The Monitor model

A theory of second language acquisition proposed by Krashen in his work in the 70s and 80s,
particularly in his book Principles and practice in second language acquisition (1982).
The model consists of five hypotheses :

1. The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis

Acquisition and Learning

Definition : Acquisition refers to the process of assimilating a language non-consciously through exposure to
that language rather than by formal instruction, conscious understanding of rules etc (learning).

Example : A child acquires, rather than learns, their L1.

The Acquisition/Learning Hypothesis

One of the five hypotheses in the Monitor Model proposed by Krashen in his work in the 70s
and 80s. Krashen suggested that, in the L2 situation, acquisition and learning were two
distinct neurological processes. He also claimed (and this is where the hypothesis
becomes most controversial) that only acquired language is available for fluent,
spontaneous use and that acquisition cannot be affected by learning - ie "learning" the
language will not replace or speed up acquisitional processes. He suggested that the
ability to acquire language is not lost at puberty, as advocates of the critical period
hypothesis would claim, but remains possible throughout adulthood.

Criticisms : Many writers would argue that, on the contrary, conscious "noticing" and deep
cognitive processing is not only an aid to L2 acquisition but also essential for it.

2. The Monitor Hypothesis

For Krashen, the Monitor was part of the distinction between acquisition and learning.
Although utterances would be generated from acquired language, this could then be
"monitored" for error - ie checked for accuracy and appropriateness - and corrected using
learnt knowledge. This, however, requires time, and there may be a payoff between
accuracy and fluency - monitoring will improve accuracy but impede fluency.
3. The Natural Order Hypothesis

 Definition : a theory originally from research into first language acquisition, proposed
by Brown (1973) and suggesting that children would acquire the morphemes of their first
language in a set order.

 Example : Children acquiring English as their L1 will always acquire the -ing
morpheme earlier than the third person -s morpheme.

 Dulay and Burt (1974) suggested that the hypothesis might

Extensions of the theory :
also be valid for children learning a second language. Krashen then picked up on the
hypothesis in the 80s, incorporating it into his Monitor Model giving it its current name,
popularising it and extending it to adult learners – for whom the evidence is much more
shaky. See Further reading for a critique of Krashen's application of the theory.

4. The Input Hypothesis

For Krashen, acquisition was dependent only on input. If you received the right sort of
input, your brain would automatically work on it to acquire the language. The "right sort
of input" was seen by Krashen as being at the "i+1 " level. ie comprehensible at the
acquirer's current competence ("i") but containing "new " language which would be the next
structure to be acquired ("+1"). The Natural Order hypothesis stated that this wouldn't be
just any language that happened to crop up but would be a specific morpheme/structure
which was "next on the list" for acquisition. As we have only a hazy view of what the list
might be, Krashen argued that we couldn't plan to introduce the next item, but that by
providing "roughly tuned input" - ie input that was comprehensible for the learner but
contained a certain amount of new items, made comprehensible by the already understood
language, gesture and visuals etc, the "next" item would naturally crop up.
For Krashen then, productive use had no part to play in acquistion - and in fact he
suggested that beginners needed a "silent period" in which they weren't asked to speak but
just to comprehend.

Criticisms : As with the Acquisition/Learning Hypothesis, many people have disagreed with
this, including Swain who posited that negotiating meaning – ie “noticing” failures in
communication and attempting to formulate language in a way that is comprehensible
- was also a factor in acquisition. She called this the Output Hypothesis.
5. The Affective Filter Hypothesis.

Krashen proposed the idea of an "affective filter" in the brain. Negative affective
factors (by "affect" we mean emotions and psychological states like motivation, depression,
fear,self-esteem, enthusiasm etc) would cause the "filter " to be raised and to block
learning/acquisition from taking place, while positive affective factors would cause it to
be lowered, facilitating intake.

Krashen was not the first person to link affective factors to the effectiveness of learning.
He drew directly on the work of Dulay and Burt (1977), but the idea (if not the name - a
metaphor for a process which has no known "concrete" neurological mechanism) is common
in all writers on humanistic education, whether general education (eg Rogers) or within the
humanistic movement in EFL - which was in full swing when Krashen started writing.

Affective variables

 Definition : Factors involving the feelings and attitudes of learners such as motivation, interest and
involvement, anxiety and fear of failure, feelings of being valued by the group etc, which may affect success
in learning either negatively or positively.

 Concern with the role that affective variables have on learning is paramount in humanistic
approaches to language learning, and to education in general. This was strongly influenced by the work of
psychologists such as Maslow and Rogers between the 1940s and 1970s.

 Krashen (1982) hypothesised the presence of an "affective filter" which when "raised" would block
learning and when "lowered" would allow learning to take place. Although not demonstrated to be an actual
neurological mechanism, this provides a useful metaphor to remind teachers that learning is not solely
influenced by cognitive factors.

 Examples : A learner made to "feel silly" by the teacher because of an error s/he has made may be
unwilling to continue to participate fully in the lesson or take risks with the language. In terms of Maslow's
hierarchy of needs, the loss of self-esteem is liable to block further learning. Conversely, a learner who is
consistently successful will be motivated to continue making the effort to learn.
Affordances

Affordancesare learning opportunities that arise during the lesson. They may have been
predicted by the teacher when planning the lesson, but very often have not - they arise
from the communication that occurs between the students or the teacher and students and
are frequently unpredictable. However, because they arise from what the learners
themselves want to say, if focused on, they have a high probability of being "noticed" and
retained.

For example :

 during pair or group work (PW/GW) at a free practice stage, a learner makes an
error with a non-target language (TL) structure that the teacher (T) has
frequently heard made in the class. By focusing on it in a follow up, the T. helps the
learners "notice" it, and possibly goes on to practice it through repetition, a substitution
drill, getting each learner to write another sentence about themselves using the same
pattern, or some other activity.
 During a PW/GW warm-up discussion on "What did you do at the weekend?", aiming
to reactivate the simple past, a learner says she played badminton. In the follow up the T.
asks if any other learners do any sports or other physical exercise on a regular basis, and
elicits the expressions focusing on their collocation with do / play / go (eg do yoga, play
tennis, go running). She then elicits the rule for the choice of verb and asks the learners in
pairs to brainstorm all the other sports/physical activities they know, listing them in three
columns according to the relevant verb. Afterwards she elicits and boards these, and feeds
in a few more that the learners haven't come up with.
 During a T/Class follow up, a learner uses, accurately, a lexical chunk that the T.
believes other learners may not know or use spontaneously. He brings this to the attention
of the class, checking comprehension and doing some repetition practice.
Notice that none of these activities were related to the main aims of the lesson. The
second may have been predictable, but it's unlikely that the first and third were. they were
"emergent language" - language which simply "come up" during interaction between the
learners or the teacher and the learners. This means that if the T is going to take
advantage of affordances (and I would argue strongly that s/he should) two things are
important :

 Distinguish between an affordance and a sidetrack. If you take the learners'

attention off the target language for too long or at the wrong moment, then they may
forget about the main aim of the lesson. Notice that I've emphasised here that the focus on
the non-TL occurred in the follow up to activities. For example, in the first case (an
activity aiming to reactivate the simple past), the sports lexis could be dealt with first, so
that the T. could then pass on to a focus on the simple past and continue from there. In the
other cases, the non-TL might be dealt with after any focus the T wanted to include on the
TL - thus dealing with the main aim immediately after the activity while the Ls were still
focusing on it before moving on to the unrelated focus. Make room for affordances, but
avoid leaping from one unconnected point to another - which can disorient learners and
hinder, rather than promote noticing and retention.
 Time must be left in the lesson plan to deal with the affordances. In my own plans,
if I think an activity will take fifteen minutes, I often time it for twenty to twenty five. This
gives me ample time to deal with the activity itself thoroughly, but also to follow up on any
affordances which have presented themselves.

A-Priori Syllabus / A-Posteriori Syllabus

An a-priori syllabus is one which is designed before the course is taught, and uses selected
materials and activities achieve the previously determined objectives. Any course
following a coursebook will have an a-priori syllabus.

An a-posteriori syllabus is one which is not predetermined but emerges from the course
itself - as the course progresses the teacher will note what has been covered and, at the
end of the course, could use this as a record of what has been achieved, or if necessary to
design an end of course test. A course following the principles of Community Language
Learning or Dogme could have an a-posteriori syllabus.

Text Types (1)

This entry deal with text types commonly used in ELT - graded, authentic and lexically
enhanced texts. For a description of text types dependent on purpose (narrative,
descriptive, expository, procedural, persuasive) see here.

NB: Texts should here be understood as referring to both listening and reading texts.

1. Simplified (or Graded) Texts

Simplified/Graded texts are texts which have been written, or adapted, to be within the
language competence of the learner reading or listening to them. They were used widely
in Audiolingual Methodology, which believed that learners should not be exposed to
language which which was not controlled to the level of structure and lexis which they
were capable of using productively, as this would result in confusion and therefore error -
which Audiolingualism saw as detrimental to learning. On the other hand, simplified
texts - texts included in the coursebook, graded readers etc - would reuse the language
which the learners had already encountered, thus consolidating their previous knowledge
of the language.

Although simplified/graded texts are no longer used as the sole basis of reading and
listening work in the classroom, it can be argued that at lower levels they still have a role
to play - eg for purposes of extensive reading. Graded readers, for example, can allow
the learners easy and pleasurable reading experiences both inside and outside of the
classroom. These are books written at a specific level using only language items from a
stated syllabus - so that the teacher can be sure the learners have already met the items
they contain. An example of such a syllabus can be found on the Pearson
website, here. The books in a graded reader series may be of two types :

 books specifically written for the series

 adaptations (simplified versions) of authentic texts
Examples of both these types can be seen on this page from the Macmillan catalogue

2. Authentic Texts

The term authentic texts (also authentic materials) refers to texts not specifically written
for language learning but originally intended for a native speaker audience. For
example an article from a UK or US newspaper; a travel brochure; a film on DVD .

The use of authentic texts in the classroom was a cornerstone of the Communicative
Approach, which argued that learners should not be "protected" from authentic use of
language but exposed to it believing that:
a) the language they encountered should always reflect natural language use, without the
distortions imposed by simplification
b) receptive competence could be developed to a higher level than productive competence
c) learners should be taught in the classroom to cope with problems posed by authentic
materials, for example unknown words, thus preparing them better for their experiences
with the language outside the classroom

NB : Many writers, eg Widdowson 1979, distinguish between the authenticity of the text
itself and the authenticity of the purpose for which it is used. "Authentic" uses of texts
may be eg reading/listening for pleasure (a film) or to get information (a travel brochure),
but studying any of these texts to focus on the language they contain would be
a non-authentic purpose.

3. Lexically Enhanced Texts

Lexically enhanced texts are associated with the Lexical Approach, developed by Lewis in
the early 1990s, which argued that lexis in general and lexical chunks in particular needed
to be placed at the centre of language learning rather than grammar. The Lexical Approach
pointed to the enormous number of fixed and semi-fixed phrases which native speakers can
retrieve from memory as single units, thus aiding fluency - once the phrase is started the
rest just follows automatically, without needing planning time, thus "freeing up" the brain.

This led to the problem however, of exposure. How could learners be exposed to the
enormous number of chunks that exist in the language? and how could these be recycled
often enough that they would be assimilated and retained. One answer was to use lexically
enhanced texts - texts specifically written, not this time, to simplify them, but to include a
higher proportion of lexical chunks than would normally be found in the same length of
text. Powell (1996), describing the Business English textbook Business Matters explained :

“The articles and many of the exercises in Business Matters have been specially written to
contain a large part of the target language of the course. They are not simplified but
lexically enhanced with a disproportionately high number of word partnerships and/or
fixed expressions (and little of the redundant or colloquial language found in many
authentic texts). And this makes them eminently exploitable in the classroom as the main
source of input as well as fuel for discussion. Your learners would have to read an
enormous number of newspaper and magazine articles to be sure of covering anything like
the same range of content language.”

Autonomy

An autonomous learner is one who can take complete control of their own learning,
without needing to depend on a teacher, course designer or organisation to make decisions
for them about what, when how etc to learn. The importance of developing autonomy in
learners began to be stressed in the 1970s and 80s, when humanism replaced behaviourism
as the predominant theory of learning in language teaching. Language teaching was no
longer seen as just a matter of providing input for intake, but also as having an educational
aim, where the learning experience contributed to the learner's personal development and
self-actualisation as well as simply teaching the language.

In the 80s, autonomy (also called self-directed learning) was strongly associated with the
work of the Centre de Recherches et d'Applications Pédagogiques en Langues (CRAPEL) in
France. Holec (1985) pointed to a number of things that autonomous learners would be
able to do unaided :

 define the ultimate and intermediate objectives of the course in both

communicative and linguistic terms
 select the materials and activities which will reach those objectives, taking into
consideration the time at their disposal, their learning preferences etc.
 organise those materials into a logical programme
 decide on the place and time of learning
 self-assess progress, and on the basis of this assessment make any necessary changes
to the course objectives, materials chosen, working methods etc
Holec also pointed out that :

a) few learners possess these capacities at the beginning of the learning experience.
Autonomy is therefore something that needs to be developed gradually, the teacher's role
being to determine "those types of intervention which are conducive to the learner's
acquiring those capacities". (ibid:180)
b) autonomy doesn't have to be "all or nothing" : The learner may be responsible for
defining every aspect of his learning programme, or some, or none; it is quite possible to
imagine different learning programmes based on completely different combinations going
from complete "self-direction" to complete "other-direction" or anything in
between." (ibid:174) and "The autonomus approach is just one of a range of options
available to the learner, and is in no sense a path which has to be followed." (ibid:173)

Few courses these days aim at total self-direction but, at least in mainstream
Communicative Language Teaching, the partial development of autonomy is generally seen
as something to promote. Reasons for this may include:
 language learning takes time - generally more time than is available in the course.
Some ability to learn independently will allow learners to continue learning outside the
course and thus to make more progress.
 autonomous learners are better learners, because they have a better understanding
of the learning process and know what strategies are available, and which work best for
them.
But if, as Holec says, few learners are initially autonomous, what can the teacher do to
help develop these capacities. "Thrown in at the deep end" the learner is more likely to
sink than swim. Initially therefore, the teacher needs to play a guiding role, showing the
learner what is possible, and helping him/her decide what is best.

Some examples :
 setting objectives for the course can be done by carrying out a needs analysis to
show the learner that language learning doesn't have to be just "starting with the verb BE
and continuing to the third conditional" but that course content can be selected to meet
specific, immediate needs. This leads to a negotiated syllabus, the first step towards
showing the learner that, even once the course has started, s/he can make changes as new
needs come up. It doesn't however, mean just "doing what the learner says". At the
beginning of the process s/he may not be right - and needs to find this out. I described an
example of this here.
 many institutions have a self-access centre for learners' use, and the teacher can
take time to show the learners what is available and how they can use the resources to
further their learning. This may be as simple as borrowing a graded reader to read between
each class.
 if no self-access centre is available, learners can be shown how they can use the
internet to continue learning. Depending on level, anything from a language exchange
(where two learners of each others' languages meet once a week to chat for ten minutes in
each language) to following blogs written in English or listening to podcasts on topics they
are particularly interested in - the possibilities are endless.
 learning strategies can be taught in the class for learners to use outside. Just a few
examples might include: the use of vocabulary cards, or websites such as Quizlet, to record
and review vocabulary; how to use dictionaries and grammar books effectively; inference
strategies, and so on.
 peer and self-evaluation strategies can also be taught in class to allow learners to
self evaluate their performance and overall progress.

Problems encountered when attempting to promote autonomy?

So, the first problem involved in expecting autonomous learning is that learners are
unlikely be autonomous from the start, but that these capacities have to be developed.
This leads to the second problem : on very short courses, there may be insufficient time
both to develop autonomy and to reach linguistic objectives. Learners who have paid to
learn the language may, understandably, resent what they see as time being taken away
from their main goal.

However, there are other issues that also need to be taken into account.
 Some learners may not wish to become autonomous but expect the teacher to "give
them a language injection" that will instantly make them proficient. I wrote about one
extreme example of this here (see point 3). However, as Holec said, autonomy is not a
"must". Somewhat ironically, the philosophy that underlies it means that the learner must
have autonomous choice as to whether s/he follows a self- or other-directed course.
Imposition of autonomy would mean taking autonomous choice away.
 Learners may come from a background - eg Chinese culture - where teachers are
held in high esteem,and seen as having full responsibility for their learners, so that
"learners (are) barely given opportunities to make independent choices regarding their
learning objectives and resources, which (are) taken for granted to be their teachers’
responsibility." (Zhong 2010). A learner from such a background, thrown into a situation
where the teacher expects to take a different role, may at best suffer from "educational
culture shock" and, at worst, lose faith in the teacher's ability.
 lack of self-esteem may mean that the learner is unwilling to believe that
s/he can become autonomous and lead them to resist any attempt by the teacher to
involve them in decisions. Here, the best course is probably "baby steps" which emphasise
that when the learner makes even the smallest of decisions, they are successful and
conducive to learning.

Communication Strategies/Coping strategies

By definition, someone learning a foreign language will not be fully proficient in that
language. There will be many linguistic items, lexical and structural, which they do not yet
know, and even if they are known may still be part of receptive rather than productive
competence - ie they will be understood when encountered in speech or writing, but may
not come spontaneously to mind when the learner is attempting to express his or her own
ideas. Similarly, when listening or reading s/he may come across items which are unknown

In order to compensate for this, the learner can use communication strategies (also
called coping strategies) to "fill the gaps". These include eg :

 circumlocution strategies: when the learner cannot think of the specific word s/he
wants to use, s/he can explain it - eg, It's the thing that you put on a horse's back when you
ride.
 avoidance strategies : an idea can be expressed more simply - eg instead of I'd have
gone if I'd known, a learner who was unsure of the formulation of the third conditional
structure might say I didn't know so I didn't go
 asking for clarification: if a speaker uses an unknown word, the learner may ask
"What does XXX mean?"
Backchaining

A method of conducting choral repetition drills by chunking the utterance and asking
students to start from the end rather than the beginning, adding on earlier chunks one at a
time. For example:

T : OK, I went to the supermarket on Saturday morning. Everybody, listen and repeat -
morning
Ss : Morning.
T : On Saturday morning.
Ss : On Saturday morning
T : To the supermarket on Saturday morning.
Ss : To the supermarket on Saturday morning.
T : I went to the supermarket on Saturday morning.
Ss : I went to the supermarket on Saturday morning

This has two advantages :

a) chunking makes the repetition easier for the students - they can concentrate on small
numbers of words before going on to the longer utterance.
b) starting from the end allow T and Ss to keep the intonation of the phrase constant. This
is lost if the utterance is frontchained.

Behaviourism
Behaviourism

Behaviourist theory was developed from the 1920s onwards in the work of the work of
psychologists such as Watson and Skinner. It argued that all behaviour could be explained
by observable factors - it was unnecessary to refer to mental processes.

Behaviourism and Learning

Behaviourists explained learning as a matter of stimulus - response - reinforcement. An

action performed (the stimulus), possibly by chance, would create a result (the response).
If this result was positive, the behaviour would be reinforced - the learner would want to
repeat it. If it was negative, then they would not. Skinner exemplified this with
experiments with rats : a hungry rat in a box would, by chance as it moved around, knock a
lever at the side, causing a food pellet to fall out. Soon the rats would learn to press the
lever intentionally. If, on the other hand, touching the lever produced a negative
consequence, such as an electric shock, they would learn to stay away from the lever.

Behaviourism and First Language Acquisition

Skinner argued that children acquire language in the same way. Correct utterances are
positively reinforced, while incorrect utterances are not. So for example, if the child says
‘teddy’ and the mother says "Here's teddy" and passes the bear to the child, the verbal
behaviour is reinforced - the child learns that it works.

Behaviourism and Second Language Learning

Behaviourist theory was applied to second language learning in the 1930s, when the
Audiolingual Method was developed. A typical audiolingual technique was the use of drills.
Repetition drills were based on a model sentence (the stimulus) - eg I go to the
supermarket every Saturday - which the learners would first repeat (the response). The
teacher would then evaluate the response (the reinforcement) positively or negatively. If
the drill was continued as eg a substitution drill, the teacher would then provide a
stimulus - another word such as library - and the student would respond by substituting it
in the model sentence. The teacher's positive or negative evaluation would again provide
the reinforcement. For example :

T : OK, everyone - listen and repeat : I went to the supermarket on Saturday (stimulus)
Ss: I went to the supermarket on Saturday (response)
T : Lovely (positive reinforcement) - Jean, again : I went to the supermarket on
Saturday. (stimulus)
J : I went to the supermarket on Saturday. (response)
T Good.. ... (positive reinforcement)
........
T : OK - Ayeesha - library. (stimulus)
A : I went to the library /laɪbə'reriː/ on Saturday. (response)
T : Mmm.... (negative reinforcement) Listen to the pronunciation /'laɪbrəriː/(stimulus)
A : /'laɪbrəriː/ (response)
T : Much better (positive reinforcement)
Beginner / True beginner / False beginner

The term beginner covers learners working towards CEFR Level A1 - ie learners who are
still developing a basic command of the language, familiarity with everyday expressions
and the ability to construct simple sentences.

A true beginner is a learner who is starting to learn a language from scratch - ie they have
never studied the language before.

Many learners who are placed in beginners' classes are not, however, in that situation.
They are learners who do have some knowledge of the language - for example because they
studied it many years before. These are commonly called false beginners.

In a private language school, the composition of a beginners' class will often be a mixture
of the two types of beginner. This can sometimes cause problems as their rates of progress
may be different : the false beginners only need to reactivate language that they
previously knew, and may find it easier to assimilate the material covered on the course.
This may be demotivating for the true beginners if they do not understand why they seem
to have more difficulty than other students with the language.

Bottom-up Processing

 Definition : decoding text (whether written or spoken) by recognising and

combining the smaller components into larger chunks - in spoken texts phonemes are
decoded and interpreted as words while in written text alphabetical letters are deoded
and interpreted as words. in both cases, these words are then interpreted as phrase
components, the phrases are interpreted as clause components etc.
 Example : The word cat, if heard, would be processed by perceiving the phonemes
/k/ /æ/ and /t/, and then recognising that, combined, they signify a small domestic feline
animal.
 Contrasts with top down processing, where the listener/reader uses knowledge from
outside the text to process meaning. Eg if I decode (BUP) /kæt/ and know the speaker
knows I'm allergic to small domestic felines, I'll interpret the utterance of having the
function of warning.
Top-down processing

Using pre-existing "knowledge of the world" - eg knowledge of discourse conventions,

topic, cultural or social norms - in order to interpret meaning while reading or listening.
Eg : If I hear "John is 18 and lives with his family in Leeds" - my interpretation of the
make-up of John's family (mother, father, siblings) differs from the interpretation that I
make if I hear "John is 48 and lives with his family in Leeds" (wife and children). The
interpretation is, however, based on my knowledge of the world, not on the text itself.

Caretaker speech
 Definition : The simplified form of speech used by people who think the
listener has limited linguistic and/or intellectual competence eg parents talking to
very young children, native speakers to foreigners, carers to the senile etc etc,
which will use eg short, simple syntax, a slow rate of delivery, concrete high
frequency lexis, repetition, and frequent reference to the "here and now" situation
to make meaning clear.

 Example : Mother to child - Where's teddy? Oh look - there's teddy. He's on

the chair. The mother knows perfectly well where the teddy is, but uses the
question, the "pretend" realisation and answer to communicate in a way the child
will understand rather than : Right, we need to clear up all these toys now.

 A difference between caretaker speech directed to native speakers and to

non-native speakers is that "foreigner talk" often includes ungrammatical items of
the type the speaker believes the listener will use - eg "You no like?"
Concept /Concept check questions / Guided
discovery

a) Concept

The concept behind a language item is its essential meaning - so for example, the concept
behind the use of the present perfect (auxiliary verb HAVE + past participle main verb) in
sentences like..

He has worked for PMC for three years

I've always liked dogs.
She has grown 3 inches in the last three months.
We've known about it since August.

.. is an event starting in the past and continuing up to the present. The concept behind a
lexical item like scrawny is thin (its basic meaning or denotation) and unpleasantly so (an
added evaluative connotation).

b) Concept Check Questions (CCQs)

Concept check questions are questions asked by the teacher, or included in materials, to
find out whether the learners have understood the meaning/use of a new grammatical or
lexical item which has just been introduced. They are part, therefore, of an inductive
approach to language teaching : ie the learners see the examples first and the rules are
explained/inferred based on those examples.

For example,

1) If the lesson is focusing on the present perfect used to describe events extending from
the past to the present, the learners may have been presented with examples such as those
above - eg : I've worked for PMC for three years. Concept check questions for this might be
eg :

When did she start working for PMC?

Is that past or present?

Does she still work there now?

By asking similar questions for all the sentences, the teacher can establish the concept
behind the structure : an event which started in the past but continues up to the present
moment.

2) If the new item is might + infinitive and the learners have been looking at examples
like : I might go to Paris for the weekend the concept questions could be :

Is he talking about a past, present or future event?

How sure about it is he? a) He's completely certain that he's going b) He'll probably
go c) It's just a possibility

3) If the item is scrawny, the CCQs could be :

Is she thin or fat?

Does the writer think she looks good or not?

If the teacher has presented the language to the class using a situation s/he has set up,
s/he may put these questions on the board and just ask them to the whole class. This was
typical of the Presentation - Practice - Production approach to language teaching used in
the seventies. It has the disadvantage, however, that it's often only the strongest, most
confident students who participate actively and work out/call out the answers. Weak or
shy students may just wait to be "given" the answer.

c) Guided Discovery

An alternative approach which is often used nowadays is guided discovery. The language
which will be focused on is built into a text (either reading or listening). The students first
work on the text to ensure overall comprehension of its content, and then move on to the
language focus stage where they see several of the examples of the target language
extracted from the text and the concept check questions below them. This may be
provided in their textbooks or the teacher may give it to them in a handout. Individually or
in pairs they then look at the examples and questions and decide their answers before a
full class follow up check. This has the advantage of ensuring that everyone is processing
the language actively, and working at a level of cognitive depth which is conducive to
aiding understanding and retention.
Open and Closed Pairwork

Pairwork involves each student working on a task together with another. Itcan be done
either in open pairs, where two students do an activity in front of the class while the
others listen, or in closed pairs - when all the students are working on an activity in pairs
at the same time.

Open pairwork is a useful way to start some activities - it checks that students have
understood what they have to do and provides them with a model. For example, the T
might set up a What do you say? activity on polite requests in the following way. The
students have the prompt situations in their books :

T : OK everyone - look at situation number 1: You're trying to study but your flatmate is
playing music very loudly and it's disturbing you. Maria, what do you say, and Paolo, what
do you reply?
M : Sorry Paolo. Can you turn the music down? I'm trying to study.
P : Oh OK, sorry.
T : OK, great. All right, now can you all continue with your partners. Decide what you say
in those ten situations.

Having elicited the example in open pairs, the teacher now asks the students to continue
the activity in closed pairs, which maximises student involvement and ensures they get as
much practice as possible. S/he will probably monitor them while they are working, but in
a large class won't be able to hear what everybody says for every situation. So at the end
s/he may follow-up the activity by going through all the situations again in open pairs,
confirming or correcting their answers, and giving them the chance to ask questions about
any alternatives they came up with.

Concordancers / Concordance

 Definition : A concordancer is computer program which can analyse a corpus of

material to search for specific words and expressions and create a list of examples (a
concordance) showing how the word is used, its collocations etc.
 Example : If you ask the concordancer to search for a specific word or collocation -
eg heavy rain - it will search the corpus or corpora that it has at its disposal for all
instances of that word/phrase.

 Try it out : Go to Lextutor. enter heavy rain (or another word or collocation of your
choice) into the Keyword box. Select a corpus from the Choose a Corpus box , then click
on Get concordance. The concordancer will produce a list of examples of the use of that
word from the corpus. This list is known a a concordance.

 Data from a concordancer can be used by the teacher to research how specific
language items are actually used. For example : What's most common - to talk about an
attitude to something, towards something, or toward something? Does it differ between
American and British English? Or between written and spoken English? By choosing different
corpora and comparing the results, you can work out what are the most common patterns
in each case.

 Learners can also be encouraged to use a concordancer, or to complete guided

discovery activities using concordances provided by the teacher, in order to encourage
them to work out rules of use for themselves.

Conversation Frames

A conversation frame is a type of activity particularly useful for practising specific

functions/structures. it consists of a dialogue framework which gives the learners instructions
about what they should say at each point to create a conversation. For example, imagine
you have been teaching the use of the present continuous to express future arrangements in
a Business English class. the conversation frame might be something like the following.
Stage one is just preparatory - it is scaffolding to ensure learners have ideas prepared. The
conversation frame itself is stage two :

1. Think of two or three appointments you have in your diary for the next week. Write what
you're doing here (don't add times or days). Eg :

 I'm interviewing candidates for a job in the marketing department

 I'm going to Birmingham for a meeting.
 I'm meeting John to talk about staff cuts
2. Now have the following conversation with your partner. Use the ideas from your diary.

A : Tell B that you need to have a meeting to discuss the new advertising campaign.
Suggest a day and time in the next few days.
B : No - apologise, but you're busy. Explain what you're doing then and suggest another
possible time.
A : No - you've already got an appointment. Explain what you're doing then. Ask B if s/he's
doing anything on another day (say which one) in the morning.
B : You're busy - explain what you're doing - but you can cancel it.
A : OK - arrange a time for the meeting.
B : Agree and finish the conversation.