Bilash’s Success-based Language Instruction Model (B-SLIM)
Dr. Olenka Bilash (Olenka.Bilash@ualberta.ca)
We talk so much about self directed learning and have structured policies and proposed practices around the assumption that all learners are equally self-directed. BUT, practitioners know that not all learners are equally self-directed. In fact, teachers also know from experience that some learners need to be taught to be self-directed. By being based on success, B-SLIM incorporates enough scaffolding (structure and support) at each phase for learners who are less self sufficient to succeed while simultaneously providing opportunities and direction for the more self-directed student to push forward. For example, while a less self-directed student might need to follow a template several times before really ‘getting’ the structure of a form such as a brief event review (in order to be able to create one on his/her own as an OUTPUT assignment), a more self-directed learner may only need to hear or see the model once and be able to replicate and creatively alter it!
Theoretical Underpinnings
1. Cognitive Science (Piaget, Vygotsky, Gagne) (We organize knowledge of different types into schema through mental processes. As learners who are active participants we require scaffolded instructional material that utilizes demonstrations, illustrative examples and corrective feedback to maximize memory retention.)
2. Constructivism (Bruner) (We construct our own understanding of the world by generating our own rules and mental models to make sense of our experiences.)
2. Developmentalism (Ryle, Schwitzgebel) (We learn concepts and dispositions in a gradual way frequently passing through periods of being "in between" genuine understanding and failure to understand.)
Goals
1. to develop self directed learners
2. to ensure that every learner succeeds at each phase of the learning process by maximizing exposure to concepts through all learning styles/intelligences and encouraging intellectual/thinking growth in systematically developed steps
3. to help students develop all aspects of language by applying research findings from all areas of second language learning and acquisition (language awareness, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, situations- fluency-accuracy, culture and Culture, learning strategies, listening comprehension, speaking, writing, reading, forms, skills, content, motivation-attitude)
4. to ensure that learners can transfer what they have learned to new contexts
5. to learn language and to learn through language
6. to identify success in learning in concrete terms
Components/Phases
B-SLIM reflects how to think about sequencing and pacing activities for all students. In this day of heterogeneous multi-level classes teachers must oversee the learning of students with varying abilities, interests and learning styles during the same class time period. B-SLIM helps the teacher to plan, organize and implement activities for each learner. See Figure 1. B-SLIM has 5 parts:
Planning and Preparation
Comprehensible Input
Intake – “Getting it”
“Using it”
Output
Assessment
Evaluation
Because assessment occurs throughout the model the teacher is easily able to recognize where a student is ‘at’ – what the student has learned and what the next step(s) should be. For example, if the student is referring to class notes, blackboard or other mounted visual clues or a dictionary then the student is clearly still at the ‘getting it’ stage. Only when content is remembered can it be used in the ‘using it’ phase. Key points about each phase follow.
The "Three Ps" approach to Language Teaching is the most common modern methodology employed by professional schools around the world. It is a strong feature of the renowned CELTA certification and other TEFL qualifications offered especially in the United Kingdom.
While this approach is generally geared toward adult learners, most of the principles involved are also essential to lessons for children (click on the "Young Learners" link above for more information). It is very important to understand what "Presentation", "Practice" and "Production" really are, and how they work in combination to create effective communicative language learning.
Presentation is the beginning or introduction to learning language, and Production is the culmination of the learning process, where a learner has become a "user" of the language as opposed to a "student" of the language. Practice is the process that facilitates progress from the initial stage through to the final one.
To explain the process in brief, the beginning of a lesson involves the introduction of the new language in a conceptual way in combination with some kind of real (or at least "realistic feeling") situation. When this is understood, the students are provided with a linguistic "model" to apply to the concept they have recognized. With this "model" in mind, the students practice the new language by means of various "controlled" activities. After sufficient practice, the students move into some kind of "productive" activity, where a situation calls for the language to be used naturally without correction or control.
In general, for communicative language learning to be most effective, the three stages need to occur and they must flow easily from one stage to the next.
PRESENTATION
This is the first (and perhaps most crucial) stage to the language learning process, as it usually has a profound influence on the stages that follow and governs whether those stages are effective or not.
Presentation involves the building of a situation requiring natural and logical use of the new language. When the "situation" is recognized and understood by the students, they will then start instinctively building a conceptual understanding of the meaning behind the new language, and why it will be
relevant and useful to them. When the situation surrounding the the new language and the conceptual meaning of it has been achieved, the new language should be introduced by means of a linguistic "model". It is this model that the students will go on to practice and hopefully achieve naturally without help during a productive activity.
For obvious reasons, it is naturally easier to "present" new language to ESL students (who are learning English as a Second Language in an English speaking environment) than it is to EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students, who hear little or no English outside of the classroom. EFL teachers in particular need to work hard to build "realistic" feeling situations requiring the new language. If the "situation" appears totally unreal or even farcical to the students, so too will the language they are learning.
An important aspect of introducing the situation requiring and concept underlying new language is to build them up using whatever English the students have already learned or have some access to. At lower levels, pictures and body language are typical ways of presenting new language. As students progress, dialogues and text can also be used.
There are a variety of ways in which new language items may be presented but most Presentations should have at least some of the following features: meaningful, memorable and realistic examples; logical connection; context; clear models; sufficient meaningful repetition; "staging" and "fixing"; briefness and recycling.
PRACTICE
The Practice stage is the best known to teachers irrespective of their training or teaching objectives. However, it is a stage that is often "over-done" or used ineffectively, either because Presentation was poor (or lacking altogether) or it is not seen and used as a natural step toward Production. It is the important middle stage to communicative language teaching, but exactly that the "middle" stage.
It is important that practice activities are appropriate to the language being learned and the level and competence of the students. Essentially Practice is the testing procedure for accuracy, and the frequency procedure for familiarity with the language. It is also a remedial stage. A good way to summarize effective Practice is to see it as repetition leading to competence and accuracy in terms of
Phonology and Syntax.
Practice activities need to be clear and understandable - they should also be directed toward promoting a considerable degree of confidence in the students. In general, a carefully laid out practice activity that looks "attractive" to the eye will generate the students' motivation. They need to be challenged, but they should also feel that the activity is "within their reach".
Making a smooth transition from Presentation to Practice usually involves moving the students from the Individual Drill stage into Pair Work (chain pair-work, closed pair-work and open pair-work). Communicative practice then leads the way toward Production.
PRODUCTION
The Production Stage is the most important stage of communicative language teaching. Successful Production is a clear indication that the language learners have made the transition from "students" of the key language to "users" of the language.
Generally Production involves creating a situation requiring the language that was introduced in the Presentation Stage. That situation should result in the students "producing" more personalized language. Production is highly dependent on the Practice Stage, because if students do not have confidence in the language then they will naturally be hesitant to independently "use" it.
One of the most important things to remember is that Production activities should not "tell" students what to say. Whereas in Practice the students had most or all of the information required, during Production they don't have the information and must think. Ideally it is challenging in that it is representative of "real life" situations.
Creating and engaging in "Productive" classroom activities can require a certain level of cognitive ability. Production activities for Young Learners in particular need to be carefully thought out and prepared (click here for more information relevant to Production in Young Learners).
Some good examples of effective Production activities include situational role-plays, debates, discussions, problem-solving, narratives, descriptions, quizzes and games.
Content based instruction (CBI) is a teaching method that emphasizes learning about something rather than learning about language. Although CBI is not new, there has been an increased interest in it over the last ten years, particularly in the USA and Canada where it has proven very effective in ESL immersion programs. This interest has now spread to EFL classrooms around the world where teachers are discovering that their students like CBI and are excited to learn English this way.
What Types of Content Based Instruction Are There?
The Sheltered Model
Sheltered and adjunct CBI usually occurs at universities in English L1 contexts. The goal of teachers using sheltered and adjunct CBI is to enable their ESL students to study the same content material as regular English L1 students. Sheltered CBI is called "sheltered" because learners are given special assistance to help them understand regular classes. Two teachers can work together to give instruction in a specific subject. One of the teachers is a content specialist and the other an ESL specialist. They may teach the class together or the class time may be divided between the two of them. For example, the content specialist will give a short lecture and then the English teacher will check that the students have understood the important words by reviewing them later. This kind of team teaching requires teachers to work closely together to plan and evaluate classes. It has been used successfully at the bilingual University of Ottawa, where classes are taught in English and French, (Briton, 1989).
The Adjunct Model
Adjunct classes are usually taught by ESL teachers. The aim of these classes is to prepare students for "mainstream" classes where they will join English L1 learners. Adjunct classes may resemble EPA or ESP classes where emphasis is placed on acquiring specific target vocabulary; they may also feature study skills sessions to familiarize the students with listening, note taking and skimming and scanning texts. Some adjunct classes are taught during the summer months before regular college classes begin, while others run concurrently with regular lessons.
The Theme Based Model
Theme based CBI is usually found in EFL contexts. Theme based CBI can be taught by an EFL teacher or team taught with a content specialist. The teacher(s) can create a course of study designed to unlock and build on their own students' interests and the content can be chosen from an enormous number of diverse topics.
How Does Theme Based CBI Differ from Sheltered and Adjunct Models?
Theme based CBI is taught to students with TEFL scores usually in the range 350 to 500. These scores are lower than the TEFL 500 score which is often the minimum requirement for students who want to study at universities in English L1 contexts. Because of the lower proficiency level of these students, a standard "mainstream" course, such as "Introduction to Economics" will have to be redesigned if it is to be used in a theme based EFL class. For example, complicated concepts can be made easier to understand by using posters and charts, (Mercerize, 2000, p.108).
Syllabus Design for Theme Based CBI
Here is the syllabus for a theme based CBI psychology class that I team taught with a psychologist:
- Unit 1 Introduction to psychology
-Unit 2 Types of learning
-Unit 3 Advertising and psychological techniques
-Unit 4 Counseling
-Unit 5 Psychological illnesses
-Unit 6 Project work
Each unit took from two to three weeks to complete. The students had two classes per week and each class lasted for two and a half hours. The syllabus that we used is clearly different from a conventional Introduction to Psychology class. Our aim was to allow the students to explore various aspects of psychology rather than attempting to give them a thorough grounding in a subject which, we believed, would have been too difficult for them to understand at this stage. In fact one of the strengths of theme based CBI is its flexibility; teachers can create units with specific learner needs in mind. For example, Unit 3 began with some textbook readings followed by questions and written work. After this the students were given some advertisements to analyze and also brought in their own examples for use in group discussions. Finally, for a small group project, they designed their own advertisements and then presented their work to the other class members with a rationale for why they had chosen their product and who the target customers would be. Among the products they designed were a genetically engineered cake tree and a time vision camera.
Materials for Theme based CBI
There are textbooks that can be used for theme based CBI classes which usually contain a variety of readings followed by vocabulary and comprehension exercises. These can then be supplemented with additional information from the Internet, newspapers and other sources. However, another approach is to use specially constructed source books which contain collections of authentic materials or simplified versions. These can be about a particular theme such as drug use or care of the elderly, or about more general topics. It's possible to create some really interesting classroom materials as long as the need for comprehensibility is not forgotten.
Readability
The Flesch-Kincaid test is one method of measuring the readability of writing. Difficulty is assessed by analyzing sentence length and the number of syllables per word. Put simply, short sentences containing words with few syllables are considered to be the easiest to read. The Flesch-Kincaid test can also be used to assess the difficulty of texts for EFL students. For students with scores below TOEFL 500, Flesh - Cinched scores in the range 5.0- 8.0 are appropriate. (By way of comparison this paper has a Flesch-Kincaid rating of 11.1). However, far more detailed research needs to be done in the area of assessing student responses to the readability of adapted materials. For example, the Flesch-Kincaid test assumes that passive constructions are more difficult for students to understand than active ones; however my own preliminary investigations have shown that removing passive verbs and replacing them with active ones does not necessarily make the students feel that the text is any easier to read.
How Can Theme Based CBI Be Assessed?
A theme based CBI course should have both content and language goals.Student progress can then be assessed when classes are underway. Continuous assessment is effective. Daily quizzes can be used to check that content information is getting through to the students and that they are remembering important vocabulary. Longer tests may also be given at mid-term and at the end of the term.
Journals are also a useful diagnostic tool. Students can be given time at the end of each class to write a summary of the content of the lesson or to answer a specific question given by the teacher. Another useful exercise is to allow the students to write freely on any topic; teachers can then read their work and assess their progress indirectly.
Direct oral feedback during the classes can be useful as long as we are mindful of the proficiency level of the students; it's all too easy to forget how difficult it is to speak a foreign language in front of classmates.
Summary
CBI is an effective method of combining language and content learning. Theme based CBI works well in EFL contexts, and I believe its use will increase as teachers continue to design new syllabi in response to student needs and interests. As I said at the beginning, I believe that learner motivation increases when students are learning about something, rather than just studying language. Theme based CBI is particularly appealing in this respect because teachers can use almost any content materials that they feel their students will enjoy. What can be better than seeing our students create something and learn language at the same time?
