Transcript The missing piece of the puzzle

Rugby players and
fairy stories
Rob Waring
Notre Dame Seishin University
JALT PANSIG May 21, 2011 Matsumoto
www.robwaring.org
Sponsored by
Fluency vs. Fluent
A fluent speaker (reader, writer, listener) can process the
language automatically, smoothly, and without much effort.
Fluency (in ELT) often refers to the development of the skill to
become fluent in it (i.e. fluency practice). This often done by:
- speed reading / writing activities
- speed word / sentence recognition activities
- using graded readers / graded listening materials
- pronunciation repetition
- etc.
Someone can be fluent but not accurate
Our challenge is to help them become fluent and accurate
Fluent Reading = Extensive Reading
This is NOT EXTENSIVE
READING
This is LANGUAGE
STUDY READING
This is NOT EXTENSIVE
READING
This is LANGUAGE
STUDY READING
What’s the optimum vocabulary coverage for
building fluency?
Reading
Pain
(too hard, poor
comprehension,
high effort,
de-motivating)
Intensive
reading
(Instructional
level, can
learn new
words and
grammar)
90%
Extensive
reading
(fast, fluent,
adequate
comprehension,
enjoyable)
98%
Speed reading
practice
(very fast,
fluent, high
comprehension,
natural reading,
enjoyable)
100%
% of known vocabulary
Slow
Reading speed
Low
Comprehension
High
High
A Balanced Curriculum
INPUT
Listening
Reading
LANGUAGE FOCUS
(Study)
(Intentional learning)
(Explicit knowledge)
FLUENCY FOCUS
(Communication)
(Incidental learning)
(Implicit knowledge)
Using a dictionary
Intensive reading
Asking the teacher
‘Teaching’
Phonics
….
Graded Reading
Extensive listening
Watching movies and TV
Listening to songs
….
OUTPUT
Speaking
Writing
Productive tests
Sentence / gap fill
Pronunciation practice
Controlled speaking tasks
Sentence level writing
….
Chatting and discussion
Keeping a diary
Writing poems
Making a speech
……
What do learners need to know to be ‘good’ at English?
Learners need 4000 word families (7-9000 to read native novels easily) and
their inflections and common derivations / multiple meaning senses
About 3-40000 common phrasal verbs and idioms
Common phrases, fixed and semi-fixed
Collocations and colligations
Register, pragmatics, discourse level awareness
Pronunciation
Some basic grammar
Skills and strategies
Etc. Etc. etc.
How long will it take to learn this?
An average word family needs 30-50 meetings for it to be learnt
receptively from reading (more for productive use)
An average word’s meaning takes 10-15 meetings to learn from
intentional study
Intentional vocab learning is 16 times faster than incidental
To learn the collocations and ‘deeper’ aspects of language
learning takes MUCH longer than learning the words alone.
There’s little research into the rate learning of collocation,
colligation or lexical phrases from reading
We know nothing at all about how long it takes to master a
particular grammatical form e.g. a tense, the articles,
comparatives
Which collocations?
Transparent ‘weak’ collocations – easy to learn – don’t teach
Beautiful flower, look out of a window, read a book, play a game
Specialized collocations – teach only if needed
Insolvency act, habeas corpus, spaghetti bolognese
Infrequent collocations – don’t bother teaching
Rancid butter, a glimmer of hope, circle of friends, by and large
Those that need attention
–Highly frequent collocations (not too many of these)
make/do + noun
–False friends
weak tea, *thin tea;
meet friends / *play with friends
Most collocations aren’t worth teaching
individually
Collocations will always occur less frequently than the words
that make them up
In the British National Corpus (100m words)
Strong occurs 213 times / 1m words
Wind occurs 73 times / 1m words
Strong wind occurs 3.06 times / 1m words
The ‘difficult’ word compromise occurs 31 times
Most collocations aren’t worth teaching individually
How frequently do lexical phrases occur (BNC)?
Raw Rank
177
222
272
285
378
1538
1725
2159
2491
2970
3307
3755
4378
5409
5987
7396
7885
9125
Word
out of
per cent
such as
of course
for example
in front of
all right
as soon as
in general
in addition to
next to
on top of
instead of
in charge of
just about
provided that
as good as
with a view to
Per million
words
490
382
321
309
238
65
58
47
41
34
30
26
21
17
15
11
10
8
Raw Rank
11459
13507
14369
16684
19505
22060
28441
43572
48241
51717
58511
74321
76170
82928
83882
88912
89371
Word
Per million
words
in between
6
by and large
5
at random
4
per se
4
old fashioned
3
grown up
2
matter of fact
2
sq m
1
fait accompli
1
straight forward
1
habeas corpus
1
self-same
0
haute cuisine
0
a good deal
0
laissez faire
0
thank you
0
persona non grata
0
How well are our courses presenting the language
students need?
Research suggests a typical language courses:
• do not systematically recycle the grammatical forms outside
the presentation unit / lesson
• have an almost random vocabulary selection (mostly based on
topic) without much regard to frequency or usefulness
• rarely, if ever, recycle taught words either later in the unit, the
book, or the series
• provide little additional practice in review units or workbooks
• ha an overwhelming focus on new material in each lesson
The number of words a learner will probably learn from
course work plus graded readers
Probably known
Course book
only
Add one
reader a
week
Add two
readers a
week
Partially Known
Probably
unknown
50+
30-49
20-29
10-19
5-9
1-4
Total
523
210
229
472
580
1,261
3,275
1,023
283
250
539
570
1,325
3,990
1,372
380
367
694
877
2,882
6,572
Data from Sequences, Foundations, Page Turners and Footprints by Heinle Cengage
225,000
60,800
570,000
174,000
(=1,029,000)
Uptake rates
When learning only from a course book over (3 years):
Only 962 words will be learnt well (29.4%)
A further 1,052 will be partially known (32.1% )
1,261 words are likely to be forgotten (38.5%)
Adding one graded reader per week:
1,556 words (40.0%) will be learnt well, plus 1,109 words
(27.8%) will be partially known and only 33.2% unknown.
Adding two graded readers per week:
They will know 2,119 words well, plus partially know another
1,571 words
Notes:
40 function words (in, of, the, by etc.) accounted for 41.2% of the
total words in the series
Typically one’s productive vocabulary is 20-25% of the receptive
Course book only
Add one reader / week
Add two readers / week
Probably
available
Partially
available
200
250
325
250
580
380
This does not include the learning of collocations,
colligations, idioms, phrases, multiple meanings, lexical
chunks, sentence heads… etc.
How many words do Japanese students
meet in JH/ SH?
Types
Tokens
Horizon 1, 2, 3 (Junior High)
1,124
9,440
Powwow I, II, Reading (Senior High)
2,857
27,221
Centre tests (680 types / 3000 tokens average
per test) x 4
1,000
12,000
College Entrance tests (590 types / 1600 tokens
average per test) x4
1,000
6,400
A total of approximately 55,000 running words will be met (not counting
juku and self-study).
A generous estimate is 100,000 words and about 3,500 types over 6
years.
Listening input would be approximately 10% of this.
A linear structure to our syllabuses
Unit 1
Unit 2
Unit 3
Unit 4
Unit 5
Be verb
Simple
present
Present
continuous
can
….
Simple
adjectives
Daily
routines
Sporting
activities
Abilities
…..
• Each unit has something new
• Little focus on the recycling of vocab, grammar and so on
• The theory is “We’ve done that, they have learnt it, so we can move
on.”
i.e. teaching causes learning
What does this all imply?
A linear course structure
• is focused on introducing new words and grammatical
features, not deepening knowledge of them
• often leaves a lot to the forgetting curve
• isn’t strong at building in repetitions of words and grammar
features for long-term acquisition to take place
• is not focused on deepening and consolidating older
knowledge because the focus is always on new things
So what needs to happen?
We have to ensure our curriculums and courses:
• build in some recycling and repetition of words and grammar
structures
• give students chances to see how the grammar and
vocabulary are used together in real language
• give students chances to deepen and consolidate the
language they learn in their course books (or they forget it)
• allow students to develop their own ‘sense’ of how the
language works
• give students chances to use language rather than just study it
Course work and Graded Readers work together
Unit 1
Unit 2
Unit 3
Unit 4
Unit 5
Be verb
Simple
present
Present
continuous
can
….
Introducing
language
Consolidating and deepening language knowledge
GRADED READING
(Extensive Reading)
How are we going to teach what?
Discrete knowledge
Individual words
Important lexical phrases
False friends
Loanwords
Important collocations and colligations
Basic grammatical patterns
Important phrasal verbs, idioms etc.
Word, phrase and sentence level
awareness
‘Fuzzy’ knowledge
Register, Genre …
Pragmatic knowledge
Restrictions on use
Most collocations and collocations
A ‘sense’ of a word’s meaning and use
A ‘sense’ of how grammar fits with lexis the tenses, articles etc.
Discourse level awareness
 Intentional learning
 Incidental learning
Selection issues – what do we teach?
Sequence issues – in what order?
Scaffolding issues – how do we
consolidate previous learning?
Presentation issues – what method?
Rough grading
Ensuring recycling
Engaging text
Matching input text to intentionally
learnt materials
What do we know about ER?
Beglar, Hunt and Kite (forthcoming): Learning from graded readers is
better than reading ‘anything you like’
Nishizawa et al. (2010) found that the favourite ER materials for rugby
players were fairy stories:- let learners decide/ They need to read
300,000 words before the benefits of ER kick in.
Claridge (2005)- patterns of use of structure, discourse markers,
redundancy, collocations, and frequency rates are similar in original
and graded versions of the same story.
Alshamrani (2003); and Allan, (2009) found GRs aided many aspects of
language learning.
Wodinsky and Nation (1988) found that it’s not necessary to pre-learn
the vocabulary at the new level if students read at the right level.
Do graded readers aid fluency?
Hafiz and Tudor (1990) found students reading GRs gained
significantly in fluency and accuracy; GRs provide models
assimilation of knowledge from linguistic input,
Iwahori (2008): ER improved fluency in a Japanese High School
Taguchi, et al. (2004): repeated readings lead to larger gains in
vocabulary than reading once: Successful reading is almost
impossible without good word decoding skills
Nation (2008) Speed reading practice gains transfer to normal
reading
Some objections from teachers and schools
Nice idea but I have no time in my course.
-> If you don’t have graded reading where will the students get
the massive exposure they need?
-> How else will they get the ‘sense of language’ they need?
-> Where are they going to get the fluency practice?
We don’t have the money for this.
-> Ask your schools to reallocate funds so this reading is done; ask
for donations; get some free samples etc.
We have to go through our set curriculum.
-> Speak with your course designers to build in graded reading.
Re-allocate resources and re-set class hours
We have to prepare the students for tests.
-> Research shows students perform better on tests if they have a
general sense of language, than an incohesive‘bitty’ one.
Making them fluent
Give opportunities for fluency….
F ast and efficient reading and listening practice
L ink their practice to real tasks
U nderstanding is primary
E ncourage speed development work
N urture confidence and motivation
T ry extensive reading and listening
Finally…
You can review this presentation by downloading it from:
www.robwaring.org/presentations/
More information about Graded Reading (Extensive Reading) at…
www.extensivereading.net
The First Extensive Reading World Congress, Kyoto Sangyo
University, Kyoto. Sept 3-6, 2011
http://erfoundation.org/erwc1/
How much reading should they do?
About a book a week or more.
Beginners - A book at week at their ability level
• They can meet unknown words easily, so you don’t need to
read much.
Intermediates - A book at week at your ability level
• They don’t meet unknown words all the time, but your books
are thicker, so you are reading more.
Advanced – 2 books at week at your ability level
• They rarely meet unknown words, so you have to read more
to meet language you don’t know.
Language (Accuracy) Focus
INPUT
Listening
Reading
LANGUAGE FOCUS
(Study)
(Intentional
learning)
(Explicit learning)
• meet new language (e.g.
grammar, vocabulary,
lexical patterns)
• notice the features of
language points
• learn strategies for dealing
with the language (e.g.
dictionary skills, reading
skills, metacognitive skills)
• create new hypotheses to
test
(NB this knowledge stays
largely atomised, discrete
and isolated)
OUTPUT
Speaking
Writing
• practice / assess new (and
partially digested) language
points in a controlled way to
ensure it is well known and
can be used accurately
• check if the form and function
of the new language is known
• make connections between
discretely learnt language
points to more accurately
express a communicative
intent
• get feedback on accuracy
Fluency (Communication) Focus
FLUENCY FOCUS
(Communication)
(Incidental
learning)
INPUT
Listening
Reading
OUTPUT
Speaking
Writing
• build reading speed,
listening fluency and word
recognition automaticity
• notice connections
between knowledge which
was previously isolated and
abstract
• meet massive amounts of
comprehensible text to
consolidate knowledge
• develop a ‘feel’ for the
language
• learn to predict
• communicate more smoothly
and with less anxiety, effort
• pull together abstract and
isolated knowledge through an
active constructive process
• learn to communicate by
communicating
• get feedback on performance
• experiment with language
knowledge to achieve successful
communication
• prepare for communication
outside the classroom