Chapter 6: Balance Your Learning - Get Fluent at Using What You Know PDF

## Chapter 6: Balance Your Learning - Get Fluent at Using What You Know **Fluency development** involves making the best use of what you already know. This chapter focuses on the speed at which you can produce and understand the language. ### How do you become fluent? Fluency activities have fo...

## Chapter 6: Balance Your Learning - Get Fluent at Using What You Know **Fluency development** involves making the best use of what you already know. This chapter focuses on the speed at which you can produce and understand the language. ### How do you become fluent? Fluency activities have four characteristics: 1. They involve easy familiar material that contains no unknown vocabulary or unknown grammatical features. 2. They include some pressure to go at a faster speed. 3. They involve a large quantity of practice. 4. They involve a focus on receiving or communicating messages. ### Developing Listening Fluency Listening fluency can be developed with the help of a digital recorder with variable speed control or a playback program. Repeated listening is important because repeated material becomes easier, and repetition provides quantity of practice. **Activity 6.1: Repeated listening** Get someone to record the numbers from one to ten in the foreign language in a random order, for example, 6, 3, 8, 1, 7, 10, 2, 9, 4, 5, 3, 10, 3, 6. * Each number should occur several times in a different place in the order so that you have plenty of opportunity to hear the same number again and again without knowing that it is coming. * Write the numbers in order from 1 to 10 on a piece of paper, and as you listen to the recording point to the number that you hear. * When you can do it easily at a slow speed, increase the speed and do it again. * Keep doing this until you can easily recognize the numbers in their spoken form. It is best if you spread of practice across several days rather than have one concentrated session of listening to the numbers. This activity makes use of repetition and increasing speed, and quickly develops fluency in comprehending numbers. You can also use it for days of the week, months of the year, greetings, names of food and many other things. ### Developing Speaking Fluency In order to develop fluency in speaking, it is useful to produce the same spoken material again and again. **Activity 6.2: 4/3/2** In the 4/3/2 activity, you speak on a very easy topic to a listener for 4 minutes. The listener does not interrupt or ask questions but simply listens carefully. Then you speak on exactly the same topic again to a different listener, but this time you have only 3 minutes to complete the same talk. Once again, the listener does not interrupt the speaking but just listens. Finally, you speak on exactly the same topic again to a new listener, with only 2 minutes to complete the talk. The 4/3/2 activity contains the four requirements for fluency development: * easy material (the topic is very familiar to you) * pressure to go faster (because of the reducing time) * quantity of practice (4+3+2 minutes) * a focus on communication (three different listeners) If you are learning a language on your own, then you may not have the opportunity to do the 4/3/2 activity with different listeners. However you can do repeated speaking on your own without an audience. ### Developing Reading Fluency Reading fluency involves being able to read silently with good comprehension at a speed of around 250 words per minute. Reading fluency develops through reading lots of easy familiar material. In English, there are speed reading courses which contain texts that are written within very controlled vocabulary levels (1,000 words, 2,000 words) and which do not contain difficult grammatical constructions. **Activity 6.3: Repeated Reading** Repeated reading involves reading the same material at least three times, each time trying to increase the speed at which it is read. It is a good idea to keep a record of the time taken for each reading. * If repeated reading is done while reading aloud, then a reasonable goal is a reading speed of around 150 words per minute. * If repeated reading is done while reading silently, then a reasonable goal is a reading speed of around 250 words per minute. When doing repeated reading, it is important that the material being read is understood. Reading fluency must involve comprehension. **Activity 6.4: Speed Reading** A speed reading course typically involves a set of twenty passages of equal difficulty, each followed by a set of multiple-choice comprehension questions based on the passage. The reading passages are written within a controlled vocabulary so that you will not meet any unfamiliar vocabulary. * You choose a passage, note the time or start a timer, and quietly read the passage trying to maintain a reasonable speed. * When you reach the end of the passage, note the time you have taken to read it and then turn the passage over to answer the comprehension questions. * When answering the questions, do not look back at the passage. * Then get the answer key and score the answers to the questions. * The time to read the passage is converted to words per minute using a table and this speed is entered on your speed graph. * Your comprehension score is entered onto your comprehension graph. All of this takes only a few minutes. Speed reading courses like this will help you increase your reading speed by 50% and maybe even double your reading speed. The aim is to reach speeds at around 250 words per minute with comprehension scores of around 7 or 8 out of 10. ### Developing Writing Fluency Writing fluency is particularly important if you have to take written exams in the language you are learning. **Activity 6.5: 10 Minute Writing** In 10 minute writing, you choose an easy topic to write about that you are interested in. You should use a digital timing app and write for exactly 10 minutes. Try to write as much as you can in the time. At the end of exactly 10 minutes, count the number of words that you have written and enter that number on a graph. Do 10 minute writing two or three times a week. **Activity 6.6: Repeated Writing** Repeated writing is particularly useful if you have to sit tests where you know the kind of question you will have to answer and you are able to prepare answers for the test. It is also useful for written tasks that you need to do very often. Repeated writing involves doing a piece of writing, getting it checked and corrected, looking at it carefully, putting it away and then writing it again from memory. When you have completed the piece of writing, you can check your writing with the original (see Activity 5.2: Delayed copying for a similar activity). The same piece of writing should be repeated at least two or three times, so that the final production can be done fluently. One way to develop fluency at a very low level of proficiency is to memorize useful phrases and sentences. This memorization ensures that what is produced is accurate, and through practice it can be produced fluently. The most useful sentences and phrases to memorize are those in the survival vocabulary. However, it is important to consider why you are learning the language and the opportunities that you have to use it, and find and memorize useful sentences and phrases related to this use. At every stage of language proficiency, you should be able to use what you have learnt in a fluent way. We have now covered the four strands of a course which is number 2 in our list of basic principles. In the next chapter we look at principle 3 – apply conditions that help learning.