Structured Output: A Focus on Form in Language Production (Chapter 8) Jennifer Robison

1. Structured Output:A Focus on Form in Language Production(Chapter 8)Jennifer Robison

2. Why Output? • Input is necessary but not sufficient • Processes involved in production: access, monitoring, production strategies • Access: the ability to express a particular meaning via a particular form or structure • Does not follow automatically from acquisition into a developing system • Linked to fluency and accuracy

3. Why Output? • Access comes not only from input, but also from opportunities to create output • Focus on output should involve learners producing language that communicates something (is meaningful) to someone

4. Pause to consider… • What factors influence the ability to access? • Strength of binding • Phonological (sound) shape? • Relationship to other forms and structures? • Number of functions attached to one form or number of forms attached to one function

5. Practice Makes Perfect?Traditional approaches Drills – purpose: good habits mechanical meaningful communicative • SLA Reasearch – bypasses deeper levels of processing • Learners concentrate on the form, abandon meaning

6. Structured Output: Form with meaning

7. Structured Output: Form with Meaning Two major characteristics: Involve exchange of unknown information Require learners to access a particular form or structure to express meaning

8. Guidelines for Developing Structured Output • Present one thing at a time • Keep meaning in focus • Move from sentence to connected discourse • Use both written and oral output • Others must respond to the content of the output • The learner must have some knowledge of the form or structure

9. Evaluating Form-focused Activities

10. What are you doing this weekend? • Make a list of three things you are going to do or places you are going this weekend. • In groups of three, ask each other: “What are you going to do this weekend?” • Write at least 3 sentences that summarize what the members of your group are going to do this weekend. For example: Javier is going to play basketball. Veronica and Malik are going to a movie. We’re all going to study.

11. Nobody’s coming! You and your friend are giving a party, and you invited lots of people, but nobody can come. You talked to Marta, Travis, and Marie. Your friend asks why each person can’t come: Why can’t Marta come? Tell her why no one is coming. Make sentences like: Marta can’t come because she has to work. Marta work Travis write a paper Marie clean the bathroom

12. Did you go to the store? Brainstorm with the class 4 stores/places to go in your community and three things one does at each place. Have a student make a chart on the board. For example:

14. Students form pairs. Give each student a card with the name of one of the places written on it. Tell students that their job is to figure out where their classmate went last night. They take turns asking each other one question: “Did you buy stamps?,” Did you see a movie?”, etc. The first pair to write down each student’s name and where they went runs to the front of the class to ring the bell!

15. Safe Driving • Write down 5 things you should or shouldn’t do to be a safe driver. For example: • You should fasten your seat belt. • You shouldn’t put on makeup in the car. • Compare your list to your partner’s. Do you agree or disagree? Choose the three most important ones. Why are they the most important? • Share your answers with the class. As a class choose three to put on a poster about safe driving.

16. A few more questions… • How do we ensure that the learner has “some knowledge of the form or structure?” • How do structured input and structured output occur at the same time? Why do both? • What’s the difference between information based communicative tasks and structured output?