4-3-2 speaking fluency activity
Using an adapted version of Paul Nation's 4-3-2
fluency activity
I was reminded again this weekend of a really great activity
for focusing on, and increasing fluency, when I attended a webinar by the
great Paul Nation. He is a real expert in many areas, but is particularly world
renowned for his work on extensive reading. You can have a look at his
fantastic website here Paul
Nation's resources | School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies |
Victoria University of Wellington (wgtn.ac.nz) It is full of resources for
you to use with your students.
Paul Nation uses the Principle of the 4 Strands, which
states that a balanced language course should have four equal strands:
·
meaning-focused input
·
meaning-focused output
·
language-focused learning
·
fluency development
His 4-3-2- activity is designed to work on spoken fluency,
and basically it involves the learners pairing up and A giving a talk on a
familiar topic to 3 different partners. 4 minutes, then 3 minutes and then 2
minutes. Then they switch and B has to do the same thing. It has been found
that this activity makes the number of errors decrease, hesitation decrease,
but the number of more complex structures used increase.
This is an activity that is well suited and very useful for
IELTS and other exam classes and I have adapted it in the following way.
My IELTS students are often very intimidated and nervous
with the prospect of having to speak, in Speaking Part 2, for 2 minutes on a
topic which is given to them by the examiner. They only have one minute to
prepare and make a few notes of keywords before they are asked to speak.
The students usually say that 2 minutes seems like a very
long time, so I thought that this activity would better prepare them for continually speaking for this
length of time and also get them more used to judging how long 2 minutes
actually is.
In my version of the 4-3-2 activity, the learners are given a
typical IELTS speaking topic. Because this topic may not be at all familiar to
them, the first step of the activity involves them working on their own at
home, where they are free to research the topic and check any vocabulary that
they feel they are unsure of.
·
When they feel ready, they record themselves
speaking without stopping, for 4 minutes, on their mobile phone. They
listen back and self-correct and evaluate their performance and then try again,
until they are happy. In this stage they can use their notes, but should not
read from them.
·
The next day in class they will work together in
a small group of three and give their talk for 3 minutes. Their two partners
will then give them feedback, including what they liked and points for
improvement. This often comes in the form of a ‘feedback sandwich’ (One piece
of advice on how they could improve, sandwiched between two positive comments).
The reason that they are working in a small group, as opposed to two big teams is to increase overall student talking time. I feel that my students would be
too frustrated if they were forced to listen to three other talks before
getting their own chance to speak.
·
The final step of my activity replicates the
conditions of the IELTS Exam to, expose the learners to as much exam style
practice as possible and make it as authentic as possible. This time they are
working in pairs. They speak for 2 minutes and can have a few keywords written down, as
reminders of what they want to talk about and points they want to cover in
their talk. After they have spoken their partner will give them targeted feedback
using the official Fluency and Coherence Criterion of the IELTS speaking exam.
·
If time allows at the end of the lesson, we will
have some students perform their talk in front of the whole class. This
gives extra practice in a more high-pressure situation and also gives the rest of
the class the chance to perhaps learn some additional relevant vocabulary on
the topic.
I have found that this is a very
good strategy for students to try at home when they are preparing for exam
talks. They get more used to being able to talk at length with ease and, over
time, they will build up a wider range of relevant vocabulary on many of the
common exam topics.
Have you ever tried the 4-3-2
activity or, if not, do you think that it would be useful for your teaching
context?
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