ENHANCING ADULT LEARNERS’ SPEAKING FLUENCY USING 4/3/2 TECHNIQUE

A FINAL PAPER

A Fullfilment Assignment of Foundations of English Language EducationSubmitted to : F.X. Mukarto, Ph.D.

By

Daniel Ari Widhiatama

Student Number: 11 6332 038

ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIESSANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY

YOGYAKARTA2011

ENHANCING ADULT LEARNERS’ SPEAKING FLUENCY USING

4/3/2 TECHNIQUE

Daniel Ari WidhiatamaEnglish Education Technology, English Language Studies

Sanata Dharma Universitydanielwidhiatama@yahoo.com

AbstractsFluency is one of important aspects in language use. It is related to the ability to control many language’s lexical and syntactical devices and being able to decide readily the language when it is appropriate and efficient to use them. Adult learners also need to master speaking fluency since nowadays it will be a part of the assessment in English language skill at any workplace and area. This paper discusses 4/3/2 technique as a teaching technique which is effective to improve adult learners’ speaking fluency by giving them a ‘push’ to enhance their skill.

I. Introduction

English is a global language, which means that it is used officially as a medium of communication in such domains as government, the law courts, the media, and educational system (Crystal, 2003). This situation demands people from any age to be able to speak using English appropriately if they want to compete with each others. It starts from the early age until adults. Adult language learners cannot escape from this situation since they have to struggle with their limitation, both physically and mentally, which is different from young learners.

This condition also demands educators, especially those who are responsible to teach English for adult learners, to find the best way to improve students’ English language skills. One of English language skills which is crucial and always be a challenge for teachers to develop is speaking skill. With a good speaking skill, adults will be able to transfer their idea. Adult learners should be able to not only have a good grammatical competence, but also well-developed speaking fluency. Al-Sibai (2004) says that we live at time where the ability to speak with L2 fluently has become a must, especially for those who want to advance in certain fields of human endeavor. This paper focuses on how to teach speaking to adult learners using 4/3/2 technique which is considered effective and applicable to improve adult English language learners speaking fluency.

II. Theoretical Discussion

In this theoretical discussion, the writer would like to elaborate the meaning of adult learners, speaking fluency and 4/3/2 technique.

II.1. Adult learners

II.1.2. Adult English Language Learners

It has been stated above that adults is also required to learn English so that they are able to compete with each others in this working world. According to Gerber and Reiff (1994), students who are over the age of 21 are included as adult learners and they tend to have a particular problem in learning language.

Therefore, this part mainly discusses the theory of adult learners. According to Lado (1961), adults and older people have the problem of transfer of the habits of the native language more severely than younger people. To be sure, the adult may be less motivated than the schoolboy (Cronbach, 1963). They, sometimes, do not want to experience something new which needs accuracy and concentration. Besides, Lado (1961) states that they have maximum difficulty in remembering the sounds, they finally learn to hear and to produce, and they have the same difficulty establishing the new sounds as habit of speech. Knowing this idea, it is significance to discover a technique which will help and facilitate adults to learn English especially for speaking skill. Lightbown (1999) supports this idea through his statement that there is a time in human development when the brain is predisposed for success in language learning. Developmental changes in the brain, it is argued, affect the nature of language acquisition.

Now, we will discuss further the characteristics of adult learners. Despite the fact that adults have a lot of limitations, they, actually, still have big motivation to learn. Motivation is one of the greatest influences of effective learning. Knowles (1977) describes that adults are motivated to learn because of a concern with upward occupational mobility, and a sense of personal achievement, satisfaction and self fulfillment. Based on Knowles’ Andragogy theory, adult learners have several characteristics which are defined as follows:

1. Need to know. Adults need to know why they learn something, how they learn it and what benefit they may achieve.

2. Self-Concept. Adults should be moved into self directed learner, they should be responsible on what they are doing and the direction it takes.

3. Role Experience. Adult experience and knowledge should be used in their new technique which is as a tool to succeed their new learning process

4. Readiness to learn. Adults seek out learning as a way to better real life task and problem.

5. Oriented to learning. Adults want their learning to have an immediate usefulness to them to be applied in their daily life.

6. Motivation to learn. Adults need more internal motivation which comes from their self-esteem, increased job satisfaction and quality of life.

It is also possible that they feel unconfident with who they are, since it has been a belief in the old stereotype that “old dog can’t play new trick” (Knowles,1977). That is teachers’ duty to always support them and provide the best circumstance to learn English. By knowing this character, then, teachers are able to adjust the teaching technique with their students so that learning goals can be achieved completely.

II. Speaking Fluency

II.1. Definition of SpeakingSpeaking is a productive skill which enables someone to produce words as a

means to communicate with others. Rivers (1986) argue that through his speech, a man is able to express his emotions, communicate his intentions, react to other persons situations, influences other human beings, and finally enable him to examine and rearrange impressions and associations so that he involves new relationship and purposes. In a certain form of communication, such as in presentation, telephone conversation, or even simple daily communication, people should think about the way they speak. Burns & Joyce (1997) defines a good speaker as someone who is able to anticipate and then produce the expected patterns of specific discourse situation. Besides, he also has to manage discrete elements such as turn –taking, rephrasing, providing feedback or redirecting. These all abilities should be accompanied with the ability to give a direct response with the right pattern, called fluency. Have they spoken fluent enough? And why is fluency important?II.1.2. Definition of fluency

When people hear the word fluency, most of them will mean it as the speed of speaking. Fillmore (1979) in Nation (1989) states that “fluency is the ability to fill tie with talk…a person who is fluent in this way does not have to stop many time to think of what to say next or how to phrase it”.

II.1.3. The Importance of Fluency in English Language Use In English language teaching, being able to speak grammatically correct is

not enough without any speaking fluency. It has been a problem for some people that they could not speak using English fluently. They always have pauses in most of words they spelled. Al-Sibai (2004) states that it is better to make a few mistakes along the way rather than to speak too slowly which may cause the speaker to be perceived as boring, tired, or less intelligent than he or she really is. Besides, fluency is an important characteristic of L2 speech, which is often be the object of evaluation in L2 skills (Derwing et al. (2004) in Al-Sabai (2004)). Let us see in some areas which fluency has been assessed in high stakes-tests that have tangible effects on university admissions, employment decisions, etc.

For adult learners, speaking fluency is one thing that they really want to achieve. Sometimes they have difficulties in finding the right diction or produce a certain phrase. It really burdens them and makes them unconfident because they feel

like they cannot make communication goes well. Hartman and Stork (1976) in Al-Sabai (2004) argues that “a person is said as a fluent speaker of a language when he can use its structure accurately whlist concentrating on content rather than form, using the units and patterns automatically at normal conversational speed when they are needed”. From the definitions above, Nation (1989) concludes that fluency can be measured by 1) the speed and flow of language production 2) the degree of control of language items, and 3) the way language and content interact. Nation, then, introduces a technique called 4/3/2 to enhance students’ mastery of fluency which can also be applied for adult learners to train learners concentrate on the content of their speech rather than its form.

II.2. 4/3/2 TechniqueThis technique is carried out by the following steps. Firstly, the students are

decided into some groups contains of three persons in each group. Secondly, the teacher will give them a topic; let us say ‘global warming’. Thirdly, each of them should think about some idea related to that topic. Thirdly, start talking. The first speaker will talk about that topic in 4 minutes. Fourthly, he should move to another group (and so do the other first speaker) and talk about the same topic in 3 minutes. It means that he will get some new listeners. Fifthly, he has to talk to the other group in 2 minutes still in the same topic.

II.2.1. Three Important Features in 4/3/2 TechniqueThis technique has three important features which is important to enhance

adult learners’ speaking fluency as suggested by Nation (2004). Those features are: 1) The speaker has different audiences each time she speaks, so her

concentration will be on communicating the message. Adult learners will not consider grammar much. Allwright (1979) in Nation (2004) also supports this idea by saying that activities with the message focus are all that are essential for all language learners.

2) The speaker repeats the same talk which means that she will develop confidence in her ability to deliver the talk and will have less difficulty in accessing the language she needs to deliver the talk. Repetition delivers opportunity to develop fluency.

3) The time available to deliver the talk is reduced each time the talk is given. It also means that as the speaker delivers her talk more fluently there is no need to think of new material to fill the available time. They are also intended to speak efficiently without using a lot of unimportant words.

With those three features, Nation believes that those will develop speaking fluency since the speaker will be ‘pushed’ with the existence of time limitation. This idea is supported by Swain (1985) in Nation (1989) who says that in order to achieve speaking fluency as what a native speaker has, a person should be “pushed” towards “the delivery of message which is not only conveyed, but also conveyed precisely and

appropriately” Swain also adds that this technique is parallel to Krashen’s theory about i+1 comprehensible input since it also ‘pushes’ the input. III. Discussion

In this stage, the writer would like to focus on some questions. The first one is how 4/3/2 technique can affect on adult learners’ fluency, grammar accuracy, and control of content. And how 4/3/2 technique can match with adult learners charactersIII.1.1 4/3/2 Technique Improves the Adult Learners’ Fluency, Grammar Accuracy and Control of Content

Some researches which are related to the development of learners’ speaking fluency has been conducted by several educators. The difference of this technique with the others is on the aspects which it develops, which contains fluency, grammar accuracy and control of content.

III.1.2 4/3/2 Technique Enhances Adult Learners’ Fluency

There are eight case studies which show that 4/3/2 technique has successfully enhanced adult learners’ fluency. The result from one case study shows there is an improvement of speaking rate the first delivery to the third chance. Speaker P spoke at a rate of 86 words per minute (wpm) in her first delivery, 100 wpm in the second delivery which is in 3 minutes, and 127 wpm in her third version which lasted 2 minutes.

Nation (1989) also mentions that this technique also decreased the number of hesitation from 1 percent to 67 percent which was analyzed from the first to the third version. The decrease can be analyzed from the number of false starts, hesitation items, such as er, um, ah. Besides, there was also a decrease in the repetition use of some words like then I, I said. Nation (1989) says that the result can be evidence that 4/3/2 technique affect on speaking fluency as measured by speed and occurrence of hesitation procedure.

III.1.3. 4/3/2 Technique Enhances Adult Learners’ Grammatical Accuracy

This technique requires learners to talk about the same topic with the same talk with different time allotment. Of course there will be repetition performed by the speakers from the first delivery to the last since the topic is the same and there should be no new information. Nation (1989) informs that from eight studies, four of them showed the reduction of errors in each delivery of each talk, three showed an increase and the other one showed no change. This affects on grammatical accuracy in two ways. First, Nation (1989) concludes that repetition improves students’ confidence while they are monitoring their own mistakes. That condition brings an overall decrease in errors. Second, Nation (1989) states that repetition may have a local effect, allowing monitoring of repeated items.

Here, Nation (1989) provides some examples how repetition occurred in a study. On the first delivery, speaker V made this error:

Reading outNext the doorGot down the benchIn the third delivery, the speaker corrected them:

Reading onNext to the doorGot off the bench

When repetition happened, the speaker would have a chance to correct his grammatically incorrect sentence.

However, there was also evidence in which speaker made mistakes in the first and it was not corrected in the third delivery. This type of error involved plural s, the past tense or third person s. The last on is when speaker had a correct grammatical sentence in the first deliver but not in the third delivery. Knowing this result, Nation (1989) suggests a conclusion that 4/3/2 technique provides some small improvement in certain aspects of grammatical accuracy during the activity. It only does not work for error involving inflections because the speaker repeated the same grammatical context.

III. 1.4. 4/3/2 Technique Enhances Adult Learners’ Control of Content Ability

When we are speaking, we often use some words or even phrases which tend to be unimportant to use. By giving limited time allotment in each talk delivery, the speaker are intended to transfer the message straightforwardly without using any unimportant details which will increase complexity instead and even ambiguity. Besides, simplifying the language is also meant to form more efficient talk (Nation, 1989). For example is when a student used this technique and he reduced as many as 144 unimportant words in her third delivery. He did so because the time limitation made him ‘pushed’ to transfer information briefly and effectively.

This result shows that 4/3/2 technique encourages learners to make fuller use of the complex rather than compound construction of English. However, an increase in complexity can also be considered as development of students’ interlanguage (Nation, 1989).

III.2.1 How Can 4/3/2 Technique Match and Significant for Adult Learners

This stage will discuss how 4/3/2 technique matches with adult learners’ characters and also provides the benefits that adults can get.

III.2.2 4/3/2 Technique Improves Adults’ Motivation to Speak Up

One character of adult learners is the lack of confidence when they are supposed to talk as said by Lado (1961). Through this technique, adults are motivated to produce sounds since they have to talk with different audiences. They are encouraged to speak more, moreover, when they only have limited time allotment. This technique also soon will erase a paradigm that “old dog can’t play new trick!”

III.2.3 Their Speaking Fluency Improvement of Using 4/3/2 Technique Will Be Useful for Their Life

As stated by Knowles (1977), adults always seek something which is applicable and useful for their daily life. This technique surely will challenge them. The instructors can provide some topics which stimulate their interest. The progress and fluency improvement they achieve after using this technique will be seen apparently and they can start applying it in their daily life. They will have sufficient speaking skill fluency as long as they keep practicing more with the right pattern.

III.2.4 4/3/2 Technique Enables Them to Make Use of Their Knowledge in Using English and Their Life Experience

Knowles (1977) said that adults’ experience should be engaged when a new learning is held. It is a quite sure thing that everybody has their own experience which is different from others and they consider them amazing. Using this technique, adults will have chance to recall again their knowledge in using English and also their life experience. It can be some language features such as vocabularies, grammatical competence and also their communicative competence which will help them in conveying a message. Besides, their life experience will be useful in this practice because they can talk about anything related to a certain topic supported with their life experience.

III.2.5 4/3/2 Technique Focuses on the Message Content, Not Language Forms

Many educators have realized that most of adult learners have a lack of grammatical competence as well as communicative competence simply because they have not learned about it for so long. This technique is not focus on the language forms (let us say grammar), but it is more on the content being delivered. Therefore, adults should not be afraid if their English language competence is not well-developed. They can concentrate on the content of message they share. They are also allowed to use the same talk to convey their message. It means that repetition will help them constructing their fluency. However, there will be feedback from the instructor towards the language they perform.

IV. Conclusion

Teaching speaking in English, especially for adult language learners, should be differentiated from teaching young learners. Adult learners have some unique characters which need to be treated carefully. Before teaching adult learners, teachers should consider the technique they are going to use and also reckon whether the technique is applicable and suitable with adults characters. Teachers also need t consider the benefits that adult learners may get so that the teaching and learning process will be useful. Guidance and motivation giving is important to succeed the learning process. 4/3/2 technique is effective to enhance adults speaking fluency because it is not only focus on the fluency but also grammatical accuracy and control content ability. The difference between this technique with the others is on the ‘push’ given on the activity and also repetition which will build their fluency.

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