Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help your students become more confident and fluent speakers when talking about a chosen topic using the 4/3/2 technique.
What is the 4/3/2 technique?
Dr. Paul Nation makes the point that “At every level of language proficiency, learners should try to be fluent with what they already know.” Therefore, he created an activity that helps students focus on meaning, speed, and volume with a familiar text. This is an activity I use with students to help increase confidence and fluency, and also encourage solid reading comprehension when it’s paired with a text.
How does it work?
Step One: Students become ‘experts’ in a particular topic. This can mean they are about to talk about the subject of their project, or what book they are reading, or the main idea of a small article they read. A resource I recommend for this type of activity are magazines by Rubicon Publishing. They have sets in French and English with ‘Top 10 [blank]’: Top ten spies, top ten sports showdowns, top ten outrageous hoaxes, etc. I had access to class sets of 30, so the whole class would read on the same topic. I would assign 3 students to read each article together, then they would be the ‘experts’ in their entry and would find someone not in their group to talk to for the next steps.
Step Two: Student A pairs up with Student B and then talks about their topic for four minutes. Student B cannot interrupt, even to ask questions. Once the four minutes are up, Student B gets to speak for four minutes. This time, Student A patiently listens.
Step Three: Student A now pairs up with Student C and repeats the process. However, this time, they only speak for three minutes.
Step Four: Student A is now with Student D but speaking for two minutes.
There are some great videos to watch to learn more. Paul Nation delivered a presentation on developing fluency in reading and includes an explanation of his 4/3/2 method. There’s also this video by IELTS Master that explains the activity directly to students.
Image soure: https://soundpracticelanguagelearning.com/2020/04/11/whatisoralfluency/
Why does this work?
There are three reasons why this exercise is more valuable than a turn-and-talk and not a waste of 9 minutes:
Different audience: the student doesn’t feel the pressure to add new information, because the topic is new to the listener each time.
Repetition: each time the student repeats their talk they become more confident and have less difficulty in accessing the vocabulary needed
Time reduction: as the student becomes more fluent in their speech, they need less time. As the time reduces at the same rate, they don’t have any pressure to fill the rest of the time with new information.
A study of ten randomly selected ELL participants in Algeria found that “repeating the same talk three times yields positive effects on enhancing’ fluency maximizing students’ speaking speed, accuracy, and conciseness as well as reducing their hesitation and unwillingness” .
How can I change it up?
For lower-level students Christopher Redmond uses the same principles to improve the yes/no game. For higher-level students Olya Sergeeva adds mind-mapping with related English-language expressions. It can also be used to help students practice for presenting their Genius Hour projects or any other non-scripted presentations.
Have you ever done this activity with your students? It was new to me as a French teacher, but seems to be pretty popular with ELL teachers. Feel free to share in the comments!