1. Rugby players and fairy stories Rob Waring Notre Dame Seishin University JALT PANSIG May 21, 2011 Matsumoto www.robwaring.org Sponsored by

2. Fluency vs. Fluent A fluent speaker (reader, writer, listener) can process the language automatically, smoothly, and without much effort. Fluency (in ELT) often refers to the development of the skill to become fluent in it (i.e. fluency practice). This often done by: - speed reading / writing activities - speed word / sentence recognition activities - using graded readers / graded listening materials - pronunciation repetition - etc. Someone can be fluent but not accurate Our challenge is to help them become fluent and accurate

3. Fluent Reading = Extensive Reading

7. This is NOT EXTENSIVE READING This is LANGUAGE STUDY READING

8. This is NOT EXTENSIVE READING This is LANGUAGE STUDY READING

9. What’s the optimum vocabulary coverage for building fluency? Slow Reading speed High % of known vocabulary 100% Low Comprehension High 90% 98% Reading Pain (too hard, poor comprehension, high effort, de-motivating) Intensive reading (Instructional level, can learn new words and grammar) Speed reading practice (very fast, fluent, high comprehension, natural reading, enjoyable) Extensive reading (fast, fluent, adequate comprehension, enjoyable)

10. A Balanced Curriculum INPUT Listening Reading OUTPUT Speaking Writing LANGUAGE FOCUS (Study) (Intentional learning) (Explicit knowledge) Using a dictionary Intensive reading Asking the teacher ‘Teaching’ Phonics …. Productive tests Sentence / gap fill Pronunciation practice Controlled speaking tasks Sentence level writing …. FLUENCY FOCUS (Communication) (Incidental learning) (Implicit knowledge) Graded Reading Extensive listening Watching movies and TV Listening to songs …. Chatting and discussion Keeping a diary Writing poems Making a speech ……

11. What do learners need to know to be ‘good’ at English? Learners need 4000 word families (7-9000 to read native novels easily) and their inflections and common derivations / multiple meaning senses About 3-40000 common phrasal verbs and idioms Common phrases, fixed and semi-fixed Collocations and colligations Register, pragmatics, discourse level awareness Pronunciation Some basic grammar Skills and strategies Etc. Etc. etc.

12. How long will it take to learn this? An average word family needs 30-50 meetings for it to be learnt receptively from reading (more for productive use) An average word’s meaning takes 10-15 meetings to learn from intentional study Intentional vocab learning is 16 times faster than incidental To learn the collocations and ‘deeper’ aspects of language learning takes MUCH longer than learning the words alone. There’s little research into the rate learning of collocation, colligation or lexical phrases from reading We know nothing at all about how long it takes to master a particular grammatical form e.g. a tense, the articles, comparatives

13. Which collocations? Transparent ‘weak’ collocations – easy to learn – don’t teach Beautiful flower, look out of a window, read a book, play a game Specialized collocations – teach only if needed Insolvency act, habeas corpus, spaghetti bolognese Infrequent collocations – don’t bother teaching Rancid butter, a glimmer of hope, circle of friends, by and large Those that need attention – Highly frequent collocations (not too many of these) make/do + noun – False friends weak tea, *thin tea; meet friends / *play with friends

14. Most collocations aren’t worth teaching individually Collocations will always occur less frequently than the words that make them up In the British National Corpus (100m words) Strong occurs 213 times / 1m words Wind occurs 73 times / 1m words Strong wind occurs 3.06 times / 1m words The ‘difficult’ word compromise occurs 31 times Most collocations aren’t worth teaching individually

15. How frequently do lexical phrases occur (BNC)? Raw RankWordPer million words 177out of490 222per cent382 272such as321 285of course309 378for example238 1538in front of65 1725all right58 2159as soon as47 2491in general41 2970in addition to34 3307next to30 3755on top of26 4378instead of21 5409in charge of17 5987just about15 7396provided that11 7885as good as10 9125with a view to8 Raw RankWordPer million words 11459in between6 13507by and large5 14369at random4 16684per se4 19505old fashioned3 22060grown up2 28441matter of fact2 43572sq m1 48241fait accompli1 51717straight forward1 58511habeas corpus1 74321self-same0 76170haute cuisine0 82928a good deal0 83882laissez faire0 88912thank you0 89371persona non grata0

16. How well are our courses presenting the language students need? Research suggests a typical language courses: do not systematically recycle the grammatical forms outside the presentation unit / lesson have an almost random vocabulary selection (mostly based on topic) without much regard to frequency or usefulness rarely, if ever, recycle taught words either later in the unit, the book, or the series provide little additional practice in review units or workbooks ha an overwhelming focus on new material in each lesson

17. The number of words a learner will probably learn from course work plus graded readers Probably knownPartially KnownProbably unknown 50+30-4920-2910-195-91-4Total Course book only 5232102294725801,2613,275 Data from Sequences, Foundations, Page Turners and Footprints by Heinle Cengage 225,000 60,800 570,000 174,000 (=1,029,000) Add one reader a week 1,0232832505395701,3253,990 Add two readers a week 1,3723803676948772,8826,572

18. Uptake rates When learning only from a course book over (3 years): Only 962 words will be learnt well (29.4%) A further 1,052 will be partially known (32.1% ) 1,261 words are likely to be forgotten (38.5%) Adding one graded reader per week: 1,556 words (40.0%) will be learnt well, plus 1,109 words (27.8%) will be partially known and only 33.2% unknown. Adding two graded readers per week: They will know 2,119 words well, plus partially know another 1,571 words

19. Notes: 40 function words (in, of, the, by etc.) accounted for 41.2% of the total words in the series Typically one’s productive vocabulary is 20-25% of the receptive Probably available Partially available Course book only 200250 Add one reader / week 325250 Add two readers / week 580380 This does not include the learning of collocations, colligations, idioms, phrases, multiple meanings, lexical chunks, sentence heads… etc.

20. How many words do Japanese students meet in JH/ SH? TypesTokens Horizon 1, 2, 3 (Junior High)1,1249,440 Powwow I, II, Reading (Senior High)2,85727,221 Centre tests (680 types / 3000 tokens average per test) x 4 1,00012,000 College Entrance tests (590 types / 1600 tokens average per test) x4 1,0006,400 A total of approximately 55,000 running words will be met (not counting juku and self-study). A generous estimate is 100,000 words and about 3,500 types over 6 years. Listening input would be approximately 10% of this.

21. A linear structure to our syllabuses Each unit has something new Little focus on the recycling of vocab, grammar and so on The theory is “We’ve done that, they have learnt it, so we can move on.” i.e. teaching causes learning Unit 1 Be verb Simple adjectives Unit 2 Simple present Daily routines Unit 3 Present continuous Sporting activities Unit 4 can Abilities Unit 5 …. …..

22. What does this all imply? A linear course structure is focused on introducing new words and grammatical features, not deepening knowledge of them often leaves a lot to the forgetting curve isn’t strong at building in repetitions of words and grammar features for long-term acquisition to take place is not focused on deepening and consolidating older knowledge because the focus is always on new things

23. So what needs to happen? We have to ensure our curriculums and courses: build in some recycling and repetition of words and grammar structures give students chances to see how the grammar and vocabulary are used together in real language give students chances to deepen and consolidate the language they learn in their course books (or they forget it) allow students to develop their own ‘sense’ of how the language works give students chances to use language rather than just study it

24. Course work and Graded Readers work together Consolidating and deepening language knowledge GRADED READING (Extensive Reading) Unit 1 Be verb Unit 2 Simple present Unit 3 Present continuous Unit 4 can Unit 5 …. Introducing language

25. How are we going to teach what? Discrete knowledge‘Fuzzy’ knowledge Individual words Important lexical phrases False friends Loanwords Important collocations and colligations Basic grammatical patterns Important phrasal verbs, idioms etc. Word, phrase and sentence level awareness Register, Genre … Pragmatic knowledge Restrictions on use Most collocations and collocations A ‘sense’ of a word’s meaning and use A ‘sense’ of how grammar fits with lexis - the tenses, articles etc. Discourse level awareness  Intentional learning  Incidental learning Selection issues – what do we teach? Sequence issues – in what order? Scaffolding issues – how do we consolidate previous learning? Presentation issues – what method? Rough grading Ensuring recycling Engaging text Matching input text to intentionally learnt materials

26. What do we know about ER? Beglar, Hunt and Kite (forthcoming): Learning from graded readers is better than reading ‘anything you like’ Nishizawa et al. (2010) found that the favourite ER materials for rugby players were fairy stories:- let learners decide/ They need to read 300,000 words before the benefits of ER kick in. Claridge (2005)- patterns of use of structure, discourse markers, redundancy, collocations, and frequency rates are similar in original and graded versions of the same story. Alshamrani (2003); and Allan, (2009) found GRs aided many aspects of language learning. Wodinsky and Nation (1988) found that it’s not necessary to pre-learn the vocabulary at the new level if students read at the right level.

27. Do graded readers aid fluency? Hafiz and Tudor (1990) found students reading GRs gained significantly in fluency and accuracy; GRs provide models assimilation of knowledge from linguistic input, Iwahori (2008): ER improved fluency in a Japanese High School Taguchi, et al. (2004): repeated readings lead to larger gains in vocabulary than reading once: Successful reading is almost impossible without good word decoding skills Nation (2008) Speed reading practice gains transfer to normal reading

28. Some objections from teachers and schools Nice idea but I have no time in my course. -> If you don’t have graded reading where will the students get the massive exposure they need? -> How else will they get the ‘sense of language’ they need? -> Where are they going to get the fluency practice? We don’t have the money for this. -> Ask your schools to reallocate funds so this reading is done; ask for donations; get some free samples etc. We have to go through our set curriculum. -> Speak with your course designers to build in graded reading. Re-allocate resources and re-set class hours We have to prepare the students for tests. -> Research shows students perform better on tests if they have a general sense of language, than an incohesive‘bitty’ one.

29. Making them fluent Give opportunities for fluency…. F ast and efficient reading and listening practice L ink their practice to real tasks U nderstanding is primary E ncourage speed development work N urture confidence and motivation T ry extensive reading and listening

30. Finally… You can review this presentation by downloading it from: www.robwaring.org/presentations/ More information about Graded Reading (Extensive Reading) at… www.extensivereading.net The First Extensive Reading World Congress, Kyoto Sangyo University, Kyoto. Sept 3-6, 2011 http://erfoundation.org/erwc1/

31. How much reading should they do? About a book a week or more. Beginners - A book at week at their ability level They can meet unknown words easily, so you don’t need to read much. Intermediates - A book at week at your ability level They don’t meet unknown words all the time, but your books are thicker, so you are reading more. Advanced – 2 books at week at your ability level They rarely meet unknown words, so you have to read more to meet language you don’t know.

32. Language (Accuracy) Focus INPUT Listening Reading OUTPUT Speaking Writing LANGUAGE FOCUS (Study) (Intentional learning) (Explicit learning) meet new language (e.g. grammar, vocabulary, lexical patterns) notice the features of language points learn strategies for dealing with the language (e.g. dictionary skills, reading skills, metacognitive skills) create new hypotheses to test (NB this knowledge stays largely atomised, discrete and isolated) practice / assess new (and partially digested) language points in a controlled way to ensure it is well known and can be used accurately check if the form and function of the new language is known make connections between discretely learnt language points to more accurately express a communicative intent get feedback on accuracy

33. Fluency (Communication) Focus INPUT Listening Reading OUTPUT Speaking Writing FLUENCY FOCUS (Communication) (Incidental learning) build reading speed, listening fluency and word recognition automaticity notice connections between knowledge which was previously isolated and abstract meet massive amounts of comprehensible text to consolidate knowledge develop a ‘feel’ for the language learn to predict communicate more smoothly and with less anxiety, effort pull together abstract and isolated knowledge through an active constructive process learn to communicate by communicating get feedback on performance experiment with language knowledge to achieve successful communication prepare for communication outside the classroom