What is a method?

Students work on all four skills from the beginning. Just as oral communication is seen to take place through negotiation between speaker and listener, so too is meaning thought to be derived from the written word through an interaction between the reader and the writer.

• Students work on all four skills from the beginning. Just as oral communication is seen to take place through negotiation between speaker and listener, so too is meaning thought to be derived from the written word through an interaction between the reader and the writer.

A teacher evaluates not only the students’ accuracy, but also their fluency.

• A teacher evaluates not only the students’ accuracy, but also their fluency.
• A teacher can informally evaluate his students’ performance in his role as an adviser or co-communicator.
• Errors of form are tolerated during fluency-based activities and are seen as a natural outcome of the development of communication skills.

Ball up several blank pieces of paper and throw them around the room. Each time a “snowball” lands on a desk, the recipient must write three takeaways from today’s (or yesterday’s) class, taking care not to duplicate other ideas already on this paper, and then throw it onward. After nine ideas are on each page, pause for students to debrief the pages in groups.

• Ball up several blank pieces of paper and throw them around the room. Each time a “snowball” lands on a desk, the recipient must write three takeaways from today’s (or yesterday’s) class, taking care not to duplicate other ideas already on this paper, and then throw it onward. After nine ideas are on each page, pause for students to debrief the pages in groups.