What is accuracy in speaking

What’s more important in language teaching: accuracy or fluency?

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Life (and language teaching) is full of debates and decisions. Tea or coffee? Instagram or TikTok? Sweet or savoury? For language educators, deciding whether accuracy is more important than fluency (or the other way around) is one of the big questions that always provokes debate in classrooms and staffrooms.

This blog post, therefore, explores the two key concepts, outlines their importance for language learning, and attempts to conclude which might be most important. We also highlight how educators can develop targeted lesson interventions that help all students to improve both skills. And detail how Sanako solutions can help educators to improve both skillsets.

What is accuracy?

Accuracy is often what we think about when we are learning a language. The term refers to how correct learners’ use of the language system is, including their use of grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary. Accuracy, for example, demonstrates a learner’s ability to use the correct verb forms (past tense, present tense, and so on), articles (a, an, the), and prepositions (in, on, from, at).

These are, of course, important skills to learn and the accurate use of language is particularly important in written communication as errors and mistakes tend to stand out more when written down. Such mistakes in all walks of life (particularly in academia or business) can also cause misunderstandings and reflect badly on the writer, suggesting poor attention to detail or even worse, general incompetence.

It takes lots of practice for learners to become accurate in their target languages and it’s something that’s developed through many small steps. Alongside grammar exercises, definitions, gap fills, and drills, teachers often use controlled practice activities to help students work on their accuracy. These enable repeated practice of the target language, with little variation and minimum amount of free speaking. As the answers are either right or wrong, teachers usually correct mistakes made, either on the spot or after the activity.

What is fluency?

Fluency refers to the ease with which a learner can explain themselves. In other words, how well can they communicate without pauses or hesitations, without needing to search for words or phrases, and without having to think about what they are about to say/write.

When a learner has good fluency, it means that they can produce and engage with language in a smooth and effortless way. Of course, they might make mistakes, but they’re able to easily communicate their thoughts and ideas in both spoken and written form.

In all settings, language fluency is incredibly important. After all, it’s not much use knowing all of the vocabulary if you cannot use the words to communicate! Building fluency enables learners to explain their views and engage in conversation with peers and/or native speakers. Outside of the classroom, the ability to communicate fluently will help smooth your entry into a foreign culture, making it easier for you to make yourself understood and to fully enjoy your international adventure!

Paul Nation (2003)* suggests that the following conditions need to be in place for educators to deliver effective fluency activities for their learners:

Fluency activities, therefore, tend to focus not so much on how students are communicating but on what they are communicating. Examples of fluency-building language learning activities include peer or group conversations, roleplays, debates, projects, and presentations.

What’s more important? Accuracy or fluency?

All of the research and experts across all commonly taught languages conclude that both accuracy and fluency are vital components for student success and language competency. Yet the practical challenge for educators is all about balance, particularly given that the skills are effectively at the opposite ends of the teaching spectrum. A conversation exercise, for example, is designed to help students practice fluency, teachers shouldn’t be regularly interrupting to correct their mistakes.

To that end, be clear about whether activities are designed to build accuracy or fluency and stick to your plan. If fluency is what you’re after, then don’t keep stopping your students if they make mistakes! Wherever possible try and ensure that lessons incorporate opportunities for students to develop both their accuracy and fluency. Creating exercises that replicate real-world situations is a great way to achieve this whatever language you’re delivering.

How can Sanako help?

With customers in over 110 countries and our products in use in over 50,000 classrooms globally, Sanako has significant experience in supporting educators to build accuracy and fluency in their students. In fact, our solutions have been specifically developed to support language learners to build their skills in these areas.

Our popular Sanako Connect product, for example, is perfect for building language fluency. Educators can easily divide students into pairs or small groups for conversation practice. This takes place online, so each group of students can talk simultaneously without distracting each other. Teachers can listen in or talk with different groups to assist as required. All conversations can be easily downloaded and reviewed for feedback after the event, rather than interrupting live conversations.

* Nation, P. (2003). Materials for teaching vocabulary. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Developing materials for language teaching (pp. 394–405). London, England: Continuum.

Accuracy and fluency in language teaching

Рубрика: Филология, лингвистика

Дата публикации: 18.06.2015 2015-06-18

Статья просмотрена: 4973 раза

Библиографическое описание:

Нарзуллаев, К. Р. Accuracy and fluency in language teaching / К. Р. Нарзуллаев, Ш. Б. Наширова. — Текст : непосредственный // Молодой ученый. — 2015. — № 12 (92). — С. 939-941. — URL: https://moluch.ru/archive/92/20373/ (дата обращения: 16.08.2022).

Knowing a language is not merely knowing the grammatical rules but also knowing when to say what and to whom, that is knowledge of how the system is put to use in the performing of social actions of different kinds. Accuracy and fluency are the two factors which determine the success of English language students in the future. It is a general problem faced by language teachers today, whether to focus on accuracy or fluency. Accuracy refers to the ability of the learner to produce grammatically correct sentences. The learner should not only know correct grammatical rules of the language but also able to speak and write accurately.

Fluency refers to a level of proficiency in communication. It is the ability to produce written and spoken sentences with ease, efficiency, without pauses or a breakdown of communication. Generally language teachers have to deal with heterogeneous students having different language background and language skills, different world views, age levels, experiences and point of view. Some students are accurate in speaking and writing but hesitate to speak in public. On the other hand, few students are fluent but not accurate. Every student wants to be accurate as well as fluent in speaking and writing. But there are many variables and kinds of learner and differences in classroom that makes teaching sometimes very challenging and interesting. It is a general problem with language teachers that they prefer focusing on grammar activity than on speaking activity. They believe that to learn a second language, grammar is the most important thing to learn first. But if we see how a child does learns his mother tongue or L1. We find that he learns simple words or sentences first by listening or repeating in different contexts. Eventually he starts speaking fluently at the age of three or four; he is able to express most of the things relating with the area of his /her knowledge without knowing the rules of grammar. She/he starts learning the rules of grammar when he enters in class 2 or3.

We have to make a balance between accuracy and fluency. In reality accuracy and fluency are closely related, which leads to the notion that accuracy as well as fluency is necessary for successful communication. As language teachers and learners, we should be able to explore along with our students not only grammar of forms but also grammar of functions. A grammar of forms makes us familiar with the grammatical structures and rules designed to show how the systems and subsystems of a language work. But a grammar of function puts together the grammatical structures of a language and how these can be used by a variety of people in a variety of situations for interpersonal and organisational communication. Main thing is that we should provide them natural atmosphere or we should immerse them in the atmosphere so that they should speak naturally or not feel that they are doing something different. For this group discussion, mock-interview, role play, simulation, research paper presentation in seminars and conferences, debate and speech activities can be better option.

In our language classes we go through many activities to develop accuracy and fluency in reading, writing, listening and speaking. Brumfit distinguishes between these two activities, “extensive reading is aimed at fluency but much intensive reading work is aimed at accuracy; free and situational writing exercises are aimed at fluency but all controlled and much guided writing is aimed at accuracy; listening exercises are aimed at accuracy but casual listening in the classroom has a major role as a fluency activity.” (Brumfit, 1984, p.53) The learner is the most important person in the classroom. However, the learner loses his importance in the teacher‟s anxiety to complete his syllabus or a lesson plan. Every teacher is concerned about the students‟ progress or welfare but unconsciously his personality dominates and the class becomes teachers centred. The learner centred class treats students as a “tabula rasa” or a clear slate to be worked over and changed by new knowledge. The teacher becomes a guide or felicitator who promotes decision making and learner autonomy in the class. The learner centred teacher should focus on the following things in the class:

a. Communication in natural and meaningful atmosphere. b. Integration of skills. c. Real life (authentic) material. d. Learning by doing. e. Class organisation- individual, pair/group/whole. f. Focus on meaning. g. Learner involvement. h. Teacher as felicitator. i. Extending language use beyond the class. j. Focus on using the language. k. Focus on the process as oppose to product.

Fluency based activities need to be introduced in the language classes and learners involvement should be increased. The teacher should motivate and create tasks for the language skills like reading, writing, listening and speaking and let them free to express themselves in natural classroom situation. To quote Johnson, “The first most central, and by now most generally acceptable implications of the nature of these processes, is that they can only be practised in a language teaching which is task-oriented.(Johnson, 1979,p.199) The second implication of these tasks and activities is the concept of information. In all types of language activities, the purpose of interaction is to convey information. In order to make a conversation interesting there should be an element of doubt and information gap activities. In a second language classroom students should be free to choose what they say within “real time”. The concept of selection or the freedom of expression is the basic to the process of fluent communication. The forth implication is to match what happens outside the classroom with the activities within the classroom. Outside the classroom the students constantly and spontaneously interact. They are not stopped when they mix two languages or two forms. But in the classroom teachers can monitor their own speech acts, and the speech act of their students. Sometimes we go to the extremes and an over emphasis on fluent language activity may result in errors which are caused by several different processes. These include:

a. Interlanguage is the type of language produced by second and foreign language learners who are in the process of learning a language. Two types of transfer may occur. Negative transfer is the use of L1pattern or rule which leads to an error or inappropriate form in the target language (TL). Positive transfer which makes learning easier and it occurs when both the native language and the target language have the same form. For example, French and English.

b. Overgeneralization-when a learner extends the use of a grammatical rule beyond its accepted uses. For example, use of mans instead of men.

c. Communication strategy — it is a way used to express a meaning in the first language, the second or foreign language by a learner who has limited command of the language.

d. Fossilization is a process which sometimes occurs in which incorrect linguistic features become a permanent part of the way a person speaks or writes a language. Aspects of pronunciation, vocabulary usage and grammar can be fossilized.

Errors can be made by the learners due to many reasons but errors should be taken as significant evidence of development and learning. Teachers should not over emphasize on accuracy and fluency because learners can lose their confidence.

To conclude, accuracy and fluency both are the important factors for learning any language. And in the case of second language there should be gradual shift from fluency based activities to accuracy based activities. A language teacher should try to make his/her classes learner centred, every activity should be contextual and task-oriented and focus should be more on fluency first then an accuracy as in case we learn our first language.

1. Celce-Murcai, M., Dornyei, Z and Thurrell, S.(1997). Direct Approaches to language teaching: Turning point in language teaching. TESOL Quarterly 31/1.

2. Krashen, S. (1982). Princilples and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Pergamon Lightbown, P. M. Spada, N. (1990). Focus-on form and corrective feedback in Communicative language teaching: Studies in second language acquisition 12.

Accuracy and Fluency: What’s The Big Deal?

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Part and parcel of being an English as a Foreign Language teacher is lesson planning, which, unfortunately, is a necessary evil. In the EFL classroom, there are a lot of different factors to consider when making a lesson plan best suited to your students. It can be tricky to know which activities are optimal to achieve the aims of your lesson. One consideration that often trips us up is when we should be focussing on accuracy or fluency. So, accuracy and fluency: what’s the big deal?

When you think about it, when you’re teaching English as a Foreign Language there are a lot of balls you need to juggle. You need to have a solid grasp of English grammar, an understanding of teaching techniques and theories of learning, a good idea of best practices when it comes to classroom management, a good dose of creativity – not to mention bucket-loads of patience. So it’s not surprising to know that there are certain aspects of the job which we can still find puzzling.

Accuracy and Fluency

Which is precisely why we’re here!

Let’s look at the difference between accuracy and fluency in the EFL classroom – and why it actually matters – so you can be more confident in your teaching skills, and together we can conquer the world!

…or just teach better, but whatever.

Accuracy vs fluency

What is accuracy in the EFL classroom?

Accuracy refers to how correct learners’ use of the language system is, including their use of grammar, pronunciation and grammar.

In other words, accuracy is the correct use of tenses, verb forms, collocations and colloquialisms, among other things.

Accuracy activities are activities which will concentrate on the nitty gritty of the language construction to ensure that the language item is produced 100% accurately – such as grammar exercises, gap fills, drilling or noticing activities. These usually take place in the controlled practice stage of the lesson. There is not a lot of variation in these activities, as there is a right and a wrong answer.

For many EFL learners, accuracy is considered very important, and one of the main responsibilities of an EFL teacher is thought to be to correct errors and ensure the highest level of accuracy. However, while of course a certain degree of accuracy is needed for all communication, classroom tasks should not be geared towards more accuracy activities than fluency, because fluency is just as important.

What is fluency in the EFL classroom?

Fluency refers to how well a learner communicates meaning rather than how many mistakes they make in grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary.

In other words, the ease with which a learner can speak and how well they can communicate without pauses or hesitations, without needing to search for words or phrases, without having to consider the language of what they are about to say.

It’s important to note that a person who is fluent may not necessarily be 100 % accurate but they are generally still comprehensible.

Fluency activities focus not so much on how the students are communicating but what they are communicating. Examples of fluency activities are conversations, roleplays, debates and projects.

So what’s the big deal?

In many EFL classrooms, the free practice stage is the last in the lesson. Most of the lesson time is dedicated to presenting the target language and ensuring the students are able to produce it accurately and appropriately. The free practice is stuffed into however many minutes are left in the lesson. Because of this, if a lesson is running late or the teacher runs out of time, it is this stage which is shortened or even cut entirely.

This is problematic for a number of reasons, not least because it is often the stage the students enjoy the most. And why wouldn’t they? It’s a chance for them to speak freely without worrying about their language. Instead they can focus on the content of what they are saying, which is why we communicate in the first place!

At the same time, this focus on accuracy is misguided, as accuracy is by no means more important than fluency. In fact, a student who is more fluent than accurate can be more successful at communication than someone who is more accurate than fluent.

This is because communication is a fluid concept which involves more than one participant, and the other participant may still be able to understand the communication even if the rate of accuracy of the speaker is not very high.

Accuracy vs fluency in the EFL classroom

Our learners want to learn to speak English in order to communicate. And if we boil it down to one thing, communication is about being understood. To get all fancy and technical, communicative competence is being able to make use of vocabulary and grammar and their rules appropriately in order to convey a message. So while of course there is a need for a certain amount of accuracy, fluency can be seen to play a bigger role in effective communication.

In your EFL lessons, try not to focus on accuracy to the detriment of fluency. Allow sufficient time for fluency activities, and this includes time for adequate preparation on the part of your students. You still need to scaffold the activity but you don’t need to give them step-by-step instructions for what they should say. If your activity is appropriate and relevant for your students, this should actually come naturally to your students, as they will have a purpose for communicating.

Speaking Activity

In the classroom, when planning a speaking activity, consider whether you will be assessing your students on accuracy or fluency and stick to that decision. If you choose to focus on fluency, don’t stop your students if they make mistakes but if you are aiming for accuracy then make sure your students are producing accurate language.

In a nutshell, both accuracy and fluency are important in the classroom and one should not be sacrificed for the other.

This may sound simple and logical, but it’s easy to try to incorporate elements of both accuracy and fluency into your lessons, often with the result that your students don’t get the benefit of practising either. Instead, make sure there are opportunities for both types of activities in your lessons to ensure your students get the best of both worlds and get practice with both accuracy and fluency.

Comments:

Hello Fionnuala O’Brien.

thanks for your help and your article,
I use this Article as one of my references.

Can I refer Tom Gibbons as the author?

Who wrote this article? I would like to reference it. Thanks,

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The importance of accuracy and fluency in english language

TOGAEV GAFUR ERKIN UGLI
TerSU, Uzbekistan

Accuracy and fluency are two key components of second language acquisition. In today’s world, it seems that learning the usage of grammar and focusing on accuracy are emphasized by many language students over fluency. This topic of accuracy and fluency has been a controversial issue that has been discussed for many years. Although some formalists argue that learning a language means learning forms and rules, some activists take a different view and claim that learning a language means learning how to use a language [1, p. 12]. Thus, this essay will argue that accuracy is not necessarily more important than fluency. It depends on learners’ needs and the purpose of instruction in second language acquisition. In order to demonstrate this, this essay will first focus on the importance of accuracy and fluency in English learning and show that they are both essential by looking at two different teaching methods. Second, it will turn to discuss both accuracy and fluency in term of learner goals, learner variables and instructional variables. Third, it will suggest what language teachers should do to deal with the issue and find the right balance between them. In this section, it will be argued that both accuracy and fluency are needed in second language acquisition.

There has been much discussion about these two components, with arguments put forward in support of either one of the other. However, it will be shown that neither component is useful without the other. Early teaching methods promoted accuracy over fluency. For instance, the Grammar-Translation Method has been used by language teachers for many years. It is the traditional style of teaching method emphasizing grammar explanation and translation. In such a method, it is important for students to learn about the form of the target language. The role of the teacher is the authority. Students merely do what the teacher says and learn.

It’s important to balance accuracy and fluency among the various stages and activities in a lesson. Learners usually attain a much higher level of proficiency in the receptive skills than in the productive skills. Mastering the language skills, like mastering any kind of skill, requires a considerable amount of practice. Step by step in the teaching-learning development process the learner should become more proficient [2, p. 78]. When we say a person knows the language, we first of all mean he understands the language spoken and can speak him. Language came into life as a means of communication. It exists and is alive only through speech. When we speak about teaching a foreign language, we first of all have in mind teaching it as a means of communication. Speech is a bilateral process. It includes hearing and speaking. Both refer to the productive skills of the students. Compared to teaching listening skills, where varieties of techniques have been developed since the introduction of the oral communication courses, partly with the help of new technological devices such as the closed captioning system or mini disk, teaching speaking seems to be far behind.

The former is known as the fluency-oriented approach. From this viewpoint, small grammatical or pronunciation errors are insignificant, especially in the early learning stages. As a matter of fact, too much emphasis on correcting them is considered harmful rather than helpful, for it may cause excessive monitor in the mind, hindering the natural acquisition of spoken skills. The fluency-oriented approach believes that spoken skills are developed meaningful communication. Naturally many EFL teachers support this viewpoint [2, p. 80]. The latter, on the contrary, places most emphasis on accuracy by pursuing mainly grammatical correctness. This view is called the accuracy-oriented approach. Practices that focus on repetition of newly introduced forms or grammatical structures are thought to help the learning. Although once supported by many linguists, nowadays it is seen as rather obsolete. Stern says that the teachers using this approach complained about the lack of effectiveness in the long run and the boredom they endangered among the students. Few EFL teachers, at least ostensibly, favor this viewpoint. In reality, accuracy and fluency are closely related, which leads us to the notion that accuracy as well as fluency is necessary for successful communication. As Ebsworth says, “A steady stream of speech which is highly inaccurate in vocabulary, syntax, or pronunciation could be so hard to understand as to violate an essential aspect of fluency being comprehensible. On the other hand, it is possible for the speaker to be halting but accurate. Sentence level grammatical accuracy that violates principles of discourse and appropriateness is also possible, but such language would not be truly accurate in following the communicative rules of the target language” Thus, it may not be too much to say one speak fluently without accuracy or vice versa [3, p. 112].

Consequently, we see the necessity of combining the fluency-oriented approach and accuracy-oriented approach by meticulously weaving certain language items into communication-oriented tasks. This research paper will discuss how we can develop learners’ speaking by enhancing both accuracy and fluency. In the first chapter, the strength and weakness of these two approaches will be examined. Then, EFL learners’ speech and major causes of inhibition will be analyzed, along with suggestions for remedies to reduce this inhibition. The second chapter will deal with how we can modify the existing learning tasks in order to implement these remedies.

References:

Miguel Bengoa ELT

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Teaching speaking: fluency or accuracy?

In this post the classroom ideas are marked with a:

Whatever type of approach you intend to use for a particular activity in the classroom, making the differentiation between fluency and accuracy is a very important one.

However, here are some things to think about. From Brumfit…

So what is the “correct” approach?

Well, the behaviourist influenced thinkers will argue that mistakes reinforce mistakes

Whilst the cognitive argument argues that mistakes are simply an exploration of meaning.

The characteristics of accuracy and fluency activities…

Accuracy

Fluency

So, it seems that we should:

look at spoken language as something different to written language;

make a distinction between accuracy and fluency;

decide whether we are going to adopt a behaviourist or cognitive approach to learning theory;

and then having decided what our students’ needs are, what their aims are and what it is that we want to do, we then need to actually get out there and actually do it…

Is it actually possible to have fluency practice in a monolingual classroom?

If the above things are taken into consideration, then it is probably very difficult to have true fluency speaking activities in the classroom with monolingual students. But…

What about level? –do students’ needs change?

Can the same activity be used for both fluency and accuracy focus?

What effect do examinations have on this?

What about the length of the course? How can this have an effect?

Fluency tasks should:

build students’ confidence.

be a chance for students to recycle language and vocabulary

allow students to talk about what they wish to talk about.

need to listen to each other

be good for diagnosis: students can experiment with language

give students space so they can personalise

have a positive effect on classroom dynamics

if they have an authentic task which works in real time, then the language will have a direct effect on the outcome of the task.

in life, communication in paramount and requires a genuine use of language.

fluency is a process not a product.

How can students cope when they do not know the words they need?

Asking for help (in L1 or in L2)

Suck it and see approach

They can change what they want to say: for example, calling a monkey a bear.

Some students close down at the start when they realise that they cannot finish off what they want to say.

Teach students fillers to give them thinking time

Teach and encourage students to start to get the language they need from their peers.

Engage in lots off listening activities using authentic materials so that students can begin to get a feel for authentic and natural language.

Give them lots of opportunities to hear authentic texts. You may well have to record them yourself though. Is it possible to find authentic spoken dialogue on the radio or television?

Multilingual classes often cause the students to bury themselves in their dictionaries when they should be involved in a fluency activity. What are the problems in monolingual classes?

Books and activities

Some books (especially the pair work ones) are very much language orientated, others are more fluency based. What is the focus of your course book? Does it address the needs of your students? Is it fluency or accuracy focussed? Are there definite reasons for using speech to communicate in these activities – in other words, is the book task based, or are the activities simply speaking for the sake of practising a definite micro linguistic point?

Some Course Book Speaking Activities are, in my opinion, fairly shoddy. However, the question I should be asking is: “what do I actually do that is better?”

There is often no outcome (other than just to get to the next exercise).

There is no reason for the communicative act. Eg. Talk to your neighbour about…

They do little to encourage native type speaking tasks.

There are very rarely any authentic models presented.

They are usually designed for grammar of function practise.

Fluency and Outcomes

Try to ensure that fluency activities have an outcome: i.e., they reach a decision. Others, for example talking about oneself can go on forever.

What can the teacher do during a fluency activity?

Collect samples of language and go over it with the students at the end.

Ask the students what they had problems with – what their perception of their performance was…

Record the students onto tape so they get to hear what they really sound like.

Provide models of native speakers performing the same tasks.

Remember, as soon as we start directing our students we are moving away from fluency activities.

Total Immersion Approaches

Prabhu in Bangalore adopted a very radical (for its time) approach involving total immersion in tas based learning with virtually no language input from teachers. What lessons there were were all based on fluency practice. It was however, extremely successful.I participated in a softer version of this in Azerbaijan to good effect.

Jigsaw Pictures

Have a large picture which is divided into 12 sections. Students have to discuss, describe and piece the whole thing together: can can even be done as an information gap exercise, although this will mean that the activity will lose its fluency bias.

For lower levels and make the activity more controlled, use less than twelve divisions in the picture. Also the teacher can set up the language beforehand. Early finishers can be writing the story up on the board.

Disadvantages with this activity is that it does tend to be rather slow, although you could try to speed it up by making smaller, more compact groups, and/or by making it a race.

Information Gap

Most good fluency activities have some degree of information gap – just as in real life.

Talking about oneself

Students share social and cultural information. Also, jobs, school, personal stories…

Problem Solving

“What’s the best way of robbing a bank?”

With/Without information gap: see Heinemann: Communication Games

Decision Making

In decision-making activities, students should share ideas and come to a conclusion or managed differences.

Examples include Balloon Debates and Skills and civilization.

Debate and Discussions

Look for interesting topics such as, “Men and Women are from Different Planets”. However this is always a very subjective thing to do and it is not always possible to actually do it in practise. How do we know what is interesting to all our students?

The answer to this is to use a questionnaire to set the activity up. The questionnaire can be used as a separate activity task.

Pure Discussion

This is the most difficult to make work. Does this sound familiar (although it may be expressed silently)

“I don’t have any opinion”

It can also take off to such an extent that some students are shouting and others never get to say anything. Some students may be so offended by what they have heard in a debate that they simply decide that these classes are simply not for them.

Our Questionnaire

Or variation: but it will give you an idea about what students think before going down the fluency road. It also means that students can’t easily change their minds over time. Any questionnaire about the class and the student’s learning experiences is nearly always a well received activity. Probably because it is actually about the students own experience.

Variations might include: true/false, change the statement so you agree, collect the statements with which you agree with and a dictation of a topic which the students can then change to suit themselves.

Project Work

Complete projects with questionnaires

Phone for information

Organising own activities

Action Research: this is solving real problems

Order pictures that show a sequence and describe the chain of events.

Role Play

Some students can find them very threatening.

Some students can be so quiet that others can’t hear what it is that they are saying.

In doing a role-play, you are in fact asking the students to act.

You can get the students to choose their own roles.

Have prompt cards ready to help them remember dialogue if they get stuck (is this fluency though?)

Organise the whole activity with great care, thinking very carefully about what each individual student can do.

Think numbers: the students not actively involved in the performance of a role-play – how are they processing language? Are they engaged in any activity?

Suggestopaedia [Lozanov Method]

Developed by the Bulgarian Lozanov. It makes use of dialogues, situations, and translations to present and practise language, and in particular, makes use of music, visual images, and relaxation exercises to make learning more comfortable and effective. Suggestopaedia is said to be a pedagogical application of “suggestology”, the influence of suggestion on human behaviour.

Teachers adopting this method often ask students to take on a new role, of their choosing. Mask making and wearing in class may sound silly, but apart from being a good project the masks can make this methodology work.

An Activity for Teaching ESL/EFL Students to Make Quick Replies and Encourage Fluency

A typically native utterance is the one that comes off the top of the head, without much thought given to it. This type of expression could well come under the heading of “small talk”, and a common example is “Great weather, isn’t it”.

The idea of this activity is to get the students to reply as naturally as possible to a relatively empty comment or statement like above.

Their reply will lack in formal correctness, because that is not the aim of the class. (Much native-native banter is said to be formally incorrect).

Another very important factor to tell them is that their reply does not have to be a logical follow-up remark; they should say the first thing that comes into their heads. By saying the first thing that comes into their heads, they are actually behaving collaboratively with the initial speaker.

To this end, the reply should also be quite short, although there are no hard and fast rules when people’s personal interpretations are involved.

The Rejoinders & Replies Activity

Tell the students that they are with friends in, say, a cafeteria.

It is a cloudy day outside and there is a lull in the conversation.

Someone is reading a paper, another person could be day-dreaming, and another people-watching. Silence reigns, and then one of the group says something, which is not directed at anyone in particular, off the top of his head.

The teacher can utter the following remarks with the tone he sees fit. He can direct the utterance at the students one by one, or at the group of students, but all the students must then reply.

Hey! It’s the end of the month!

Ouch! I’ve cut my finger on this page.

Someone looking at a newspaper: You know guys, this town we live in really IS a beautiful place.

Someone looking at a holiday photo of himself: Jeez, I look awful here.

Someone who is broke: I’d have another coffee, only I don’t have any money left.

Someone looking at a newspaper: That was a terrible accident in X, wasn’t it?

Someone looking towards the street: It must be raining, I see an umbrella up outside.

Someone whispering: See that man over at the counter, he’s just put a cake into his pocket.

Someone looking at a newspaper: Actors are lucky people, aren’t they?

Someone looking at the TV in the cafeteria: People watch too much TV.

Someone watching a mother/father with young children: They shouldn’t allow kids in here.

The teacher can say the spontaneous comments and then get the students to reply spontaneously.

You can change the setting to, say, a meeting, a hospital, a school and so on

Students often tend to take too long, and ended up constructing wonderful, logical, grammatical sentences (not to mention polite). For example, to “Ouch! I’ve cut my finger”, I got: “You must go to hospital”! and “Cover it” (?)

Fair enough, you can just practise simple, correct sentences,

but this activity wants to encourage realistic, fast replies, which are elliptical in many cases like in native-native exchanges.

Allow the students to give their long-pondered sentences, but remind them that they are with friends and that real life interlocutors don’t normally wait 20 seconds for a reply to a spontaneous remark.

Get them to be creative and help to get them into an appropriate frame of mind. They must forget they are in a classroom.

As a bonus, you may even be able to digress (let them know this, tell them it is a time-out) and actually debate a reply (for example, the one about the town being a shop window. Why is it?).

In summary, encourage:

Appropriate frame of mind. Get into context.

Accuracy is not that important.

“Getting Elementary Students to Talk” –Roslyn Young

This is an approach that Roslyn Young took to get a group of students to become a group of friends an begin to engage in pure fluency talk. She wanted to get rid of books and methods and allow students to talk about themselves. This was based on the premise that everyone wants to talk about the most important person in the world: me. So, she thought, “let it show, make it obvious! Help them to meet each other”.

The class

The class was a fifty hour Evening class over 25 weeks. From October to June.

More than half had already has 50 hours of English instruction with the same teacher using Silent Way.

Most of the students were in their 50s and some were in their 60s.

It was a French monolingual class.

The beginning

She began by giving a five minute potted history of the English language. She believes that the French students particularly appreciate that they realise they already know half the language.

She then said that she was going to stop talking and that they if they wanted something to ask, they should finds someone they wanted to ask it of, and do their best to get the message across.

By November…

They were getting the hang of chatting in English… but,

they absolutely wanted to take notes. RY didn’t want them to do so, because they would then miss out on parts of the conversation and the whole way of working would be doomed.

Her compromise…

she recorded the whole class and typed up the conversation (!) and gave it out the next week. She has carried on like this until now.

Wile they waited for late comers, the students read over what they had done the week previously.

Ongoing techniques…

She uses the Silent Way Charts, and any word not on them will be written up on the board.

Correction: she holds her hands out in an open gesture to indicate: “how can you correct this sentence?” The class collectively try to work the problem out. If there are still minor errors, she uses finger correction. After she uses chants, chorus and concept cheking techniques to ensure that the students have got the sentence “off pat”.

She uses any type of link that helps students to remember vocabulary.

She expends vocabulary using “series”. The word “way” comes up. She adds: raiwa, runway, subway.

By March…

The students were beginning to have proper conversations.

However, the course had become for the students like some kind of party. They had become natural friends.

Learning to write…

Some students wanted to write, so she proposed that they wrote letters to her.

She asked them not to write about important things like politics, but about their own lives.

instead of correcting the letters, she simply wrote back.

How much time does it take?

She reports that writing letter only takes a few minutes. I have done a similar thing and in half an hour one can write many letters… maximum length is a page, and both she and I tended to write about the same length as the students.

It takes about an hour to transcribe the tape I the evenings.

On the other hand, she has no need to prepare the classes as she as no idea as to what is going to happen.

Bibliography and further reading

Brumfit, Christopher Communicative Methodology in Language Teaching: the roles of fluency and accuracy. (CUP 1984) Chapter 4 “Accuracy and Fluency” pp.50-57 sect 4.1

Klippel, Friederike Keep Talking CUP 1984

Sion Chris Creating Conversation in Class: Student Centred Interaction First Person Publishing 2001