Longman Dictionary of

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primary language acquisition
primary language acquisition n
a term referring to the acquisition of any language from infancy, sometimes
preferred over the term FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION because of the
difficulty in establishing which language should be considered “first” in
some cases, such as in childhood BILINGUALISM.
primary language instruction n
an approach to the teaching of second language students in which
instruction in the students’ primary language – i.e. the native language
of the students – is used for subjects which are the most cognitively
demanding.
primary stress n
see STRESS
priming n
processing a word that has been recently encountered and activated is
faster and easier than processing one that has not. This phenomenon is
called priming. For example, if a subject is shown the word doctor and
later is shown a list of words and non-words and asked to say which are
English words and which are not (a lexical decision task), the decision
will be made faster for the word doctor than for words that have not
been activated. Concepts that are related to one another in some way
are also assumed to be connected in mental networks and when one
member of the network is activated, the others are as well. This
phenomenon is called spreading activation. For this reason, when the
word doctor is presented, related words such as hospital, nurse, and
medication are also primed.
see also IMPLICIT MEMORY
principal clause n
see DEPENDENT CLAUSE
principle of subjacency n
see BOUNDING THEORY
principles 1 n
in teaching, beliefs and theories that teachers hold concerning effective
approaches to teaching and learning and which serve as the basis for some
of their decision-making. For example,
Make the lesson learner-centred.
Every learner is a genius.
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