discontinuous constituentdirect speech n
a style used to report what a speaker actually said, without introducing
any grammatical changes. In English, the speaker’s words may be written
between quotation marks, for example, “You are a thief”, he said. This may
be contrasted with indirect speech(also reported speech), for example,
He said I was a thief.
direct teaching n
also active teaching
sometimes used to describe an approach to teaching which seeks to increase
achievement by focusing the teacher’s attention on specific, analytical and
academic objectives, by coverage of objectives to be tested, by engagement
of students in tasks, and by giving feedback which focuses on the degree
to which objectives have been achieved. Attention is given to promoting
student success in learning through a teacher-directed style of teaching in
which the teacher provides a favourable climatefor learning.
see also time on task
direct test n
a test that measures ability directly by requiring test takers to perform tasks
designed to approximate an authentic target language use situation as
closely as possible. An example of a direct test of writing includes a test that
asks test takers to write an essay; an oral proficiency interview (opi)is
an example of a direct test of speaking, which is conducted face to face
between an interviewer and an interviewee.
see also indirect test, semi-direct
disambiguation ndisambiguate v
the use of linguistic analysis to show the different structures of an ambiguous
sentence. For example:
The lamb is too hot to eat.
can be analyzed as:
a The lamb is so hot that it cannot eat anything
or:
b The cooked lamb is too hot for someone to eat it.
see also ambiguous
discontinuous constituent n
parts of a sentence which belong to the same constituentbut which are
separated by other constituents are called a discontinuous constituent.
For example: