The destructionof the crops was the result of severe winds.
Foregroundingallows important information in a sentence to be highlighted.
Severe windsdestroyed the crops.background knowledgen
in reading, prior knowledgethat readers make use of in understanding a
text. This can include topic-related knowledge, as well as cultural, linguistic
and world-knowledge. Background knowledge enables the reader to make
greater use of top-down processing.
back propagationn
see learning rule
back-shiftn
see direct speech
backslidingn
(in second language acquisition) the regular reappearance of features
of a learner’s interlanguage which were thought to have disappeared.
Sometimes a learner who appears to have control of an area of grammar or
phonology will have difficulty with particular linguistic features in situations
which are stressful or which present the learner with some kind of com-
municative difficulty. Errors may then temporarily reappear.
Research into backsliding suggests that such errors are not random but
reflect the linguistic system the learner had learned at an earlier stage of his
or her language development.
back voweln
see vowel
backward build-up drilln
also backchaining
a language teaching technique associated with audiolingualismin which
a sentence pattern or pronunciation feature is practised by getting students
to repeat successively longer portions of it, starting with the last part
and extending backwards to the beginning. For example to practise the
unstressed “to” in “Give it to him” the teacher may have students repeat
“him”, “to him”, “it to him”, “Give it to him”.
backwash effectn
see washback
background knowledge