Form focus and recycling: getting grammar
Submitted by
Dave Willis
on 16 April, 2008 - 14:26
In my last article,
Reading for Information: Motivating learners to read efficiently,
I referred to four stages in a task-based reading lesson:
We looked at the first two stages in this process, priming and reading. Now I'd
like to look at the next two stages.
At the beginning of my last article, when I was talking about how we read I said
‘If you are a good reader you almost certainly don't read every word
carefully. You read with a purpose, and as your eye skims over the page you take
from it whatever you need.' And I pointed out that this is how we want our
students to read. But there is a problem with this quick efficient reading. It's
very good for getting what we want out of a text, but it's not a very good way
of learning language.
Reading for information is very much a lexical process. We focus on the
message-bearing words. Often we don't take account of the little words that hold
the text together - words like at, the, in, this,
'd and to in my first paragraph above. But if we want our learners to
improve their English grammar these are exactly the words they need to look at
very carefully. So there is a contradiction between learning to read efficiently
and using that reading to develop a knowledge of grammar. They are quite
different processes.
The priming and reading stages of our lesson have given learners useful practice
in learning to read, and as a result of their reading they are familiar with the
text on sharks and what it means. Now it is time to put that text to work to
help them to develop their grammar.
We need to look at a text carefully and decide what it can illustrate for
learners. There are several very useful things we might demonstrate with this
text. One of these is quantification. There are a number of useful expressions
like:
Sentence 1. is a very useful one. The phrase Some sharks shows that we
are not talking about all sharks. Later in the sentence we have a demonstration
of what grammarians call ellipsis, with the words some and others
standing in for the complete phrases some sharks and other sharks and the word
live is omitted after others. Later in the text phrases like as many as,
not all, almost, more than half, (only) about and
less than are all very useful quantifying expressions.
Our next step is to decide how to draw learners' attention to these elements and
in some cases explain how they are used. Expressions like only about and
less than, for example, are used to suggest that quantities are
surprisingly small. As many as, on the other hand, suggests that the
quantity is surprisingly large.
There is a very simple way of making sure that learners focus on these elements.
We can simply give them gapped sentences and ask them to work in groups or pairs
to complete the sentences from memory:
We can then read out the sentences to allow learners to check their answers and
change them if they wish. They can make a list of these quantifying expressions,
and as they come across similar expressions in other texts they can expand their
list to include things like nearly/almost/not as many as, just over, no
more/less than. Finally we can give heavily gapped sentences and see how much
learners can recall:
What we are doing here is encouraging learners to pay close attention to the
wording of the sentences. Their first reading of the text was for meaning, to
encourage them to read quickly and fluently. Now we are looking at elements of
the text in detail and encouraging them to learn from it.
Finally I'd like to look at recycling the text. We have treated it in some
detail and learners will probably have reached the stage where they want to move
on. So the text should be laid aside for a while, but it can usefully be
resurrected later.
A week or two later we can ask learners to review the text for homework. One
group can be asked to act as ‘question master' and prepare a comprehension test
with ten questions about the text for the others to answer from memory, without
reference to the text. I have used this technique with a number of classes of
teenagers. The question masters take their role very seriously and do their best
to find really difficult questions:
The other learners work hard at the text trying to anticipate the questions they
will be asked.
You can take the questions from the question masters and quickly correct them
before they are put to the rest of the class, and you can write the questions on
the board as they are asked. The important thing about this activity is that it
will oblige learners to read the text in detail. As a result of this detailed
reading they are more likely to remember both the content of the text and how to
express that content. This makes our four stage methodology a useful approach in
a
CLIL
programme which recognises the close link between language and content.
We have now looked at one text and a four stage cycle to exploit that text. In
my next article
Techniques for priming and recycling
I will look at different techniques which we can apply at each stage.
The approach recommended here is a task-based approach. Click
here
for more on task-based learning and teaching.
For two more lessons illustrating the four stage methodology go to:
www.willis-elt.co.uk/taskbased.html
and look at LESSON 2 and LESSON 3 and at the commentaries on these lessons.
Written by Dave Willis