Scientific Approach and Four Strands
Principle that related to four strands:
Four
strands: A course should include a roughly even balance of
meaning-focused input, language-focused learning, meaning-focused output, and
fluency activities.
We can see the
principle above, it is important that a language course provide a balanced
range of opportunities for learning. A reasonably straightforward way, to
evaluate if a course is well balanced or not is to keep a list of activities
done over a period of time recording how much time was spent on each activity.
The activities should then be classified into each of the four strands and the
amount of time added up for each strand. The amount of time for each of the
four strands should be roughly equal.
Relating to Scientific
Approach and Four Strands, we can make collaboration of them.
In
the part of OBSERVING, we can fill with meaning-focused input
activities. Meaning-focused input is collaborated on Scientific Approach.
Principle:
Comprehensible input: There should
be substantial quantities of interesting comprehensible receptive activity in
both listening and reading.
Meaning-focused
input
Meaning-focused
input involve having the opportunity to learn from listening and reading.
Krashen (1981) would call it learning from comprehensible input. The conditions
which are needed for such learning are a low density of unknown items in the
language input, a focus on the meaning of the message, and a large quantity of
input. In language courses, the most important way of providing a large amount
of comprehensible input is to have an extensive reading programme. This
involves the learners in reading books which have been specially written for
learners of English in a controlled vocabulary.
It is important
that a course should apply the “time on task” principle. That is, if reading is
a goal of the course, there should be plenty of reading activity. If listening
is a goal of a course, there should be plenty of listening activity.
Where the
listening is not accompanied by visual clues, it more difficult to learn from
listening than from reading. Another major source of meaning-focused input in a
course comes from interacting with others. One person’s output can be another
person’s input. An advantage of interactive learning is that the listener can
negotiate the meaning of the input with the speaker. That is, they can ask the
meaning of words or constructions and they can ask for a repetition of poorly
heard material. They can also control the speed of the input by asking the
speaker to speak more slowly.
In
the part of NETWORKING, we can fill with meaning-focused
output activities. Meaning-focused output is collaborated on Scientific
Approach.
Principle:
Output:
The learners should be pushed to produce the language in both speaking and
writing over a range of discourse types.
Meaning-focused
output
Meaning-focused
output involves learning through speaking and writing. Learning by input alone
is not sufficient because the knowledge needed to comprehend input does not
include all the knowledge which is needed to produce output. A well-balanced
language course spends about one quarter of the course time on meaning-focused
speaking and writing.
Meaning-focused
speaking should involve the learners in conversation and also in monologue. The
conversation can have a largely social focus and can also be used for conveying
important information. That is, there should be practice in both interactional
and transactional language use (Brown, 1978). The conditions for meaning-focused
output are similar to those for meaning-focused input. There should be a focus
on the message (that is getting the listener or the reader to understand), the
task should be demanding but not too demanding, and there should be plenty of
opportunity for such activity.
If a language
course has the goal of developing skill in writing, then there needs to be
regular meaning-focused writing. This can involve writing letters to other
students or to the teacher, keeping a diary, writing essays and assignments, writing
brief notes to get things done, writing stories and poems, writing
descriptions, writing instructions, and persuasive writing.
If the language
course has the goal of developing skill in speaking, then there needs to be
regular meaning-focused speaking. This can involve information gap activities,
short talks, conversation while doing a task, problem-solving discussions and
role plays.
In
the part of QUESTIONING AND ASSOCIATING, we can fill with
language-focused learning activities. Language-focused learning is collaborated
on Scientific Approach.
Principle:
Deliberate learning: The course
should include language-focused learning on the sound system, spelling,
vocabulary, grammar, and discourse areas.
Language-focused
learning
Language-focused
learning involves a deliberate focus on language features such as
pronunciation, spelling, word parts, vocabulary, collocations, grammatical
constructions and discourse features. Language-focused learning is an efficient
way of quickly learning language features. It is an important part of any
language course and about one quarter time should be spent on such learning. In
most courses too much time is spent on such learning, and this means that there
is less opportunity for learning through the other three strands of the course.
The answer is not to completely remove language-focused learning from the
course, but to make sure that there is an appropriate amount of it.
Language-focused
learning can have two major effects. It can result in deliberate conscious
knowledge of language items. This explicit knowledge can be helpful in making
learners aware of language features which they will meet in input. This
awareness can help learning from input. Language-focused learning can also
result in subconscious implicit knowledge of language items. This is the kind
of knowledge which is needed for normal language use. Deliberate learning of
vocabulary items can result in both kinds of knowledge (Elgort, 2007). For most
grammatical features however deliberate learning is likely only to contribute
to conscious knowledge. Such conscious knowledge can be useful when learners
have time to check their production as in writing, but it is also useful as a
stepping stone to implicit knowledge when the items are later met in meaning-focused
input or fluency-development activities.
Here are some of
the activities which could occur in the language-focused learning strand of
course – intensive reading, pronunciation practice, guided writing, spelling
practice, blank-filling activities, sentence completion or sentence combining
activities, getting feedback on written work, correction during speaking
activities, learning vocabulary from word cards, memorizing collocations,
dictation and the explicit study of discourse features.
In
the part of EXPERIMENTING, we can fill with fluency
activities. Fluency development is collaborated on Scientific Approach.
Principle:
Fluency: A language course should provide
activities aimed at increasing the fluency with which learners can use the
language they already know, both receptively and productively.
Fluency
development
The fourth
strand of a course is a fluency development strand. Fluency involves making the
best use of what is already known. Thus, the fluency development strand of a
course does not involve the learning of new language features, but involves
becoming fluent with features that the learners have already met before. The
conditions for the fluency development strand are: (1) easy, familiar
materials, (2) a focus on communicating messages, (3) some pressure to perform
at a faster speed, and (4) plenty of opportunities for fluency practice.
There needs to
be fluency practice in each of the four skills of listening, speaking, reading,
and writing.
Listening
Listening
fluency practice can involve listening to stories, taking part in interactive
activities, and listening to lectures on familiar material.
Speaking
Speaking fluency
activities can involve repeated speaking where learners deliver the same talk
several times to different learners, speaking on very familiar topics, reading
familiar material aloud, and speaking about what has already been spoken or
written about before.
Reading
Reading fluency
activities should involve a speed reading course within a controlled
vocabulary. Such courses can bring about substantial fluency improvement with
just a few minutes practice two or three times a week for most learners (Chung
and Nation, 2006). Such courses need to be within a controlled vocabulary
because they should not contain vocabulary which is unfamiliar to the learners.
It is very difficult to develop fluency when working with material which
contains unknown language features. Other reading fluency activities include
repeated reading where the learners read the same text several times, and
extensive reading involves very easy graded readers.
Writing
Writing fluency
activities involve the learners in writing about things where they bring a lot
of previous knowledge. A very useful activity in this strand is ten-minute
writing. In this activity, two or three times a week, the teacher gets the
learners to write under timed conditions, that is for exactly ten minutes. The
teacher does not mark any of the errors in the writing but comment on the
content of the writing perhaps suggesting what the learners should write more
about next time. The learners record the number of words per minute they have
written on a graph. Their goal is to increase the number of words per minute
written. Other writing fluency activities include linked skills activities.
Linked skills activities are very effective for fluency development in all of
the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. A linked skills
activity involves learners working on the same material while moving through a
series of changes, for example, from listening to the material, to talking
about it, and then to writing about it. Usually we would expect to see three
skills linked together, such as reading, then writing, and then speaking. The
last activity in a series of linked skills is usually a fluency activity,
because by this time the learners are very familiar with the material and can
work with it at a faster speed.
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