[Steven D]

bottom-up: Language learning that proceeds from the most basic blocks of language, such as words, and then proceeding to more complex structures, and finally to meaning. This can be contrasted to top-down learning where students try to understand the general message without understanding all of the constituent parts. Listening for exact phrases and words would be considered a bottom-up listening activity, whereas listening for the gist would be considered a top-down activity. Also, studying individual grammatical structures or sentence structures would be bottom-up.

top-down: Studying language as a whole. Trying to understand the meaning of a reading or listening selection without worrying about the individual components of language. Listening for the gist and reading for the gist are two types of top-down activities. The learner is trying to understand using cues such as intonation, tone of voice or body language without focusing on specific words and structures. Top-down learning is thought to be important for producing automatic processing. Top-down techniques can be contrasted with bottom-up techniques.

http://bogglesworld.com/glossary.htm

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