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INTERNATIONAL HOUSE CERTIFICATE IN ADVANCED METHODOLOGY Module 4: Production Skills

Pre-reading task: Before you read the notes, consider your answer to these four questions. You may like to make notes, as your answers will be discussed during the session. Once you have answered them, read the notes which follow and compare with your answers. 1. What is the difference between accuracy and fluency work in the classroom? 2. Why is it worth differentiating between them? What are their roles in learning? 3. How do they affect the role of the teacher (with regard to, e.g., monitoring, correction and feedback)? 4. How can we stage production activities so that they succeed? 4.1 What is the difference between accuracy and fluency work in the classroom?

Your definitions may have referred to some of these issues: An accuracy-focused activity... helps learners develop their control of language systems (e.g. grammar, lexis, phonology); helps build confidence with the nuts and bolts of language; involves close attention from the teacher and explicit correction.

A fluency-focused activity...

gives the learners a chance to use their own linguistic resources for real-time communication; helps develop their confidence and ability with production skills; allows the learners to express their own meanings with minimal intervention from the teacher.

Rather than seeing the two as polar opposites, it is perhaps more useful to see them on a continuum, with purely accuracy focused work (e.g., a drill involving simple repetition) on one end, and purely fluency focused work (e.g., a spontaneous discussion) on the other. Accuracy_________________________________________________________Fluency

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An example of an activity that falls somewhere in the middle could be a discussion which is designed to practise and make more automatic a particular structure that is being focused on, e.g., talk about your weekend plans using appropriate future forms. Clearly, restrictions on linguistic choice have been placed, meaning it cant be considered a pure fluency activity. On the other hand, the learners are being encouraged to use this language to talk about themselves, and only a few restrictions have been placed on what forms to use where this should (the teacher hopes) occur as a matter of learner choice as they try to express their meanings precisely. You will probably recognise this type of freer practice activity as one that we commonly use in the classroom. It demonstrates that work on accuracy and fluency isnt necessarily mutually exclusive. Nonetheless, being able to distinguish as a teacher whether an activity primarily promotes one or the other is an important skill, as they both serve different, but complementary, purposes, in helping learners develop their English competence. In this unit, we will be focusing primarily on fluency, and how we can go about staging production lessons successfully. 4.2 Why is it worth differentiating between them? What are their roles in learning? As indicated above, they serve different purposes in helping learners. Lets take a brief look at some of the theory informing this, although this will be considered in much greater depth in later units. It is now generally recognised that the classroom should be an environment in which learners are engaged in meaningful communication and close attention to language that is, that there should be both fluency and accuracy work. This may seem somewhat obvious to you as a teacher working under the umbrella of Communicative Language Teaching and using standard coursebook materials such as Cutting Edge and English File. But think back to French or German lessons at school (this is certainly true if you are British, though I suspect many of you from different backgrounds will also identify with this) endless drills, a high percentage of class time spent discussing L2 in L1, written grammar exercises, minimal spontaneous (or even structured) discussions. Formal accuracy work dominated, and work on production was negligible. The situation in English language teaching has been similar audio-lingual and grammar translation methods valued accuracy work over fluency. What is the effect of this on learning? Lets consider Learner A you may have had students like Learner A. They are very good when it comes to written grammar exercises and limited production such as drills. But they are often considerably weaker when it comes to fluency work. Learner A is reluctant to speak; when she does speak, she does so haltingly, constantly querying whether what they have said is accurate, self-correcting

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and reformulating. She has knowledge of the language but lacks the skill and confidence to employ it effectively in real-time communication. Over the seventies and eighties, the emphasis on accuracy shifted. The SLA (Second Language Acquisition) researcher Stephen Krashen represents one of the more radical positions here. In The Natural Approach, he argued (persuasively but controversially) that focusing on form in other words, accuracy work played an absolutely minimal role in language acquisition. Rather, exposure to the target language was key (through, for example, immersion programmes). Linguistic competence would take care of itself without formal instruction. Such a radical position of course invited plenty of criticism, one of which in particular concerns us here; without the option of feedback on form, learner language tends to fossilise that is, certain errors become ingrained and very hard to eradicate. This brings us to Learner F. Learner F, because of learning style, personality or other factors, prizes fluency over accuracy in actual fact, he has no interest in formal instruction, grammar exercises or correction. He simply wants to communicate with minimal interference. He communicates with confidence and is quite good at getting his message across. The problem is that his production is riddled with errors which he seems unaware of. Most of the time, these dont, on their own, impede the message. But, cumulatively, it puts a strain on the listener or reader. What is more, sometimes, it is hard to get the gist of what he is saying due to impeding errors. Learner A and Learner F are stereotypes; like all stereotypes, you may recognise some truth in them but feel they are exaggerated. This exaggeration serves a useful purpose the realisation that focusing too exclusively on accuracy or fluency has a damaging effect on learning. If the outcome of learning is to develop the communicative competence of a given learner, it is fairly clear that they need close work on language, in terms of input and feedback, and they need plenty of opportunities to express themselves and experiment productively with the language. 4.3 How do they affect the role of the teacher (with regard to, e.g., monitoring, correction and feedback)?

The chief reason it is important for teachers to be aware of whether an activity focuses on accuracy or fluency is that this affects (or should affect) his or her behaviour in the classroom. Lets take a closer look at this. Before you read on, consider the last time you administered a controlled, accuracyfocused activity with your students, for example, a gap-fill where they had to select the correct tense.

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Answer these questions: How did you monitor? What was your physical position? How many times did you intervene? Did you correct the learners? When did you correct them? What form did feedback take?

Hopefully you were quite hands on. When it comes to helping learners put rules into practice, and helping them develop their control of language, the teacher adopts a more instructive and less facilitative role. This can manifest itself through close monitoring, in a position where you can see the learners work and guide them through micro-teaching (e.g., recapping and re-clarifying rules). You will, as part of this, point out errors and encourage the learners to self or peer correct; correction, in other words, tends to be on the spot and certainly explicit. After most learners have completed the activity, you will hold a plenary slot, summarising the correct answers and perhaps addressing one or two common problems. Now consider a production activity you recently taught (you will do this in more detail later). Answer the same questions as above. You probably notice that your behaviour was quite different (if not, then consider why you monitor or correct in the same manner during a fluency / accuracy activity). I would argue that during a production activity, the following represent desirable teacher behaviour: The teacher carefully sets up the activity so that the learners know what they have to do, who with, for how long, and what the outcome is. The teacher lets the learners get on with it she monitors carefully but without intervening (unless she has to e.g., to repair instructions). She makes notes of some of the students ideas and the language they use to express them. She doesnt correct errors she hears on the spot. After the activity is finished, she conducts feedback on how successfully they completed their goals and offers some delayed correction on common / useful linguistic problems.

The difference here is that the teacher adopts a much more facilitative role the emphasis is on carefully setting-up the activity and providing comprehensive feedback afterwards but letting it run without intervening. During the activity itself, the students are free to use all the language at their disposal, to experiment, to make mistakes, to communicate in a motivated manner. Its important to be clear about the significance of this role the teacher is not abdicating responsibility. Quite the contrary as we will see, setting up production tasks so that they

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work is a tricky business which requires careful planning. If planned properly, you give learners the opportunity to experiment with English and negotiate meaning with each other in a way that rarely happens in accuracy-focused stages.

4.4

How can we stage production activities so that they succeed?

We will look in more detail at a possible staging for written and spoken production in the session itself. For now, it is probably worth reflecting on one key point. There is no fixed, monolithic staging for production activities (though it is easy to recommend a very workable and flexible template, which we will do in the session). How you go about it will depend on various factors such as the level of the class, their general confidence and competence with speaking and writing, their knowledge of the topic, their mood and so on. Rather than being very prescriptive then, it is more useful to consider a set of variables that you can take into account when planning a production activity. Here are the main ones: Orientation and Preparation. Required Linguistic Support. Set up of the Activity. Feedback on Content and Feedback on Language. Task Repetition.

It may help you to consider these variables as knobs to be played with in accordance with the specific group and activity. You may turn these knobs on or off, or set them to low or high, as the specific circumstances require. Lets define each in turn and look at their implications: Orientation and Preparation This refers to setting the topic for discussion, and generating interest in it. It also refers to any pre-production preparation that the learners need in terms of ideas. For example, if you want your group to debate the best way to deal with a particular social problem in their country, you might first brainstorm common problems and possible solutions. This allows the learners to activate their topic schema (i.e., what they know already about social problems in their country), invest themselves in the topic, and collaborate by pooling ideas it readies them for the production itself. The learners might also need thinking time regarding their specific arguments even jotting down notes to support what they will say. Far from inhibiting fluency, preparation

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and thinking time have been shown to promote it, as well as improving the accuracy of the language chosen. Required Linguistic Support In order to facilitate the production, the teacher may feel it is useful to focus on certain expressions or lexical items before the production itself. The language could be preselected by the teacher, or could arise based on learner initiative, during their thinking time slot. The language could be topic-related lexis, or gambits for helping support their points, e.g., discourse markers such as As far as Im concerned..., or What Im trying to say is... This doesnt necessarily tip the activity away from fluency towards accuracy as this language has a supporting role it is there to be used if and when necessary. However, heavy-handedness on the part of the teacher could tip the balance; that is, the teacher putting too much emphasis on the language, rather than ideas, or insisting the learners use the phrases. Set up of the Activity The topic has been established. The learners have ideas and language. Before they start, the learners need to know several things that will help keep them on task. Who they will be communicating with alone, in pairs, groups, or in front of the whole class? Will they take turns, or converse? Note that the physical position of the learners is very important here if you want them to speak in groups, they need to be able to make eye contact and easily converse with everyone in that group. If they are writing at length, they need a desk, or a comfortable position for writing. The goal, outcome, or purpose of the activity. This is crucial. There is an enormous difference between these two instructions talk to your partner about social problems in your country and talk to your partner about social problems in your country; try to agree on the two most important. The latter requires actual communication that is speaking and listening to each other; arguing and negotiating. Similarly, with written production, providing a purpose for the piece of discourse is highly motivating and authenticates the process. For example, the learners may be asked to write a letter of complaint about a poor hotel visit; the outcome will be a class decision on who is most likely to get a refund, based on the effectiveness of their letter. Note that some formats for production activities already have a goal built into them for example, a debate, where the goal is to be persuasive and win the argument; or a ranking activity, where the goal is to agree with your partner on a given order. The time limit giving some sort of indication of how long they have to speak or write. This helps determine the pace of the activity.

Feedback on Content and Feedback on Language

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As discussed earlier, the role of the teacher while the activity is being carried out is to listen and make notes for feedback. The two main types of feedback are indicated above. Content Feedback means discussing the topic of the production activity itself, with reference to the goal or outcome for example, who was most persuasive in the debate, whether you could find something in common with your partner, who will get their money back, etc. Given that fluency activities focus on ideas more than language, this stage should arguably not be neglected. It provides closure and makes the students feel validated in their opinions. Language Feedback is straightforward the teacher selects errors from what he or she has heard and focuses on them. This could involve putting them on the board and eliciting corrections, assuming they were slips; it could take the form of a mini-input slot in which learner output is upgraded. Note that you can also draw attention to successful language use in this stage, i.e., expressions you heard that were impressive and worth drawing to the attention of the whole class. Task Repetition This may seem somewhat unusual we generally dont have learners discuss something, offer feedback, and then ask them to do it again. There are, however, some powerful arguments for task repetition, based on research. Task repetition has been shown to improve learners organisation of ideas, as well as the complexity and accuracy of the language used, in terms of lexis and syntax. Learners also tend to be able to repair their output self-correct more when repeating a task. Teachers, though, often resist the idea of task repetition because they feel learners will be unwilling to do it, or become bored by it. But there are plenty of variables to play with here. The following could be altered in order to vary the task when it is repeated: Interaction have the learners regroup / talk to a different partner or write for a different reader. Content tweak the content so that the topic is slightly different. For example, a discussion on plans for the weekend could become a discussion on plans for next summer. Roles roles can be switched. For example, the waiter becomes the customer and vice-versa. Goal tweak the outcome in some way. For example, instead of identifying who they agree with the most in the group, they find the person they disagree with the most. Time put pressure on learners by reducing the amount of time they have to complete the task second time around. Occasion of repetition repeat the activity in the next lesson, or the next week.

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Any of these can be tweaked as desired. Note that research doesnt support the idea that learners become bored or fatigued by task repetition. Its benefits are numerous; and explaining rationale to your learners, and allowing them to become aware of the decisions you make and the subsequent benefits for their learning, can mitigate any potential resistance. In conclusion, it may not be desirable to select a single way of staging a production activity. Rather, there are certain conditions that need to be met and how much emphasis is placed on these depends on the circumstances. Having said that, we can use these conditions to construct a template for staging production activities. As I have already mentioned, these will be looked at in the session. For now, look at the pre-session tasks, which aim to bridge these notes and the session itself, and relate some of the ideas outlined here to your own experience. Pre-Session Tasks Before the session, answer the following questions and have your answers available as they will be referred to. Task One Based upon the knobs discussed in section 4.4 and considering your own experience, design a staging template that would work for most production activities. Task Two Think of a production skills activity you recently administered. It could involve speaking, writing, or both, but should be fluency rather than accuracy focused. Write down the stages, including micro-stages. Write down the aims of each stage. Was it a success, in your eyes? If so, why? If not, why not what could you do to improve it? How could you tweak it? Reading list: Second Language Acquisition, Ellis, R., OUP, 1997. The Practice of English Language Teaching, Harmer, J., Pearson Education, 2001, (chapters 17-19 on productive skills, speaking and writing). The Natural Approach, Krashen, S., Prentice Hall, 1983. A Cognitive Approach to Language Teaching, Skehan, P., OUP, 1998. How to Teach Speaking, Thornbury, S., Longman, 2005. Challenge and Change in Language Teaching, Willis, J. & D., Macmillan Heinemann, 1996, (especially Martin Bygates paper Effects of Task Repetition).

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