Making Input Comprehensible | Spoken - Speed & Clarity
[GRADING LANGUAGE I]
EAL learners are both learning English and learning through English
(Leung, et al., 2017)
EAL Bites | Speedy Tips are posts and videos about supporting EAL learners in your classrooms and around school. I’m hoping chunking them into small bites will make them easier to fit into your busy week. Topics are inspired by past and present observations and conversations with staff and students. Have a topic you’d like me to address? Please get in touch.
In this tip, I’m going to briefly start talking about Comprehensible Input and Grading your Language: what they mean, why they are important, and a couple of things to think about when you’re speaking to EAL learners.
SPEEDY TIPS| MAKING INPUT COMPREHENSIBLE | GRADING LANGUAGE SERIES
This series consists of the following posts (updated as posts are added):
Part 1 | Grading Language I | Spoken | Speed & Clarity
Part 2 | Grading Language II | Spoken | Clarity & Paralinguistic Features
TASK TO CONSIDER BEFORE WATCHING OR READING
Either:
Record audio of yourself giving your students instructions about a task or activity.
or:
Think about a recent or upcoming activity or task in one of your lessons.
Imagine you are in the lesson and record yourself giving students the instructions.
The article below expands upon the the video above, whilst also detailing links and references mentioned.
Schooling is a fundamentally linguistic process, with content teaching and classroom activities presented and assessed in English, both written and verbal (Leung, et al., 2017; Schleppegrell (2004). EAL learners have the dual challenge of simultaneously both learning English and learning (subject content) through English (Leung, et al., 2017). It is only once EAL students reach Band E (Fluent) on the Bell Foundation’s Proficiency Scales that they have an equivalent level of competence to non-EAL learners and unlikely to need support making language comprehensible. Until then, to assist students with developing academic language and being successful in these tasks, it is important to provide students with comprehensible input and to support them to produce comprehensible output. These can be oral (speaking or listening), written or visual.
EAL learners are both learning English and learning through English
(Leung, et al., 2017)
For those of you who know of Stephen Krashen’s principles of language acquisition, I’m not going to discuss those specifically here, but will simply reiterate the importance for EAL learners of teachers providing understandable messages in low-anxiety, safe contexts. That, and also include a link to an old video of him talking about Language Acquisition. He tries to teach German, initially by just speaking German, then demonstrates why adding context can help make the input meaningful. I do like the video, despite it’s age, and it even has a Star Trek cameo!
What is Grading my Language?
In order to make your language accessible to your EAL learners, it is important to think about grading your language so that it is clear and comprehensible. Essentially, it is adjusting or modifying one's language use to better suit the comprehension level, linguistic ability, or cultural background of the audience. This can involve simplifying vocabulary, sentence structure, grammatical structures, and overall communication style to make the information more accessible and comprehensible to the intended audience. With spoken language, it is also important to consider your delivery of the language.
How much you need to grade your language will depend upon your students’ Proficiency in English, as well as other factors …
How much you need to grade your language will depend upon your students’ Proficiency in English, as well as other factors, such as their educational or cultural backgrounds and the context in which you are communicating. My communication with the same student may vary tremendously between Tutor Time, an EAL lesson, a Physics lesson and the lunch queue in the dining room, for example.
Spoken Language - Speed and Clarity
I am going to start this collection about grading language with tips which are particular to spoken language. This first post will whizz through Speed and Clarity. Why have I decided to start here? This year, speed has often been mentioned to me as one of the reasons EAL learners struggle to follow some of their lessons, as well as sometimes not having enough time to think, translate and formulate responses before teachers move on or give answers.
… speed has often been mentioned to me as one of the reasons EAL learners struggle (in lessons) …
If you watched the video, the speed I was speaking at the beginning is probably about an average speed that is accessible for our EAL learners, who range from a Band B (Early Acquisition) to Band E (Fluent) on the Bell Foundation’s Proficiency Scales. That means some EAL students may actually need you to speak even slower!
Perhaps that should give us all pause for thought...?
Speaking of pause...
Use pauses, stress and intonation to provide natural breaks in speech and to emphasise key points. Combined with chunking, these make it easier for EAL learners to digest information in manageable quantities, giving students more opportunities for thinking time and helping to prevent information overload. It can also be useful to plan instructions for clarity in advance and try to avoid backtracking, which we explore further later in this “Making Input Comprehensible” series.
Whilst you’re thinking about all of those things, don’t forget to enunciate words clearly too!
Until next time …
That’s it for now, we will talk more about other ways of Grading Language, starting off with paralinguistic features of verbal communication, in a later post. I haven’t forgotten about your recordings, don’t lose them, we’ll reflect on them further down the road. Which reminds me, whilst you’re here, why not have a look at the first post in the other series I’m writing at the moment:
EAL Bites | Knowledge Bank | Time and Tenses Across Languages and Cultures
LINKS, FURTHER INFO & REFERENCES
Krashen, S. D. (1989). The input hypothesis: Issues and implications (1. publ., [impr.]). Longman.
Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Pergamon.
Leung, C., Monaghan, F., & Pieris, N. (2017). English as an Additional Language: A Guide | A NALDIC Video and Workbook. [Only Available to NALDIC members]
Schleppegrell, M. J. (2004). The Language of Schooling (0 ed.). Routledge.
Schleppegrell, M. J., Achugar, M., & Oteíza, T. (2004). The Grammar of History: Enhancing Content-Based Instruction through a Functional Focus on Language. TESOL Quarterly, 38(1), 67.
The Bell Foundation Assessment Framework
Stephen Krashen on Language Acquisition [YouTube]
In the 2nd EAL Bites | Speedy Tip of this series, I’m going to briefly talk about Making Input Comprehensible with Paralinguistic Features: what they are, whether they’re universal, and whether you should use them when you’re speaking to EAL learners.