup/ shoe is a laminal fricative.
see also place of articulation, manner of articulation
LAN n
abbreviation for a local area network, which connects computers locally,
usually in one room or on one campus, without the need to access the Internet.
language^1 n
the system of human communication which consists of the structured
arrangement of sounds (or their written representation) into larger units,
e.g. morphemes, words, sentences, utterances.
In common usage it can also refer to non-human systems of communication
such as the “language” of bees, the “language” of dolphins.
language^2 n
any particular system of human communication (see language^1 ), for
example, the French language, the Hindi language. Sometimes a language
is spoken by most people in a particular country, for example, Japanese in
Japan, but sometimes a language is spoken by only part of the population
of a country, for example Tamil in India, French in Canada.
Languages are usually not spoken in exactly the same way from one part
of a country to the other. Differences in the way a language is spoken by
different people are described in terms of regional and social variation
language