Of course, in an ideal world, learners will be motivated to set their own goals, devise strategies for achieving them, and provide their own ‘push’. But that sort of student is probably going to learn anyway, and won’t need the support of the teacher and of co-learners to provide the necessary incentives. They probably don’t even need a classroom. But for the majority of learners, just as a physical trainer is useful in helping gym novices select and calibrate their objectives, a teacher is well placed to ‘add weights’ or ‘raise the bar’ at timely intervals. Dick Allwright (2005: 20) talks about the teacher’s role in ‘providing learning opportunities’, but adds that ‘there is [also] fine-tuning of such opportunities to meet the particular needs of particular learners’. Part of this fine-tuning is the way teachers customize certain tasks so as to encourage learners to exceed their present competence.
So, what can teachers do to provide this extra ‘push’? Here are a few ideas:
1. Rather than accepting one- or two-word replies to questions, insist on more elaborated utterances, in the spirit of: ‘OK, that was good. Now give me a full sentence.’ Or, ‘OK, say that again, but include two facts, not just one.’
2. Repeat tasks. Research suggests that performance generally improves when learners repeat a speaking task. The second or third time round, ‘raise the bar’, e.g. ‘This time, do it from memory, without your notes.’ Or, ‘This time do it in half the time.’ If doing the same task seems like a chore, add variety by changing the partner for each iteration of the task.
3. Public performance. Whereas pair and groupwork is great for task rehearsal, it’s also easy for learners to under-perform in this setting, especially when out of earshot of the teacher. Performing the task to the whole class, or publicly reporting on the outcome of the task, adds an element of formality that often encourages greater attention to accuracy. And knowing that they may be called upon to report or perform has a useful washback effect on the level of engagement during the groupwork itself.
4. Encourage learners to go beyond their present competence by incorporating novel language items into their performance. For example, if a role play involves making requests, establish the request forms that the learners are already comfortable with, then top up by teaching some new ones. Ask individuals to choose at least one new form, and to write it on a piece of paper, which they hold during the role play, and which they relinquish once it’s been used. Alternatively, a Cuisenaire rod can represent the targeted form, on the principle that something physical helps to jog their memory when the time is right.
5. Increase memory load. For example, write targeted words, expressions or structures on the board in preparation for a speaking task, such as a class survey. As the learners perform the task, selectively erase the material from the board, placing greater demands on their memory in an incremental fashion.
6. Change the mode. For example, learners summarize a groupwork discussion in written form. Or they perform a dialogue that they have first scripted. Or a rehearsed dialogue is then filmed. Or a PowerPoint presentation is then performed. And so on.
Questions for discussion
1. Do you think it’s the teacher’s job to push the learners, or do you think that it’s the learners’ responsibility to push themselves?
2. Is there a risk of pushing too hard?
3. Have you ever observed lessons where the learners seemed under-challenged? If so, how could you tell?
4. Has the communicative approach, with its emphasis on fluency rather than accuracy, contributed to a sense that learners are under-challenged?
5. Likewise, has the influence of humanistic approaches led us to ‘go soft’ on learners?
6. What does the concept of output + 1 mean, in practical classroom terms?
7. With regard to second language learning, to what extent is the analogy of sports training a fair one?
8. What other activities can you think of that provide ‘push’?
References
Allwright, D. (2005) ‘From teaching points to learning opportunities and beyond’, TESOL Quarterly, 39, 1.
Krashen, S. D. (1985) The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications, Harlow: Longman.
Swain, M. (1985) ‘Communicative competence: some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development’, in Gass, S. and Madden, C. (eds.) Input in second language acquisition, Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
To see how readers responded to this topic online, go to
http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/p-is-for-push/
10 Why focus on form?
Can you learn a language simply by using it? This was certainly the belief that impelled the early days of the communicative approach, and which underpinned the comprehension approaches that drew heavily on Krashen’s learning versus acquisition distinction. Experiential, deep-end approaches to language learning have survived in the form of immersion-type programs and content-based language teaching. But, generally speaking, the last few decades have seen a retreat from the view that use is sufficient. Even advocates of task-based learning acknowledge the value – even necessity – of directing the learners’ attention, not just to the content of their language use, but to the forms that this content takes. This is the so-called ‘focus-on-form’, as defined by Michael Long (1991: 45):
Focus-on-form … overtly draws students’ attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overriding focus is on meaning or communication.
Likewise, it’s a central tenet of the Dogme approach to language instruction that it’s all ‘about teaching that focuses on emergent language’ (Meddings and Thornbury 2009: 8). To this end Dogme enlists the concept of focus-on-form: ‘A focus on form … aims to redress the weaknesses in the second language learner’s innate capacity to notice, tally, and abstract patterns from the input, and to re-use these abstracted patterns as output’ (ibid.: 20).
However, there are a number of problems inherent in Long’s definition above, such as how overt is ‘overtly’? And which linguistic elements are drawn attention to – those that cause a breakdown in communication, those that are inaccurate, or those that not all the learners in the class might be familiar with? But possibly the biggest problem is with the word ‘incidentally’.
For some researchers, such as Lyster (2007), ‘incidental’ is not good enough. Based on extensive research into immersion and content-based classrooms in Canada, Lyster argues that ‘there now exists considerable evidence that the prevalence of implicit and incidental treatment of language [in immersion and content-based classrooms] does not enable students to engage with language in ways that ensure their continued language growth’ (ibid.: 99).
Lyster is particularly critical of the tendency in content-based classes, i.e. those where a school subject is taught in the learners’ L2, to take learners’ non-standard utterances and simply recast them. Recasting means tidying up learners’ ill-formed utterances, but without any overt indication that they are wrong. For example (from Lyster ibid.: 102):
T: Pourquoi pensez-vous qu’elle veut se faire réchauffer? Oui?
S8: Parce qu’elle est trop froid pour aller dans toutes les [?].
T: Parce qu’elle a froid, OK. Oui?
S9: Elle est trop peur.
T: Parce qu’elle a peur, oui.
[T: Why do you think she wants to warm herself up? Yes?
S8: Because she has too cold to go into all the [?].
T: Because she is cold, OK. Yes?
S9: She has too frightened.
T: Because she is frightened, yes. ]
According to Lyster, recasting of this type seems to happen a lot in content-based instruction, and is probably motivated by a desire to maintain a focus on the subject matter, as well as to keep the lesson flowing along. But does recasting pay off in terms of language acquisition? Only in classes where there is already a strong form-focus, apparently. In classrooms where the focus is primarily on meaning – as in these content-based o
nes in Canada – the linguistic information encoded in recasts goes largely unnoticed by learners.
I think the problem is that Lyster elides ‘incidental’ and ‘implicit’. But the former does not necessarily entail the latter. Because a focus-on-form arises naturally out of communicative interaction (i.e. it is incidental in the sense of unplanned) it need not be implicit. This is a different sense of incidental learning than what Ellis (2008: 966) defines as ‘[the] learning of some specific feature that takes place without any conscious intention to learn it’. A focus on form implies conscious intention, or should.
There are alternatives, after all, to recasting. Here, for example, a teacher draws explicit attention to a student’s use of a ‘false friend’ (from Thornbury 1996: 286):
S3: You have a river, a small river and [gestures].
T: Goes down?
S3: Yes, as a cataract.
T: OK, a waterfall [writes it on board]. What’s a waterfall, Manel? Can you give me an example? A famous waterfall [draws].
S1: Like Niagara?
T: OK. So what do you do with the waterfall?
S4: You go down.
But it’s not just recasts that Lyster takes issue with. He is also sceptical about the value of a purely reactive approach in general:
If teachers were to rely exclusively on reactive approaches, students would soon be discouraged by being pushed in ostensibly random ways to refine their target language output, without the possibility of accessing linguistic support provided systematically through proactive instruction (Lyster ibid.: 137).
Proactive instruction is sometimes called (confusingly) a focus-on-formS (plural), because it typically involves working from a pre-selected syllabus of discrete linguistic items, or forms. Because a pre-selected syllabus only accidentally represents the learner’s immediate (or even long-term) communicative needs, this is arguably a high price to pay for allaying the learner’s aversion to ‘randomness’.
The question, then, is: how can a reactive approach be married to an incidental but explicit focus-on-form in such a way that learners are not ‘discouraged by randomness’, and that their long-term communicative needs are met? To paraphrase Larkin,
Ah, solving that question
Brings the applied linguist and the researcher
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
Questions for discussion
1. Do you think ‘you can learn a language simply by using it’? Have you had an experience that suggests as much? Why do you think that there was a ‘retreat’ from this view?
2. According to Long (1991: 45) a ‘focus-on-form … overtly draws students’ attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overriding focus is on meaning or communication’. What do you understand by the underlined terms in that definition?
3. Recasting has been promoted as a ‘natural’ way of providing feedback to learners, and replicates the kinds of interactions that young children have with their caregivers. What is your opinion of recasting? Do you think that feedback should be more overt?
4. Lyster (2007) argues for a ‘counterbalanced approach’, i.e. one in which there needs to be a strong emphasis on form in classes that are predominantly content-driven, and where there needs to be a push towards communication in classes that follow a more traditional, form-focused syllabus. Which ‘direction’ (meaning to form, or form to meaning) seems preferable to you? Why?
5. Do you agree that in a purely reactive approach learners are likely to feel discouraged and short-changed? How could you mitigate this?
6. Do you agree that ‘a pre-selected syllabus only accidentally represents the learner’s immediate (or even long-term) communicative needs’? Why/Why not?
7. Content-driven learning, e.g. in the form of ‘content and language integrated learning’ (CLIL) has been enthusiastically promoted in recent years. Do you think that this enthusiasm has overlooked its inherent weaknesses, including its being ‘soft on form’?
8. In what other ways could a focus-on-form be applied in a content-driven class, apart from through reactive feedback?
References
Ellis, R. (2008) The Study of Second Language Acquisition (2nd ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Long, M. (1991) ‘Focus on form: A design feature in language teaching methodology’, in de Bot, K., Ginsberg, R. and Kramsch, C. (eds) Foreign Language Research in Cross-cultural Perspectives, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Lyster, R. (2007) Learning and Teaching Languages through Content: A counterbalanced approach, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Meddings, L. and Thornbury, S. (2009) Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching, Peaslake: Delta.
Thornbury, S. (1996) ‘Teachers research teacher talk’, ELT Journal, 50, 4, 279.
To see how readers responded to this topic online, go to
http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/f-is-for-focus-on-form-2/
11 What is scaffolding and how do you do it?
If you google ‘scaffolding’ or any of its derivatives, you will get a lot of hits like these:
This article stresses the importance of scaffolding academic language for second language learners, emphasizing active student involvement.
Time was taken to explore and use descriptive language while hunting. I scaffolded the children’s search using questioning based on positional terms.
I structured carefully because they are not native English speakers. I scaffolded and I summarized.
Since this was an introduction to multimodal composition for these students, I scaffolded it by putting a folder of shoe images on their desktops.
Scaffolding has become such a buzz term that it’s in danger of losing any meaning whatsoever. Teachers and trainers regularly talk about their role in ‘scaffolding’ learning, but if you unpick their examples, it’s difficult to distinguish these from the kind of simple question-and-answer sequences that have always characterized effective teaching. Here, for example, is an extract that Rod Ellis (2003: 181) uses to exemplify scaffolding:
Teacher: I want you to tell me what you can see in the picture or what’s wrong with the picture.
Learner: A /paik/ (= bike).
Teacher: A cycle, yes. But what’s wrong?
Learner: /ret/ (= red).
Teacher: It’s red, yes. What’s wrong with it?
Learner: Black.
Teacher: Black. Good. Black what?
Learner: Black /taes/ (= tyres).
Ellis explains that ‘the teacher is able to draw on his experience of communicating with low-level proficiency learners to adjust the demands of the task and to scaffold the interaction so that a successful outcome is reached’ (2003: 182). It seems to me, however, that this is simply a sequence of teacher-initiated display questions following the traditional IRF (initiate-respond-follow-up) pattern of classroom discourse. There is no real evidence that the learner has ‘appropriated’ any of the teacher’s own language ‘material’, even if (according to Ellis) this is the first time he has produced a two-word utterance. This only notionally embodies Bruner’s definition of scaffolding as ‘the steps taken to reduce the degree of freedom in carrying out some tasks so that the child can concentrate on the difficult skill she is in the process of acquiring’ (quoted in Gibbons 2002: 10).
What, then, are the ‘steps’ that Bruner refers to? Looking at the literature on scaffolding, a number of key features have been identified. Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976, quoted in Ellis 2003: 181) in one of the first attempts to define the term, itemize six:
1. recruiting interest in the task
2. simplifying the task
3. maintaining pursuit of the goal
4. marking critical features and discrepancies between what has been produced and the ideal solution
5. controlling frustration during problem solving
6. demonstrating an idealized version of the act to be performed.
Here is another i
nstance of teacher-learner talk (from Johnson 1995: 23) which perhaps comes nearer to meeting these criteria:
Teacher: Vin, have you ever been to the movies? What’s your favourite movie?
Learner: Big.
Teacher: Big, OK, that’s a good movie, that was about a little boy inside a big man, wasn’t it?
Learner: Yeah, boy get surprise all the time.
Teacher: Yes, he was surprised, wasn’t he? Usually little boys don’t do the things that men do, do they?
Learner: No, little boy no drink.
Teacher: That’s right, little boys don’t drink.
Notice how the teacher ‘recruits interest in the task’ by means of judicious question-asking, and ‘maintains pursuit of the [conversational goal]’, while at the same time ‘marking discrepancies’ by recasting the learner’s flawed utterances into a more target-like form (in the last two teacher turns).
While the metaphor of scaffolding implies support, it also implies impermanence. What is not demonstrated in the above extract (nor included in Wood, Bruner and Ross’s original scheme), is the gradual relinquishing of the teacher’s role as the learner appropriates the targeted skill – what one writer calls ‘transfer of control’: ‘As students internalize new procedures and routines, they should take a greater responsibility for controlling the progress of the task such that the amount of interaction may actually increase as the student becomes more competent’ (Applebee 1986, quoted in Foley 1994).
Another important feature of scaffolding is what van Lier (1996: 195) calls the ‘principle of continuity’, i.e. that ‘there are repeated occurrences, often over a protracted period of time, of a complex of actions, characterized by a mixture of ritual repetition and variations’. That is to say, scaffolded learning is not a one-off event, but is embedded in repeated, semi-ritualized, co-authored language-mediated activities, typical of many classroom routines such as games and the opening class chat. These constitute part of what Mercer (1995: 84) calls the ‘long conversation’ of teacher-learner interaction, in which ‘talk is used to construct knowledge’:
Big Questions in ELT Page 5
