Professional Documents
Culture Documents
An alternative model
As we have seen, PPP represents an accuracy-to-fluency model of instruction. An alternative model stands this progression on its head, and adopts a fluency-to-accuracy sequence. Put simply, the learning cycle begins with the meanings that the learners want to convey. They try to express these meaning using their available resources. They are then given guidance as to how to do this better. This guidance may include explicit grammar instruction. Through successive stages of trial, error, and feedback, the learner's output is fine-tuned for accuracy. Proponents of the communicative approach proposed a fluency-first model of instruction that is called task-based: first the learners perform a communicative task that the teacher has set them; the teacher then uses this to identify language features learners could have used in order to communicate their intentions more effectively.
These features are taught and practised, before students re-perform the original (or a similar) task: TASK TEACH TASK In this kind of lesson, the language items that are selected for special attention arise solely out of an assessment of the learners' communicative difficulties, rather than having been predetermined by a grammar syllabus. But if the grammar is not pre-programmed, how is teaching organised? One approach is to organise the syllabus around the tasks. Thus, the syllabus objectives are expressed in terms that relate to real language use (telling a story, booking a hotel room etc.) rather than in grammar terms (present perfect, adverbs of frequency etc). Task-based learning is not without its problems, however. For a start, what criteria determine the selection of tasks, the ordering of tasks, and the evaluation of tasks? More problematic still are the management problems associated with setting and monitoring tasks. lt is partly due to these problems that task-based teaching has had a mixed reception. Nevertheless, many teachers are finding ways of marrying elements of a task-based approach with the traditional grammar syllabus.
1 2 3 4 5 6
He had to help with the housework. His parents made him take piano lessons. He wasnt allowed to stay out late. Viv didnt have to help with the housework. Her parents let her have a motorbike. She was allowed to stay out late.
Step 3 The teacher then elicits paraphrases of each of the six sentences and writes them on the board. For example:
1a 2a
His parents made him help with the housework. He had to take piano lessons.
2
3a
The teacher erases the first set of sentences and asks students, in pairs, if they can reconstruct them from memory. Students write the sentences and these are read out and checked in open class. Step 4 The teacher sets a group-work task. The object is to find out who, in their groups, went to the strictest, and who to the most easygoing, school. Students prepare questions to ask each other using the target language forms and finally report back to the teacher. A general class discussion follows, as to the merits or not of a strict education. Discussion The lesson is plotted along PPP lines, with Steps 1 and 2 being the presentation, Step 3 the (controlled) practice and Step 4 the freer production. The presentation is a situational one, arguably more meaningful and memorable than a straight explanation. The teacher wastes no time in presenting learners with the written form (Step 2), since the written form is more easily processed than the spoken form and therefore a better medium for a grammar focus. The practice stages involve the students first of all transforming and then reconstructing the model sentences (Step 3). Again, this is done as a written exercise, allowing students reflection time as well as the chance to work collaboratively. It is probably at the stage when the students are reading out their sentences that the teacher would start to fine-tune for accurate pronunciation. The fluency task (Step 4) is still relatively controlled, but by having the students ask and answer a lot of questions using the target language there is built-in repetition. Moreover, there is a communicative purpose to the task, ensuring a focus on meaning as much as on form.
monitors the interactions, noting down examples of student productions that could be improved, but she doesn't correct them at this point. Step 4 The teacher asks the class to listen to a recording of some fluent English speakers chatting on the same theme. The conversation includes various examples of the language of coercion. The teacher asks some general gist questions about the conversation - for example, which of the speakers had a strict upbringing, which had an easygoing one? She then hands out a transcript of the recording, and replays the tape while they read. Step 5 Students then study the transcript with a view to finding language that might be useful in the survey task, particularly language related to the notions of being strict and easygoing. They list these in two columns: adjectives and verbs. Students work in pairs on this task, and then the teacher elicits ideas on to the board. For example:
ADJECTIVES tolerant
She then asks the class to complete the blank spaces after each verb, and to make generalisations about the grammar of the verbs. She also elicits the question forms of the verb structures: were you allowed to ...? etc. Step 6 The students then return to their survey task - but are first given a chance to redraft and refine their questions in pairs. They are then paired off with different students than the ones they were talking to earlier (in Step 3). Step 7 The teacher then asks students, working in their original pairs, to prepare a report on their findings, with a view to answering the question: How does upbringing affect attitudes? Individual students are asked to present their report to the class. A general discussion ensues. Discussion The lesson is a task-based one because, rather than being plotted around a preselected item of grammar, the purpose of the lesson is to achieve a task outcome: in this case, deciding how upbringing affects attitudes. While this may seem contrived just as contrived, in fact, as pre-selecting a grammar item - it could be argued that the task focus encourages learners to take more creative risks with their language. They needn't restrict themselves to the teacher's grammar agenda (as in Sample lesson 1): theoretically, they could choose any language from the sample text (Step 4). Finally, and most importantly, a task invests the lesson with an intrinsic interest, apart from a concern only for language. The language is simply a means, not an end in itself (as is so often the case in PPP-type lessons). It should be clear that this task-based lesson shares many of the ingredients of the PPP lesson, but that the order is radically different: the major difference being that the production stage is brought to the front of the lesson (Steps 2 and 3) after an initial introduction to the theme (Step 1). The lesson starts in the deep end, as it were. The production stage acts as a trial run, where learners attempt to put into words the meanings they wish to express. The problems they have doing this should motivate 4
them to look for solutions in the sample text (Step 4). That is, they have an incentive to use the text as a resource, and may be better primed for noticing features of the text than if they had just read it for the sake of reading it. The teacher's role is to guide students (Step 5) to notice features that she herself has diagnosed as being misused or underused in the trial run. Students are then ready, theoretically, to re-attempt the task (Step 6). As a final push towards accuracy, the report stage (Step 7), in which the students 'go public', imposes an element of formality that forces attention on to form. Evaluation
Step5 The teacher asks students to formulate the rule. He writes it up in this form:
Example 4: Integrating grammar into a story-based lesson for very young learners
6
Most of the approaches so far have been targeted at adult or young adult Iearners. This is Iargely because any explicit focus on grammar is going to be over the heads of Iearners younger than eleven or tweIve years old. The research evidence suggests that until Iearners reach this age, second Ianguage acquisition is acquisition, and that the new Ianguage is best experienced rather than Iearned. Stories and songs offer a Ianguage-rich and highly engaging means of experiencing the Ianguage. In this Iesson, the teacher of a group of five-year-olds is incorporating the present perfect continuous into a story-telling activity. Step 1 The teacher is seated and the children sit in a half-circle on a mat at her feet. She uses a series of large visual aids to tell the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The visuals can take the form of either a 'big book' or a set of Ioose-Ieaf pictures, but they are big enough to be seen clearIy by all the chiIdren. The story is told naturally but clearIy,and with a good deal of checking of understanding (OK?) and of repetition. She also stops to expIain or transIate unfamiliar vocabulary as it occurs. The teacher inserts frequent exampIes of the present perfect continuous into the story, in the form of statements (Someone's been eating my porridge)and of questions (Who's been eating my porridge?), and adapts the traditional story so as to be abIe to include several instances of this: Who's been drinking my milk? Who's been reading my newspaper? Who's been sitting in my chair? Who's been playing with my doll? etc. A typical sequence might go like this: 'And then Father Bear found his newspaper. His newspaper was all mixed up [teacher gestures appropriateIy]. Father Bear thought Someone's been reading my newspaper. Father Bear asked Who's been reading my newspaper? ...' Step 2 The teacher goes through the story again, this time inviting the children to chorus the refrain Who's been eating my porridge? etc. Step 3 The teacher repeats the story in subsequent Iessons, and, at each successive telling, she invites more and more participation from the children. She also varies the story by either re-arranging the sequence, or by introducing new elements, such as further evidence of Goldilocks having been in the house (Someone's been using my computer; someone's been picking my flowers ... etc) The children are eventually so familiar with the story that, prompted mainly by the pictures, they are capabIe of telling it on their own. Step 4 The teacher sets the children the task of drawing their own pictures for the story, which they can use as a basis for re-telling. Discussion The sequence adopts the same approach to text-familiarisation that children experience in their first language: that is, repeated tellings, reinforced with visual stimuli and such theatrical elements as changes of voice (Whos been eating my porridge?). Into these re-tellings a number of repeated, refrain-like elements are incorporated. No attempt is made to deal with the text or the language embedded in it as an object in its own right, e.g. by talking about the grammar. The principIe operating is that, at this age, engaging and comprehensible input is sufficient to trigger acquisition. For very young learners, there seems no limit to the amount of repeated tellings of a story they will tolerate, although these tellings should be spread over a number of lessons. As they get older, however, this tolerance drops off markedly. The teacher will 7
then need to find tasks that disguise the repetitive element, by, for example, having them transform the story in some way, such as turning it into the script of a puppet play, or telling it backwards, or telling it from the point of view of another character.