right hemispheren
see cerebral dominance
risk-taking n
a personality factor which concerns the degree to which a person is willing
to undertake actions that involve a significant degree of risk. Risk-taking is
said to be an important characteristic of successful second language learning,
since learners have to be willing to try out hunches about the new language
and take the risk of being wrong.
see also cognitive variable
ritual n
a speech event which follows a more or less strictly defined pattern, e.g. part
of a religious service, an initiation ceremony. Often utterances must follow
each other in a particular sequence and may have to be of a particular kind.
role n
1 the part taken by a participant in any act of communication. Some roles
are more or less permanent, e.g. that of teacher or student, while other
roles are very temporary, e.g. the role of someone giving advice. The
same person could have a number of different roles in his or her daily
activities. For example, a man may be father, brother, son, husband in
his family life but colleague, teacher, employee, treasurer, counsellor
in his working life. Roles affect the way people communicate with each
other (see role relationships).
2 people also sometimes talk of the “roles” of speaker or listener in a
speech event.
role-play n,v
also role playingn
in language teaching drama-like classroom activities in which students take
the roles of different participants in a situation and act out what might
typically happen in that situation. For example, to practise how to express
complaints and apologies in a foreign language, students might have to
role-play a situation in which a customer in a shop returns a faulty article to
a salesperson.
see also simulation
role relationship n
the relationship which people have to each other in an act of communication
and which influences the way they speak to each other. One of the speakers
may have a rolewhich has a higher statusthan that of the other speaker(s),
role relationship