Longman Dictionary of

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backsliding
backsliding n
(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
communicative 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 vowel n
see VOWEL
backward build-up n
also backchaining
a language teaching technique associated with audiolingualism in which
an utterance is divided into parts, and then the students are taught to say
it by repeating the last part, and then the last two parts, etc., until they
can repeat the whole utterance.
For example:
Teacher Students
some letters some letters
to post some letters to post some letters
to the post office to post some to the post office to post some
letters letters
I’m going to the post office to I’m going to the post office to
post some letters. post some letters.
backwash effect n
see WASHBACK n
balanced bilingual n
see BILINGUAL
band n
(in testing) a level of performance in a rating scale that describes what a
test taker has achieved in a test.
see also LEVEL
bandscales n
see STANDARDS n
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