Elements for successful language learning (esa)

Personalisation (where students use language they have studied to talk about themselves or to make their own original dialogues, often as the third or production phase of PPP) provides a bridge between the study and activate stages. But more genuinely activate exercises include role-plays (where students act out, as realistically as possible, an exchange between a travel agent and a client, for example), advertisement design, debates and discussions, Describe and draw (where one student tries to get another to draw a picture without that other student being able to see the original), story and poem writing, email exchanges, writing in groups, etc.
Activation is not just about producing language in speech and writing, however. When students read or listen for pleasure (or when they are listening or reading to understand the message rather than thinking about the form of the language they are seeing or hearing), they are involved in language activation. They are using all and any language at their disposal to comprehend the reading or listening text. But, of course, students may, once they have been through an activation stage, go back to what they have said or to the text they have read, and focus upon its construction. Activation can be a prelude to study, rather than necessarily the other way round. [3]
All three ESA elements need to be present in most lessons or teaching sequences. Whatever the main focus of the lesson (e.g. a grammar topic or a reading skills exercise), students always need to be engaged, if possible, so that they can get the maximum benefit from the learning experience. Most students will readily appreciate opportunities to activate their language knowledge, but for many of them the inclusion of study elements, however small or of short duration these are, will persuade them of the usefulness of the lesson. Some events, for example a debate or a role-play, a prolonged Internet-based search or a piece of extended writing take a lot of time and so, in one lesson, teachers may not want to interrupt the flow of activation with a study stage. But they may want to use the exercise as a basis for study (perhaps in a different lesson). The same might be true of an extended study period where chances for activation are few. But, in both these cases, the only limitation is time. The missing elements will appear at some other time. The majority of teaching and learning at lower levels is not made up of such long activities, however. Instead, it is far more likely that there will be more than one ESA sequence in a given lesson sequence or period.[4]
When we think of what to do in our lessons, we have to decide what it is we hope our students will achieve by the end of a lesson (or the end of a week or month, for example). We then try to plan how to get there. In this context, balancing up the three ESA elements reminds us of the need for student engagement; it prompts us to ensure that there are study events built into the plan; it ensures that in almost all lessons there are also opportunities for students to have a go at using the language they are learning (or learnt yesterday, last week or last month). When they try to use language (whether for interacting with other people’s texts and conversation or in order to produce language themselves) they get a chance for the kind of mental processing that makes all that learning and acquisition worthwhile. Many teachers have to plan around a course book which has been chosen for their classes. But even where lessons are based on coursebook pages, it is important to manipulate the activities in the book so that the three elements, engage, study and activate are evident in appropriate sequences.

REFERENCES

1. Harmer, J (2003) ‘Do your students notice anything?’ (Modern English Teacher 12/3).

2. Richards, J and Rodgers, T (2001) Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (2^nd rev. edition.) Cambridge University Press.
3. Palmer, H (1921) The Principles of Language Study, World Book Company.
4. Griffiths, G and Keohane, K (2000) Personalizing Language Learning, Cambridge University Press.