Up from the Bottom or Down from the Top?

I recently updated my book, Teach and Learn: Reflections on Communicative Language Teaching, and made it available on Kindle and as an inexpensive paperback. To enjoy a read, please click here.

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

Psychology long ago began to debate two views – “top-down interpretation” and “bottom-up processing”– of how we understand language. Although the evidence is ambiguous, researchers generally believe they are distinct but complementary processes. For language instructors, the debate is less important than an appreciation of the roles these parallel processes play in classroom teaching and learning.

This discussion argues that good teaching practice accepts both views of language learning. However, their relative importance largely depends on the skills of the language learner.

To appreciate this, let’s begin with points of view. The advocates of “top-down interpretation” argue that background knowledge and previous experience of a situation, context, and topic play primary roles in helping us interpret meaning. We use prior knowledge and experience to anticipate, predict, and infer meaning. By contrast, the advocates of “bottom-up processing” believe language relies more heavily on decoding the sounds and letters of a language into words, clauses, sentences, and such. We then use our knowledge of grammatical, syntactic and lexical rules to interpret meaning. In this view, language users work from the bottom – the sounds they hear and the letters they encounter – to identify meaning.

To put that broad debate into context, consider that the primary focus of communicative language teaching is to develop communicative competence. CL teachers develop this competence through the use of materials and activities that focus on using language functions – for example, describing people and telling time. Because native-speakers use higher mental schema when they are processing language, language teachers develop activities that will enable their second-language learners to do the same. Broadly speaking, activities of these kinds involve top-down learning skills.

Is this always a good thing? No. Some language teachers are too quick to jump on the top-down bandwagon. In our view, better teachers are those who strike a conscious balance between top-down and bottom-up learning, which both have roles in language instruction.

According to Robert Norris, who uses listening activities to illustrate, “If we…require (our) students to use native speaker processing skills without first giving (them) a firm grounding in decoding the stream of sounds they hear, we run the risk of causing (them) more frustration and confusion than they can handle.”

We will return to Norris’s thoughtful discussion shortly. In the meantime, remember that bottom-up processing is particularly important when learners use the receptive language skills of listening and reading, because it plays a big role in making input comprehensible. And comprehensible input is the engine of effective language acquisition.

Bottom-up…: The bottom-up view assumes that listening is a process of decoding sounds and graphemes (the letters of the alphabet). We start with the smallest units, and gradually decode them until we understand the content of what we are listening to or reading.

The number of micro-skills involved is large. For example, when we listen we discriminate among the distinctive sounds of English, recognize stress patterns and the rhythmic structure of English, and discern how we use stress and intonation to signal information. Also, we need to identify words in stressed and unstressed positions and in reduced forms. We also have to recognize grammatical structures and typical word-order patterns. Meaning and comprehension are the last steps in the decoding process.

When we read, we use the building blocks of language to make meaning of what we see on the printed page. Bottom-up processes include sounds and graphemes -- the representation of sounds by letters. In English this involves word recognition for the countless irregular spellings and a sophisticated system of punctuation. We then need to to process written information through grammar and sentences. From these blocks we build comprehension.

…and Top-down: By contrast, top-down proponents believe that language processing involves the reconstruction of meaning through prior knowledge or “schema.”

Listeners actively reconstruct the original meaning of the speaker using incoming sounds and other signals like body language as clues. Prior knowledge of context and situation enables us to make sense of what we hear. A native speaker, for example, may completely zone out while hearing the news, then snatch a few brief cues that quickly draw him in. Similarly, when we begin a phone conversation to make an appointment, we shift into formal speech-patterns for such situations. This is another instance of schema guiding language use.

We also use schema to help us understand what we are reading. For example, the format of letters, emails and magazine ads are similar from culture to culture. Their format, whether in the reader’s first or second language, provides specific and useful information about what we can be likely to expect. Other top-down skills include surveying, skimming, scanning, reading for full comprehension, reading between the lines (inference), and reacting personally to reading texts. Teaching these learning strategies to your intermediate students can greatly improve their reading comprehension.

The Language Level Issue: In his excellent discussion of top-down and bottom-up teaching, Norris argues that the teaching community’s eagerness to focus on top-down teaching is sometimes misguided. “Many of the listening materials on the market today are concerned chiefly with helping learners become more adept at improving top-down skills by having them (identify relevant information while ignoring unnecessary details.)”

He adds, “In order to simulate the knowledge that native speakers bring to listening, learners are often provided with vocabulary lists prior to the task and told who the speakers are, what the situation is, and what the topic is about. However, scant attention is paid to the phonological characteristics that mark informal speech. This seems a bit like putting the cart before the horse.”

Norris makes a strong case that teachers must develop both bottom-up and top-down skills, especially at the lower levels. “Teachers are asking a lot from their students… when top-down listening tasks are given without first assessing the students' ability to do bottom-up processing.” His argument is sound. Learners need many micro-skills learners for bottom-up processing, and a good teacher neglects them at his peril. This applies especially to beginning and early intermediate students.

Wrap-up: The main conclusion of this discussion is that we need to feed both learning processes when we are teaching our students.

How and when can we use top-down processing? When you are teaching, make sure your students are aware of the format and general content of a reading, for example. Tell them they are going to read a ghost story, for example, and then elicit ideas about what the content might be, what vocabulary might occur, and so on. This switches on the ghost-story schema in their brains, and also begins activating their English skills. You can do the same with listening. Tell them you are about to listen to a sports broadcast on the Football World Cup. Elicit information about football and the vocabulary they might expect to hear, and so on. Also, of course, a CL teacher is constantly using authentic activities to teach. Thus, a role-play “in the restaurant” is by its very nature a top-down comprehension activity.

In these and many other ways, you can take advantage of your students’ ability to use top-down comprehension to get them ready for the upcoming learning activity. As your students advance, you can use more sophisticated top-down schema and strategies.

Bottom-up skills are different. As we have suggested throughout, they are usually more basic and therefore more important for lower-level students. With those students, you need to spend time helping them recognize reduced speech, for example, and irregular spellings. In the early stages of language acquisition, automaticity in word recognition is critical.

Communicative language teaching emulates real-life language acquisition, which means our work has a top-down bias. Your class needs to use authentic activities and materials to function effectively, and those materials tend to be top-down. However, focusing exclusively on top-down teaching creates problems. Especially with beginning students, spend time developing bottom-up skills.

Aural and Oral Skills

 I recently updated my book, Teach and Learn: Reflections on Communicative Language Teaching, and made it available on Kindle and as an inexpensive paperback. To enjoy a read, please click here.

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

Please click to download a PDF of my book Teach and Learn: Reflections on Communicative Language Teaching. 

The two most basic language skills, listening and speaking, sound exactly alike when we describe them as oral and aural skills. “Aural” language, of course, refers to language as we hear it. “Oral” language is what we say.

These two words are “homophones” – words spelled differently that sound alike. There is no good reason why they should be homophones, but they are. Perhaps that accident of spelling can serve as a reminder that, while these two skills cannot be separated, they need to be developed in different ways.

Teaching Basic Skills: According to a hoary adage, “We are given two ears and one mouth so we can listen twice as much as we talk.” This is a maxim to remember when we plan our lessons – especially when we are dealing with a classroom of new learners.

Logically, listening should be the first skill you teach. In practice, however, most teachers get their students talking on the first day of class, and many make speech the major focus of their lessons. They tend to downplay the skill of listening, as do most foreign language textbooks. Yet listening is probably the more important skill involved in foreign language learning, as it certainly is in the acquisition of one’s native tongue.

Stephen Krashen and other thinkers have stressed that we acquire language best by using it in communicative ways. He was also one of the first to stress that language acquisition and language learning are not the same. Language learning (in the sense of making conscious discoveries about grammar, for instance) involves different mental processes, and those processes play distinctly secondary roles to those we use when we acquire language naturally. Language develops, he says, through exposure to and use of “comprehensible input” – target language the learner can understand and assimilate. All of this is textbook Krashen.

One reasonable conclusion from these observations is that language learners should understand what they are listening to before they begin to speak. Especially at the initial phase of language acquisition, teachers should avoid oral practice to some degree. Instead, they should have their students concentrate on comprehending what they hear. This idea parallels the experience of young children, who spend almost two years in linguistic silence before they begin to speak.

To use listening-focused learning, a communicative language teacher needs to incorporate active listening into their classes. This is done with activities in which the learners demonstrate that they understand, and receive gentle correction when they err. More advanced students must be explicitly taught to recognize reduced language forms heard in colloquial speech – as in “Whaddaya say?” Also, of course, part of aural comprehension is learning to decipher nonverbal clues.

Pure listening is rarely a good strategy for sustained language acquisition. Even if students are still in their silent period – a common phase for beginners, in which they speak very little if at all, – teachers should encourage active participation from them. This is the only way to confirm that they have understood. Participation can mean as little as a nod or a headshake, for example, or the words “yes” and “no” in English or their native language. Listening without speaking is important for foreign language learners, especially when their language learning has just begun, but at some level that listening should be participatory.

Listening activities do not always involve some other skill, but they generally do; the best classroom activities cross skill boundaries. Since the most typical pairing for a listening activity is to combine it with speech practice, a focus on listening can actually promote the effective development of speaking skills. To see how, let's turn to the activation of speech.

Focus on Conversation: Speaking activities best occur in classrooms in which learners feel comfortable and confident, free to take risks, and have plenty of opportunities to speak. While there are countless kinds of activities teachers use to develop speaking skills, they most commonly promote conversational speech. This, of course, requires the use of both listening and speaking skills.

Conversational language has four characteristics. It is interactive, in the sense that we talk back and forth in short bursts. Often, we do not even use complete sentences – “nice day, eh?” Conversation also has narrow time limits. We have to listen and respond without the luxury of thinking much about what we want to say. Conversation is also repetitive, in the sense that we tend to use a relatively small amount of vocabulary and a relatively small repertory of language structures.. And finally, of course, it is error-prone. Because of time limits, we may use the wrong word, pronounce something wrong or mangle structure. While we may hear the mistake and back up and correct ourselves, often we don’t.

Bearing in mind the earlier comments about listening, these characteristics of conversation illustrate an important difference between listening activities and speaking activities. Because listening is a learner’s primary source of comprehensible input, aural activities depend heavily on accuracy. To understand, learners must listen carefully, and their comprehension must be good. In many listening activities, we play a short recording of speech repeatedly until we think our learners understand it.

By contrast, learners shift heavily in the direction of fluency during conversation practice, which combines both listening and speaking skills. At this portion of the language class, the teacher kisses student accuracy goodbye. During speaking activities, the focus is on interactive, time-limited, repetitive and error-prone conversation. As is often the case in the language classroom, as we move from skill to skill, or from language study to language activation, we willingly compromise accuracy in the interest of fluency.

The How and Why of Language: Language originated with the two linguistic skills we have just reviewed – listening and speaking. But why? What is the purpose of language? And how did it evolve to play this role in our lives?

Whether we hear it or voice it, the purpose of language is to do the things that speech can do. In no way is it abstract. Like an axe, language is a tool with which we do things.

According to linguistic philosopher J.R. Searle, we use language to perform five kinds of “speech act”. These are commissive, declarative, directive, expressive and representative. Commissive speech commits the speaker to do something – for example, “I promise to bring it tomorrow,” or “Watch out or I will report you.” Declarations change the state of things – “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” or “You’re fired!” Directive speech gets the listener to do something – “Please come in,” “Watch out!” or “Why don’t you take your medicine?” Expressive language explains feelings and attitudes: “Those roses are beautiful,” or “I hate broccoli.” Finally, representative speech describes states or events – “Rice is an important Thai export,” or “The United States is at war again.” All of our speech seems to do one or more of these five things.

Language is such an important part of our lives that we use it to meet virtually all of our daily needs. Consider psychologist Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, which is often illustrated as a pyramid. In Maslow’s model, we can only move to a higher level of need after we have scrambled up the lower levels.

In his view, people have five kinds of need. Our most basic needs are physiological – food and water, for example. The next level up is the need for safety and security, which we achieve, for example, by dealing with emergencies. Tier 3 involves needs for love, affection and belongingness. The need for esteem – self-respect and respect from others – comes next, but the highest level in this hierarchy is the need for self-actualization. According to Maslow, in this last level “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write.” The point of this discussion is that we meet virtually all those needs through speech acts.

The gradual evolution of language has profoundly affected the nature of our species. As Stephen Pinker observes,

Human practical intelligence may have evolved with language (which allows know-how to be shared at low cost) and with social cognition (which allows people to cooperate without being cheated), yielding a species that literally lives by the power of ideas.

It is impossible to overstate the value or complexity of language. It is perhaps the most fundamental feature of our lives.

What Research Says about Teaching Methods

I recently updated my book, Teach and Learn: Reflections on Communicative Language Teaching, and made it available on Kindle and as an inexpensive paperback. To enjoy a read, please click here.

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

Educators base their systems of language teaching on language theory. Here is one summary of teaching methods, based on the work of two Canadian educators. In their technical but thoughtful book, Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada discuss contemporary thinking about how we learn languages, and illustrate how such ideas directly affect the classroom.

Here is a commentary on their five proposals for classroom teaching. The authors describe each method as an imperative the teacher might bring into class.

Grammar Translation and Audiolingualism. A traditional teacher coming into class would insist to her students, “Get it right from the beginning!”

Teachers from both the grammar translation and the audiolingualism schools do this. They emphasize speech, but are reluctant to let their students use it spontaneously. The reason is that they worry about their students forming bad, ugly habits that they cannot break. Since habits are hard to break, it is better to prevent them. Unbreakable habits of speech – they do occur – are said to be “fossilized.”

According to the two Canadians, research does not support the idea that avoiding fossilization by getting it right from the beginning is an effective way to teach. Just the contrary, in fact. In experiments, students learning by this method clearly did better when communicative activities were added to their lessons. That said, many adults prefer these structure-based methods despite their limitations.

Interactionism. The Interactionist view holds that second language learning takes place primarily through talking with other people (“conversational interaction”). When students have meaningful conversations in a second language, both sides of the conversation use behaviours that are quite useful for language learning. Here are some practical examples:
• One partner might make an effort to make sure the other has understood.
• The learner might ask for clarification to make sure he understood.
• The learner may repeat or paraphrase a sentence, to make sure she gets it right.
These are all excellent strategies for language learning, and they lead to the interactionist teacher’s imperative: “Say what you mean and mean what you say!”

This method is based on the idea that, when given the opportunity to engage in meaningful activities, learners will “negotiate for meaning” – clarify and express their intentions, thoughts and opinions in ways that permit them to achieve their learning goals. “Genuine exchanges of information must surely enhance students’ motivation to participate in language learning activities,” the authors say. But then they ask, “Do they…lead to successful language acquisition?” According to the two authors, the research is ambiguous.

Communicative Language Teaching

Lightbown and Spada describe three other methods of classroom teaching, all of which fall generally into the scope of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). To simplify our review of CLT, it is worth quickly reviewing Stephen Krashen’s theory of second language acquisition.

Krashen’s ideas consist of five main hypotheses:
• The acquisition-learning hypothesis
• The monitor hypothesis
• The natural order hypothesis
• The input hypothesis, and
• The affective filter hypothesis.
As we discussed elsewhere, these ideas seem to describe quite effectively how learners acquire second languages.

Of particular importance, Krashen’s ideas have practical value for the classroom warrior wanting to deliver effective lessons. In the following commentary, I suggest that each of the last three Lightbown and Spada imperatives correspond roughly with one or more of Krashen’s hypotheses.

The Comprehensible Input Hypothesis. The authors describe a radical application of Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis in the form of a method of language teaching in which the students “Just listen, and read!” This kind of learning is most likely to take place in a well equipped language lab, where the students use tapes and readings graded to their individual level.

As long as the students are working with language they can comprehend, there is no theoretical reason they cannot acquire a second language. After all, Krashen’s primary thesis is that we can only learn language through comprehensible input. (He adds to this that teachers should stretch their knowledge of the language by providing them with “i+1” encounters – just a tad more of the second language than they can easily understand, to increase their comprehension.)

The “just listen and read” method assumes it is not necessary to drill and memorize language forms. Emphasis is on providing comprehensible input through listening and reading activities. Experimental research has found that this system is effective, but the authors sound a note of caution.

Students develop not only good comprehension (in reading and listening), but also confidence and fluency....However, research does not support the argument that an exclusive focus on meaning in comprehensible input is enough to bring learners to high levels of accuracy in their second language.

Students also need explicit instruction in the forms of language – for example, specific structures. Otherwise, their language skills will remain somewhat limited.

The Natural Order Hypothesis. Lightbown and Spada describe a method which focuses on teaching structural forms, but teaching them in developmental order. Their imperative? “Teach what is teachable!” The concept is that instruction cannot change the ‘natural’ course of development. This is because linguistic structures develop along particular developmental paths. Teaching advanced structures to beginners will not work because the learners do not yet have the ability to process (unconsciously analyse and organise) them.

That, at least, is the theory. As the authors explain, it is difficult to test because the “natural order” of language learning is still unclear. Some things are known – for example, WH questions and Yes/No questions are much easier to acquire than those using question tags (“It’s easy to do, isn’t it?”). However, as a learner begins to reach complicated structures, the difficult language structures are not too well defined.

The Acquisition/Learning Hypothesis. Lightbown and Spada describe one final method. While this course in TEFL finds value in many teaching methods, the authors’ last teaching method is the one we most strongly support. “Get it right in the end!” they say.

This method is the one most in keeping with Krashen’s “monitor model” of second language learning. As our study of Krashen explains, the monitor hypothesis is the idea that conscious learning serves primarily as a monitor or an editor for the language student. It plays a relatively small but necessary role in effective language acquisition, which comes primarily from exposure to comprehensible input and language practice.

The “get it right in the end” method recognizes the importance of explicitly teaching language content – making the study of structure, lexis and phonology a part of language lessons. However, it puts primary emphasis on the idea that students will acquire most language features will be acquired naturally if learners have adequate exposure to the language and a motivation to learn. This view largely agrees with “Teach what is teachable”, but “emphasizes the idea that some aspects of language must be taught and may need to be taught quite explicitly.”

Approach, Method and Technique. All these methods of instruction can play a role in a good language teacher’s toolkit. Communicative Language Teaching is based not on dogma, but on what works to help students learn language effectively. While we believe CLT is the most effective approach to language teaching, we also recognize that is effective because it is eclectic. CLT begins with the idea that the purpose of language learning is to communicate, and uses ideas and practices from any other method if they can help achieve that goal.

CLT is nothing if it is not pragmatic.

The Krashen Revolution

By Peter McKenzie-Brown

About 25 years ago, a psychologist named Stephen Krashen transformed language teaching. He had been developing his ideas over a number of years, but several books he published in the 1980s received widespread acceptance. They quickly became the most widely accepted way to explain the twin processes of language teaching and learning. Also, with Tracey Terrell, he developed the natural approach to language teaching. One of his books is available on the web.

Much has been made of Krashen's theory of second language acquisition, which consists of five main hypotheses: The acquisition-learning hypothesis, the monitor hypothesis, the natural order hypothesis, the input hypothesis, and the affective filter hypothesis. Before we turn to these ideas, though, it is worth noting that by no means do they pertain exclusively to second language acquisition. As you read the following explanation of Krashen's five hypotheses, ask yourself whether his ideas are not equally applicable to an individual who has only one language. It seems to me that Krashen's ideas work equally well to describe how an adult native-speaker would improve her English, say, as they do to describe the process for the second language learner.

The Natural Order Hypothesis. Based on a powerful analysis of research results, Krashen’s natural order hypothesis suggests that the acquisition of language, especially the rules of language, follows a predictable natural order. For any given language, some grammatical structures tend to be acquired earlier than others. This idea reflects Noam Chomsky’s revolutionary notion that we all have a built-in Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which within the first year of our lives begins to enable us to understand and acquire language.

Because of the nature of the LAD, we tend to learn different structures at different levels as young children. Researchers have found that the same pattern occurs for older learners – not a surprise to seasoned language teachers! This is the “predictable natural order” of this hypothesis.

The Acquisition/Learning Hypothesis. The distinction between acquisition and learning is the most fundamental of all the hypotheses in Krashen's theory, since it suggests that language comes to us in two rather different ways. Acquisition is one. You acquire language by using it for real communication. Learning, which he describes as “knowing about” language, is quite a different thing.

Acquisition is the product of a subconscious process very similar to the process children undergo when they acquire their first language. It requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural communication - in which speakers concentrate not on the form of their utterances, but in the communicative act. Learning, on the other hand, provides conscious knowledge “about” the target language. It is therefore less important than acquisition for basic communication, but it still plays an important role in language learning. To oversimplify a bit, learning is likely to occur in the “study” segment of an English lesson, while acquisition takes places during language activation.

The Monitor Hypothesis. The fundamental distinction between acquisition and learning leads directly to the next hypothesis. The monitor hypothesis relegates language learning (that is, a student’s responses to what the teacher teaches) to a secondary place in the scheme of language learning.

The monitor hypothesis is the idea that conscious learning – that is, the outcome of grammar instruction and other activities that were the traditional stock in trade of the language teacher – serve only as a monitor or an editor for the language student. Real acquisition takes place as “meaningful interaction in the target language – natural communication – in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding.”

The Input Hypothesis. The input hypothesis suggests that people acquire language in only one way: by understanding messages, or by receiving ‘comprehensible input’. According to the input hypothesis, learner’s progress by receiving second language input that is one step beyond their current stage of linguistic competence. Acquisition for learners with language knowledge “i” can only take place if they are exposed to comprehensible input at a slightly higher level, which Krashen describes as level “i + 1”.

The Affective Filter Hypothesis. Finally, the Affective Filter Hypothesis proposes that a mental block caused by affective or emotional factors can prevent input from reaching the student’s language acquisition device. The affective filter hypothesis says that affective variables like self-confidence and anxiety play a role in language acquisition. When the filter is up – that is, when negative emotional factors are in play – language acquisition suffers. When the filter is down, it benefits.

Taken together, these hypotheses offer a practical, elegant and appealing theory of language acquisition and learning.

Putting Krashen’s Ideas to Use.
Tracy Terrell worked with Krashen to create the nuts-and-bolts practical applications of the natural approach. He borrowed widely from many methods, adapting them to meet the requirements of natural approach theory. “What characterizes the Natural Approach is the use of familiar techniques within the framework of a method that focuses on providing comprehensible input and a classroom environment that uses comprehension of input, minimizes learner anxiety, and maximizes learner self-confidence.”

He held students to a high level of accountability. They must be clear about their goals, take active roles in ensuring that input is comprehensible, make decisions about when to start producing speech, and even contribute to choices about the amount of time to be spent on grammar, for example. The teacher is a central figure in the natural approach classroom, however – the primary source of comprehensible input, and responsible for creating a friendly and encouraging class atmosphere. Also, of course, the teacher must find and introduce a rich mix of classroom activities to make the approach work.

The focus is always on introducing a little more English usage to what the students already have – i + 1, in Krashen’s formulation, – and to do so in a warm and receptive classroom. The method makes wide use of realia, props and visuals (typically magazine pictures) to introduce new vocabulary and practice comprehensible input.

How Persnickety Should the Teacher Be?

By Peter McKenzie-Brown


There are endless debates among language teachers about how concerned teachers should be with their students’ language output. What is the best balance between the extremes of correcting most of their errors and correcting none? Do we want students to speak accurately, even if doing so limits their ability to use the language easily? Or do we want them to speak more comfortably (that is, fluently), even at the expense of accurate pronunciation and grammar? How persnickety should the teacher be?

There will always be battles between advocates of accuracy and advocates of fluency. However, most Western language teachers now fall into the latter camp, and they are supported by a large body of research and language theory. According to this point of view, there is in inevitable lag between language fluency and language accuracy. As language learners develop greater comfort in using a second language, they become better able to identify and correct their own mistakes. I believe this principle should dominate language acquisition.

If you want to visualize this idea in practice, take a look at the graphic at the beginning of this post. The upper triangle represents teacher talk, which is always accurate; after all, she is usually a native speaker. The teacher begins class by talking (call this “teacher input”). However, the good teacher steadily reduces her own talk time by introducing activities that increase language production by her students (call this “student output.”) Conceptually, the class quickly changes from one in which the teacher does almost all the communication (focus on accuracy) to one in which the students do almost all the talking (focus on fluency).

As is always the case, a good language lesson should go through several stages as you make the transition from accuracy to fluency. It should begin with language study, then continue with activation of the language through controlled, guided and free practice exercises.

Forget about spending endless hours teaching grammar or having your students repeat sentence patterns by rote. Language acquisition takes place most effectively when your students use it in increasingly life-like situations. As the band leader said in auditions, “Don't play me the scales. Play me a damned tune!”

The focus on accuracy is strongest during the language study phase of class. Here the teacher explains some points of grammar, pronunciation or vocabulary, and does most (if not all) of the talking. There’s little possibility of error, because students don’t say much. This stage of the lesson is short, however.

Teachers need to structure their classes in such a way that they say less and less as class rolls on, while the students say more and more. When they do this, students become increasingly active in later stages of class, the “three practices”.

In controlled practice, the teacher remains in control. Student activities are such that it is fairly difficult for them to make errors – and when they do, the teacher’s job is to make corrections. At this stage, teacher input (also known as “teacher talk time”) is about equal to student output (“student talk time”). But student output completely dominates the latter parts of the class. The teacher relaxes control progressively during guided and free practice activities. Sure, your students will make mistakes, but their fluency will improve. And if you design your activities well, your students will correct each other or themselves when challenged.

I haven’t described all the components of an ideal lesson plan, of course. For example, good classes begin with a warm-up, which serves to switch on the students’ second language brains. They also include a stage often referred to as “engagement” – a few minutes of class in which the teacher catches student interest and generates excitement about the upcoming topic of study.

These notes are barely more than the sketch of a notion, but the basic idea is strong. Let accuracy go in the interest of fluency. If you do, the odds are you will see immediate improvements in your students’ classroom performance.