Chapter 8 ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking I. S. P. Nation and J. Newton First published 2009 by Routledge
Deliberate Teaching
Language-focused learning involves giving attention to features of the langauge not just for a particular message that they convey, but for their spoken or written form, their general meaning, the patterns that they fit into, or their correct use.
The Value and Limits of Language-focused Learning
A combination of language-focused learning and meaning-focused use leads to better results than either kind of learning alone.
Language focused learning can speed up the rate of second language acquisition.
Language focused learning can indirectly provide meaning focused input.
Deliberate Vocabulary Learning
The best language focused vocabulary instruction involves looking at a word as part of system rather than as part of a message. This means paying attention to regular spelling and sound patterns in words paying aattention to the underlying concept of the senses of words.
The Requirements of Language-focused Vocabulary Instruction
We have more frequency informaation about vocabulary than any other part of the language.
For learners who have a good knowledge of the high frequency words, the focus of instruction should be on learning and coping strategies, including using context clues for inferring meaning and using words parts for learning new low frequency words.
Techniques and Procedures for Vocabulary Learning
Beginners: Before listening activities it is worth drwaing learners´attention to some of the vocabulary that will occur and quicly discussing them, giving learners lists of words and meanings to work on at home, or by doing a semantic mapping activity drawing on th learners´previous knoledge and introducing the target vocabulary into the map.
Intermediate: An important focus at the intermediate level is expanding the uses that can be made of known words. This means drawing attention to the underkying meaning of a word by seeing its use in a variety of contexts. This type of activity can be done inductively with the learners going in to the underlying meaning through the analysis of many examples or deductively by going out from a meaning to examples.
Advanced: All learners at this level need to refine the strategies they need for dealing with the large number of low frequency words that they will meet.
Deliberate Grammar Learning
Grammar focused Description: The instruction is teacher produced description of rules or partners, learner analysis of examples, or learner manipulation and joining of parts.
Exploring collocations: Collocation patterns are like "local" rules and may be of more practical value to a learner than the more generally applied rules.
Correcting Grammatical Errors
Language focused Correction: Their deliberate encouragement of errors through incorrect analogy is called "the garden path" technique. The expression "to lead someone down the garden path" means to deliberately trick someone.
Is best done if there is some understandig of why the error occurred. This involves error occurred. This involves error analysis. Error analysis is the study of errors to see what processes gave rise to them.
The errors the learners make could show first language, second language, efficiency, or accidental influences.
The Effect of Correction
Source of Error
The learners were not sufficiently prepared for the task was not sufficient = Check the language, ideas, skill, and text aspects of the task to make sure that at least thrre of the four aspects are well within the learners´previous experience.
Correction Procedures
There is little sense in using procedures that have already been unsuccessful for those learners.
A new correction procedure allows the learner to account for a previous lack of success.