Observational Drawing Lesson Plan Ks3
Why this postal service?
In the last decade or so, a large number of language educators around the world have embraced my approach, EPI (aka All-encompassing Processing Educational activity). Many teachers and schools have done so 'wholesale', applying it to all aspects of their MFL curriculum; others but partially, incorporating some aspects of my approach due east.chiliad. my employ of sentence builders, L.A.Grand. (Listening-As-Modelling), Narrow Reading techniques, Retrieval practice tasks, Chunking-aloud games, Fluency-training activities, Universals, 50.I.F.T, etc. Of those who have consort the approach, some have adopted it in its purest form, adhering to the letter of EPI. Others take 'hybridized' it, as it were, combining their existing approach or other approaches with mine (e.thousand. NCELP + EPI) creatively adapting EPI to their learning context.
Despite its popularity and the many blog posts and articles written on EPI, some published in prominent specialised journals such as Applied Linguistics , at that place exist gross misconceptions near the arroyo, some of which I was reminded of during several conversations with language educators at a recent briefing in Sheffield, the ALL 'Linguistic communication World'. There I realised, to my horror, that even some prominent MFL influencers I talked to on the day had some serious misconceptions about the arroyo and a superficial understanding of information technology. They seemed to believe that EPI is most teaching random sentences embedded in commutation tables and getting the students to parrot them until they learn them past rote without any input about grammar, SSC (spelling-to-sound correspondance) and the meaning of individual words. In other words, EPI would consist of only drilling in a fix of unanalysed chunks advertizing nauseam through a range of ludic activities without a coherent instructional plan or rationale. A very prominent lady said: I don't sympathize how it is dissimilar from what we used to do information technology the 80s.
10 ugly truths almost EPI
Hither are ten of the most common misconceptions virtually EPI, supposedly the primary reasons why language teachers, according to my detractors, should stay away from 'contification':
ane. In East.P.I. we don't teach grammar
2. In Eastward.P.I. we don't teach phonics
iii. In E.P.I. we don't teach the meaning of single words. The method is about learning unanalysed chunks by rote. Meaningless parroting
4. In Eastward.P.I. talking is merely about read-aloud games a la 'Sentence stealer' and oral translation drills such as 'No snakes no ladders'
v. E.P.I is slow. The coverage is unambitious
six. Due east.P.I. is nearly memorising paragraphs with parallel texts
7. In Due east.P.I. listening and reading comprehensions are banned
eight. East.P.I. cannot be used with high-ability classes
9. In E.P.I. we don't teach civilization
10. E.P.I. doesn't ready for National Examinations
The reasons for these misconceptions are manyfold. 1 reason is that quite a few of the blog posts/webinars on EPI floating on the web were written/delivered by people who provided their own understanding or adaptation of my approach and in some cases have never attended whatever of my trainings (!). Some other reason refers to the deliberate attempt past sure people and entities to misrepresent EPI as anti-grammer, anti-phonics, anti-culture, anti-retrieval practice, anti-creativity, and anti- everything else that teachers agree equally the untouchable pilllars of language pedagogy and learning – the aim: to put them off the approach.
Debunking the myths most EPI
In a series of posts – hopefully but two – I intend to debunk every unmarried one of the above myths nearly EPI. For reasons of space, in the electric current post I volition concern myself just with the peak 3 on the above list.
#1. In E.P.I. grammar is not taught
Nothing could exist farther from the truth. Grammar is taught at many points in a typical MARS EARS sequence, both explicitly and implicitly. The learning of grammar, however, different what happens traditionally, is not an terminate in itself; rather it is intended as a mode to increase the generative ability of the target chunks, i.e.: it aims at enabling the learners to skillfully dispense the constructions modelled in a given unit of work to suit a communicative purpose. Moreover, it is subordinate to communication and lexis.
So, for instance, if in sub-unit ane ("Talking about what I did yesterday') of a unit of work on "Talking virtually the recent past", the students have learnt the construction Fourth dimension marker (due east.thousand. yesterday) + I + perfect tense form + substantive or/prepositional phrase, nosotros may decide to teach the full conjugation of the verb 'Avoir', or parts of information technology, then as to raise the communicative ability of the target chunk (i.e. making it applicable to a greater range of agents). Thus, the grammer content is derived opportunistically from the target communicative context and not imposed elevation-down past the curriculum designer as a list of items to tick off. Figure 1, below, illustrate this point.
Grammar educational activity starts explicitly in the initial Modelling/Awareness-raising phases (the M & A in MARS), in which the instructor sensitizes the learners to 1 or more of the morpho-syntactic features which underpin the target construction. At this stage, nosotros are non talking of a full-fledged grammer explanation but rather of 'pop-up grammar', a short capsule of language awareness, which draws attention to specific features in the input the teacher wants the learner to notice.
During the Receptive phase too (the R in MARS), grammar is learnt, implicitly, through input-flooding, input-enhancement (see figure two beneath), thorough processing and repeated processing at every level of grain (phonemic, syllabic, lexical, morpho-syntactic, pragmatic and semantic) of the target structure. The tasks used in this phase aim at inducing the so-called 'structural (or syntactic) priming effect" showtime documented past Bock (1986).
Input-flooding and input-enhancement work in synergy in an endeavor to draw the learner attention to the target linguistic features. In the instance in figure 3 below, for instance, the text is flooded with French perfect tense and imperfect forms which have been highlighted in yellow and blueish.
Grammar is also learnt explicitly, through activities which deliberately direct the learner'due south attention to the target features (see figures 5 to 8 below). For instance, in a lesson on 'Talking about concluding week-cease' in French, the auxiliares AVOIR and ETRE may be gapped from a text which needs to be filled in by the students as part of a partial dictation. Or, as part of a 'Faulty transcription' chore, the students may exist asked to correct wrong instances of the perfect tense occuring in a text similar to the one used in the partial dictation. In a 'Tracking' listening activeness, the students may be asked to annotation downward how many instances of AVOIR and ETRE they hear in an audible text flooded with perfect tenses read aloud at moderate pace.
Editing activities (e.g. 'Editing Carousel' or 'Best writing') may also be staged where working individually or in groups, the students would try to spot and correct errors. Whilst the activities above focus on form, focus-on meaning activities will be staged too, including semantic processing activities based on the principles of (1) elaboration (2) distinctiveness (3) appropriateness to retrieval and application (4) relevance to personal experience.
During the Structured production phase (the Due south in MARS), pairwork retrieval practice and communicative activities elicit production of the target structure. Another short popular-up grammar session may accept place at this stage to activate prior knowledge, clarify misconceptions and prime number the students for the employ of the target structure during this stage, which would ideally last two lessons. Subsequently each substantive retrieval practice or communicative chore, curt bouts of popular-upwards grammar may be staged to point out mutual mistakes the instructor noticed during the performance of the tasks.
In the Expansion or Explanation phase (the Due east in EARS), the target grammar characteristic is explained more thoroughly. Since, past this stage, the target structure has been candy many times over and the teacher will have already directed the students' attention to the target characteristic several times through activation of prior knowledge, corrective feedback and breezy assessment, oftentimes s/he will be able to teach information technology through guided-discovery techniques or even through full-fledged inductive tasks. In this stage, grammer and translation drills may be staged, where the learning status is chore-essentialness, i.e.: the target feature is necessary in order to complete the tasks-at-mitt (e.thousand. a gap-fill task requiring the retrieval of an appropriate perfect tense form). It is worth noting that, with lower ability groups, with whom grammatical accurateness is not a priority, 1 may skip this phase and devote this lesson to consolidation of the target lexis. With college ability students, a transfer-practice component possibly added in, whereby the structure-at-hand is practised in linguistic contexts and/or tasks different from the one(s) in which it was initially learnt. For instance, if adjectival agreement is being taught in the context of describing apparel using colours, the transfer-practice chore could involve applying the agreement rules in other vocabulary domains (east.g. the one learnt in previous units on describing classroom objects, people animals, etc.).
In the Autonomous recall stage (the A in EARS), I always recommend embedding a short grammar assessment chore, e.g. an Editing job involving identifying and fixing errors pertaining to the target structures or a translation or othe retrieval-practice chore in which the target construction is job-essential. The aim is to examination whether the students have grasped how the target structure 'works' declaratively and can apply it in familiar tasks.
In the Routinization phase (the R in EARS), form-focused tasks such as 'Fast & Furious' or 'Fixy Echo' will explicitly focus the students on the target grammar feature, whilst meaning-focused tasks such equally 'The iv,3,2 technique', 'Market Identify', 'Speed Dating', 'Five', 'All for one one for all' etc. may be used to elicit the rapid retrieval of the target feature in a chatty context.
Finally, in the Spontaneity phase (the S in EARS), unplanned communicative tasks may be staged in a bid to elicit the deployment of the target construction among others (e.g. under timed conditions, the students may be shown a story-board and asked to describe it in the past tense or they may exist interviewed on what they did terminal calendar week, etc.)
As you can see from the above, grammar didactics is woven into every stage of the MARS EARS sequence. How'due south the EPI approach to grammar instruction dissimilar from the current methodology promoted by the DfE in England?. Here are some cardinal differences:
- Grammar is not the finish goal of pedagogy only a tool to support the achievement of spontaneity and creativity with the language: it serves a communicative purpose. As picture 3 above shows, information technology is selected based on the Communicative functions nosotros teach and, more precisely, on the construction(s) which convey that function. For example, in educational activity the function "Describing what 1 did last weekend" in French, I may choose to teach the structure: Time marker + Perfect tense of Aller + prepositional phrase. C'était + adjective. Every bit a consequence, I will decide to teach the perfect tense of aller. This ways that the target grammer structure emerges organically from the context; it is learnt in context. The grammar explanation occurs as a way to requite the target construction more than generative power, i.e.: teach the learners how to manipulate it using declarative knowledge then that they have control over information technology and doesn't stay a monolytical unanalysed chunk of language. In other words, declarative knowledge is taught in order to build on procedural knowledge.
- The total-fledged explanation of the key grammar point is delayed to the Explanation phase, which occurs after much receptive and productive do, on the 4th of fifth lesson. This means that grammar teaching is often about reverse technology, picking autonomously what the students already know, which makes learning declarative knowledge easier and in some cases even redundant. Delaying the educational activity towards the stop of each sub-unit (or MARSEA sequence) ways that the grammer explanation that at best puts off, at worst excludes a substantive chunk of a mixed power course at the very first of a lesson, comes afterwards four lessons packed with inclusive and fun activities, mostly ludic in nature.
- The core structures that your students must 'nail' by the cease of each year or cycle, the 'not-negotiables' selected for education, what I call 'Universals' are non equally many as those found in course books such equally Dynamo or Studio. They are limited because there is a limit to what can be truly 'entrenched' in the ridiculously small time allocation linguistic communication learning typically gets in primary and secondary schools (i to 2 hours a calendar week). The benchmark for choice? How foundational and key they are in the building of the L2 arrangement. In movie 11 below I take listed my universals for a twelvemonth 7 French group.
#ii. In Due east.P.I. we don't teach phonics
This is another myth. The teaching of Phonics or SSC (Spelling-to-Audio Correspondence) is likewise woven into every step of the MARS EARS sequence. Equally happens with grammar, phonics too are taught through a synergy of Explicit and Implicit teaching.
The phonemes and syllables the EPI teacher focuses on, though, are derived opportunistically from the vocabulary and grammar you selected, as shown in motion picture ane higher up. For case, if, as part of the chatty function "Describing people", you programme to teach words like mère, frère and père, this may prompt you lot to focus on the phoneme /ɛ/. Moreover, if, equally part of the aforementioned topic, you are going to teach the present indicative of the verb Etre (suis, es and est) this may trigger a focus on silent consonants s and t. This ways that the target phonemes and phonemes clusters volition be constantly recycled multiple times across the entire unit.
Ane of the advantages of modelling language through sentence builders is that the learners hear and see the words being presented simultaneously. Hence, each word the students are taught is concurrently encoded in both its phonemic and graphemic course. Thus, phonics teaching starts implicitly from the get-go, in the Modelling phase.
In the awareness-raising phase, through activities such equally "Faulty echo", "Spot the silent letters", "Rhyming pairs", "Write information technology as yous hear it", "Spot the foreign sound" and many others described in Conti and Smith (2019), the teacher draws attention to specific sounds known to be problematic for the students (e.one thousand. silent consonants in French, nasal sounds, etc.). These noticing activities are used routinely past EPI teachers and are the staples of this initial phase. Input enhancement techniques, both visual (east.thousand. highlighting silent letters) and acoustic (e.m. stressing specific sounds) are also used in this phase as awareness-raising tools.
In the ensuing Receptive processing stage, listening and reading piece of work in synergy to further reinforce SSC. This is done through a number of engaging 'Scripted listening' (listening whilst reading) activities, such every bit 'Discussion Bingo', 'Sentence Bingo', 'Suspension the period', 'Spot the missing detail', 'Spot the intruder', 'Listening puzzle', 'Slalom listening', 'Jigsaw listening', etc. These aural tasks elicit dual processing, i.east.: the students simultaneously process aural and written input. For instance, in 'Spot the intruder', the learner is given a written text and must identify any words contained in that text, which are not read aloud by the instructor. Most EPI scripted-listening activities are designed to promote 'thorough processing', i.e. force the students to pay close attention to every single word in the transcript. Thorough processing ways that, if yous have flooded the input with the target graphemes/phonemes, the chances of the students learning SSC are likely to exist multiplied.
Dictations are as well usually used in EPI, occasionally in synergy with Scripted listening. For instance, in 'Faulty transcript", the students demand to place and note downwardly the differences between what they listen to and the respective transcript; for example, the text they encounter might say "Me llamo Paco" whereas the text the teacher reads out would say "Me llamo Juan". Some of the dictation tasks I utilise in this stage are detailed in this post. Whilst Scripted listening and Dictation tasks build a strong SSC implicitly, explicit SSC-focused episodes can still be embedded through corrective feedback (eastward.chiliad. on dictations) or pre-chore activation cognition (e.g. prior to a "Rail the sound" job, where the sound to be tracked is /ɛ/ the students may be reminded explicitly of the relevant SSC declarative knowledge in synergy with physical awareness).
In the Structured Production phase, prior to the Chunking aloud games typically staged with beginner to pre-intermediate classes, another short pop-upwardly phonics session may occur to sensitize and prime the students, in which you would stage phonological sensation classics such every bit 'Minimal pairs', 'Phonemes bingo', 'Dissimilarity and response', 'Rhyming pairs' and others detailed in this post . During each chunking-aloud game you volition of course walk effectually monitoring pupil output, correcting when necessary and making mental notes of the most common mistakes. After each game, yous will utilize the so-gathered observational data to provide whole-class feedback on their decoding skills, earlier the students proceed to play the side by side activeness. For some EPI classic chunking aloud games, follow this link.
In the Fluency-training phase, tasks and games aimed at speeding up authentic production of the target sounds (eastward.thousand. "Chain reading", tongue twisters, etc.) are staged.
Likewise the activities typical of each phase I take just described, in EPI many other techniques and initiatives are carried out which cutting through the whole MARS EARS cycle, aimed at promoting alertness to sound, concrete awareness, disquisitional listening and other dimensions of sound-related metacognition.
As you lot can encounter, just like Grammar education, Phonics instruction is pervasive but not overly explicit in EPI; and, because the SSC focus stems opportunistically from the vocabulary and grammatical content of each unit of measurement, extensive recycling throughout the MARS EARS sequence is guaranteed.
#3. E.P.I. doesn't teach the meaning of unmarried words. The target construction are taught as unanalysed chunks.
This is another preposterous misrepresentation. Anyone vaguely familiar with judgement builders knows that every L2 word in the sentence architect is translated in the L1. In fact, in order to make sure that the L1-to-L2 meaning mapping is every bit unambiguous every bit possible, I encourage the use of literal translation. For instance: 'J'ai besoin d'argent' would be translated in a typical sentence architect equally 'I take need of coin' (instead of 'I need money') or 'J'ai onze ans' equally 'I have eleven years' (instead of 'I am eleven). Hence, from the get-go the students are fully aware of what each constituent of a target construction ways. This approach is taken in the bright EPI-based website www.sentencebuilders.com as evidenced by the example in Figure 17, below.
Furthermore, plenty of vocabulary building activities used in EPI in the Receptive and Productive stage elicit focus on single words. These include: (1) traditional vocabulary-building activities such every bit 'Gap-fill' tasks, 'Odd one out', 'Categories', 'Detect the near synonym', 'Match L1 and L2 equivalents' etc. as well as EPI classics such as (2) Sentence puzzles with L1 translation, 'Observe the L2 equivalent in the text' 'Gapped translation', 'Faulty translation', Tangled translation', Word-substitution, etc.
In EPI, the target vocabulary is selected based on three principles:
- Relevance to the students. Research shows unequivocably that when the target vocabulary is perceived by L2 learners every bit relevant, information technology is more likely to exist successfully acquired.
- High frequency. Vocabulary which is loftier frequent is more than likely to be useful, as the outset 2,000 most frequent words in a language requite access to at least 80 % of any generic L2 text.
- High surrender value. Vocabulary which is useful in the learning of other vocabulary or fifty-fifty grammar structures should be manifestly prioritised. For instance, 'aller' has high surrender value, as it is the necessary pre-requisite for the learning of the Firsthand future in French. Learning 'Mettre' paves the way for the learning of Promettre, Admettre, Sousmettre,etc. High-frequency vocabulary ofttimes has higher surrender value, and then if one applies criterion (ii), ane partially satisfies this benchmark too.
Conclusion
Many misconceptions are being circulated in UK MFL circles past entities and people who are either misinformed or have a vested involvement in portraying EPI every bit an anti-grammar and anti-phonics approach whereby language learners are fed unanalysed chunks of language whose meaning they learn 'holistically', without truly grasping the meaning of each individual lexical item they incorporate nor the underlying grammar that glues them together. Easy to understand why: grammer, vocabulary and phonics are considered these days by OFSTED equally the 'three pillars of progression', the central areas, that is, which school inspectors are going to investigate when they visit schools in gild to assess teaching and learning. Hence, the message is clear: y'all volition neglect OFSTED if y'all encompass EPI. This is, of form, not true: one can teach EPI and nonetheless show 'progression' in all the above areas.
In this mail, I have attempted to demonstrate that in EPI both grammer and phonics are practised extensively through a powerful synergy of implicit and explicit learning. All the greatest Practical Linguistics theorists and researchers would agree that this synergy is key to successful learning and that implicit (or procedural) knowledge is what education should business organisation itself by and large with. As Ellis and Shintani (2013) posit: " Instruction needs to exist predominantly directed at developing implicit noesis of the 2nd language while non neglecting explicit cognition".
As for the notion that EPI is near the teaching of unanalysed formulaic chunks of language, I promise I have shown that is non the case at all – although, of class, some chunks have the potential to stay unanalysed (e.k. 'Il y a' in French or 'Es gibt' in High german). The meaning of and usage of private words is modelled and practised in context at all times, true-blue to the notion (primal to EPI) that 'you lot will know a word by the visitor information technology keeps' (Firth, 1957).
In fact, ane advantage that EPI has over approaches like the one championed by NCELP, is that, non merely the target vocabulary, merely also the target phonics and grammar are selected equally tools which enable the learner to fulfill a communicative purpose and are seamlessly and organically integrated in the linguistic and even cultural fabric of each unit of work, which allows for abundant meaningful recycling. Take the NCELP approach instead: each lesson consists of two completely disjointed sections, 1 which deals with explicit phonics teaching following the PPP sequence and ane which deals with grammar and vocabulary. In other words, phonics instruction occurs in isolation, as a self-continuing episode. Difficult to run across the logic of such an arroyo. In improver, the words are non selected based on a unifying theme, only pretty randomly. Moreover, the linguistic content has been selected by the NCELP curriculum designers top-downwardly and without any apparent guiding principle – apart from high frequency for the target lexical items. The result is a random and decontextualised list of phonics, words and grammar rules for the students to regurgitate. Add to this the fact that the guiding principle for vocabulary selection – loftier frequency – flouts the earth-shaking 'relevance-to-the-learner principle in that the corpora used for the selection of the target lexical items include mainly texts intended for adults – not adolescents (due east.g. European Commission or Parliament documents and newspapers).
In the side by side postal service I will concern myself with the residue of the misrepresentations on that list.
If yous want to know more about my arroyo, do get hold of my books, co-authored with Steve Smith: "Breaking the sound barrier: teaching learners how to listen" and "Memory: what every language teacher should know".
Source: https://gianfrancoconti.com/
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