Use situational communication exercises, normal speech, ad hoc grammar explanations, and echo-expansion correction¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The article lists classroom techniques that its experiment found sufficient for statistically significant skill improvement: situational communication exercises such as language games, interviews, dialogues, and skits; speaking to students normally, slowing down and simplifying speech when the instructor felt necessary; giving short ad hoc grammatical explanations when students asked or appeared to need them rather than by course design; and correcting students by a personalized echo-expansion technique. Each was reported "sufficient for significant skill improvement" in the experimental program.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• An environment which maximized students' participation in the English language, with attempts to take the learner's mind off the task of learning the language.

Constraints¶

• Findings come from one limited experimental research project; questions about assisting untrained teachers, introducing reading and writing, oral-skill evaluation, and accent reduction were not dealt with.

Target Learners¶

• adult second language learners in immersion classrooms

Target Learning Goals¶

• structural and communication skill improvement in English

Affordances¶

• First Second Language Acquisition Similarity

Related Strategies¶

• Plan the second language course situationally rather than grammatically

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Gallagher, W. K. (1976). Facilitating the Immigrant's Learning a Second Language in the Classroom. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED136593