HỘI THẢO KHOA HỌC LẦN THỨ IX

Chuyên đề:

APPLYING 4/3/2 TECHNIQUE

TO HELP STUDENTS IN XYZ HIGH SCHOOL FOR
THE GIFTED TO IMPROVE THEIR ENGLISH
SPEAKING FLUENCY

APPLYING 4/3/2 TECHNIQUE

TO HELP STUDENTSIN XYZ HIGH SCHOOL FOR
THE GIFTED TO IMPROVE THEIR ENGLISH
SPEAKING FLUENCY

I. Background

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Being a teacher of English at Gifted High School for 16 years, I have had a lot of

opportunities to work with a lot of students from 15 to 18 years of age. In this

school, there are 24 classes with 35 students per class, they have to learn 12

subjects, among which English is one of the majors. In fact, students at high

school always face a great deal of pressure from administrators, community

members, and others to pass all the exams especially the national exams and

teachers are often under the same pressure of finishing the syllabus and their

students’ achievements. Therefore, students have to learn all the lessons in their

fixed textbooks in a limited time and teachers have to save time to do every single

activity on every single page of the textbook. Most of English teachers follow the

textbooks, so tasks are usually repeated and boring. Therefore, students feel it

complicated and impractical when working with textbooks.

II. Rationale and justification

In general, speaking is very fundamental to our communication, and we do

speaking much more than writing in our everyday life. Similarly, in terms of

language learning, speaking is a very important productive skill, and speaking

fluency with correct pronunciation, intonation, the ability to converse effectively

with others is regarded as the most important.

For over many years of teaching at my school, I have observed that my students can
not speak English well because they lack an amount of vocabulary as well as
grammatical rules, but sometimes teaching techniques are not appropriate . As a result,
whenever they have to speak, they get very confused and can’t say much. This is

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because of some reasons. Firstly, the teacher tends to focus on teaching use of
English, reading and writing much more than listening and speaking because of
the exam format i.e. listening and speaking are not included in the final exam
papers. Secondly, even when a speaking lesson has to be taught in some periods, it
is limited to the extent that students take turn to read some dialogues from the
textbooks. Therefore, they have few opportunities to speak English. The last
reason is that some of my students are often shy, many others are not used to
speaking English in front of lots of people.
4/3/2 Technique (Maurice,1983 & Nation,1989) involves all students in a class in
speaking activity, so that every student has real opportunities to speak English in
class positively and actively and improve their speaking fluency. To be more
specific, it is very useful for teaching speaking for a group of excellent students
who are prepared for the national exam.

III. Literature Review

This research proposal in its extent will mainly focus on the 4/3/2 Technique
(Maurice,1983 & Nation,1989), which emphasizes presenting the same talk over
and over again to different listeners. The first delivery takes the speaker four
minutes, the second three and the third two. Therefore, regular practice helps
leaners gain speaking fluency. The teacher needs to get students to repeat short
talks using the same language items. The ability to use language smoothly and
easily is a skill, and can develop only through practice (Schmidt, 1992;
Nation,1994 , 1995).
Circle of changing listeners
The first talk in 4 minutes.

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The second talk in 3 minutes. The speaker changes the partner clockwise.

The third talk in 2 minutes. The speaker changes the partner clockwise.

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Yet, it is argued that this technique leads learners to laying stress on speaking
fluency, so accuracy is not paid attention to. Actually, when learners get some
confidence from the first and second speaking, they will be aware of grammatical
accuracy. Nation (1989) showed that during the three deliveries the speaking
speed of learners increases as measured by the number of words per minute, the
hesitations they make during speaking also decrease as measured by hesitations
per 100 words, and there is a decrease of their grammatical errors in the repeated
parts of the talk. Therefore, 4/3/2 Technique aims at developing leaners’ fluency in
speaking and accuracy as well.
There should be some conditions if the teacher wants to use 4/3/2 Technique to
improve students’ speaking fluency (Nation,1989). First, the topic must be very
familiar to them in terms of content and language features. This is one of the
advantages of 4/3/2 Technique. When students are familiar with the topic , they
can deliver the talk faster, so the teacher has to assign or let students choose the
topics which they are interested in so that they can take part in the activity
actively, consciously and responsibly. Obviously, this technique shows to be the
right way in involving students individually in speaking what they like. It brings a
lot of fun, raises motivation especially brings students the idea that each of them

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can conduct a presentation, which brings them pleasure . Second, they have to
focus on receiving or conveying meaning, and should be pressed or encouraged to
perform the talk at a faster than usual speed because they are supposed to finish
the second and third deliveries in shorter amount of time. Although it is a little
stressful for students, it is a real challenge for them to try in their ability to deliver
the talk. And last, they have to practice regularly just because practice makes
perfect. At the end of the lesson students may get the feeling of joy, confidence
and success, so they will look forward to the next speaking lesson.
On the other hand, 4/3/2 Technique in itself has a few disadvantages. A classroom
which applies 4/3/2 Technique often gets noisy because as in my class there are
around 17 pairs speaking at the same time, which might cause disturbance to other
classes. Some students take advantage of this to talk or chat. They do not focus on
the lesson or the job they are required to do, and they may speak in their mother
tongue. In an attempt to minimizing negative backwash effect, in those situations,
I will manage and control the class so that the noise can be reduced to the lowest
possible level by conducting the activity in the classroom which is separated from
the others and is used for afternoon extra-curricular activities , by asking students
to speak just loud enough and especially by going around more frequently to
closely monitor students etc. As importantly, I will create a motivating speaking
environment in the classroom by arranging the classroom desks in different and
flexible ways, by decorating the walls with English posters. (Nunan,1991).
Another thing that I will care about is that 4/3/2 Technique is applied for all
English learners who learn English as the first, second or foreign language. Of
course, those who learn English as the first or second language have many
advantages over my students, who learn English as a foreign language, so the time
for the three talks in my class may be changed in two opposite ways. It may be
reduced to 3/2/1 when my students do not have much to talk or when they still feel
shy or confused, however it may go in a different way 5/4/3 when they need more
time to talk just because they have too many pauses, “hesitations” and “false

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starts” (Nation, 1989). Therefore, I hope 4/3/2 Technique will work well when I
make such dynamic preparations and efforts on the purpose of giving
encouragement to students to involve them all in the speaking activity.
As presented above in spite of some disadvantages, 4/3/2 Technique proves to be
effective in improving my students’ speaking fluency. With positive and
wholehearted help and encouragement from the teacher, I hope that the 4/3/2
Technique will be useful and applicable to my English classes after a semester,
and my students in spite of their different levels will achieve evident progress in
their speaking fluency through 4/3/2 Technique.

IV. Methodology
In 4/3/2 Technique, the teacher lets students prepare their talk on a given topic for
a few minutes. During this time, they just think of what they are going to talk
about and do not make notes. Then they will work in pairs. Student A talks on
that topic for four minutes while student B is listening. Student B does not
interrupt and does not ask questions, but listens carefully and gives positive and
encouraging non-verbal signals. After four minutes, student A changes the partner.
Student A now talks again on the same topic to a new listener, student C, but this
time he has only three minutes to do the same job. When the second time of
presenting finishes, student A changes the listening partner again, but this time he
has only two minutes to talk about the same talk. (Nation,1989).
At times, I may give them a little time to prepare what they are going to talk if it
necessary. Besides, I may give them some vocabulary input and activate their
background knowledge of the topic(s), and even let them discuss the topic(s) for a
while before presenting. The aim is to make sure that all students are well-
informed for their speaking . Moreover, my students are allowed to prepare the
topics as they are familiar with the topics and can present them confidently

Procedure

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The teacher chooses 3 pairs of students .
The teacher gives them the topic “High school is the best time in a person’s life.
Your opinion” , and for each pair he asks one student to speak and the other to
listen.
The teacher sets the time : 4 minutes for the first time, 3 for the second and 2 for
the third.
 The teacher observes and listens to the three pairs separately, and record their
voices.
 The teacher analyses and synthesizes the result by using a holistic marking
scheme, based on what he observes, and listens to the students’ voice from the
cassette recorder.

V. Conclusion
In conclusion, 4/3/2 Technique actively helps improve students’ speaking fluency.
They have a lot of opportunities to speak English and are exposed to maximum
possible amount of time in English speaking classroom environment. Therefore,

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students’ progress is the inevitable result of applying the technique. However, it
needs the teacher’s talent, flexibility, enthusiasm and especially the love for
teaching career & students. In this research proposal I cannot cover all the theories
which are related to the topic of the research proposal, and it might have certain
shortcomings. Consequently, further study on 4/3/2 Technique in improving
students’ speaking fluency from colleagues, language teachers is
needed ,especially when it is used to teach for a group of students who are
prepared for the national exams.

VI. References
David Nunan (1991). Language Teaching Methodology . A Textbook for Teachers.
Prentice Hall (New York)
Maurice, K. (1983). The fluency workshop. TESOL Newsletter, 17 (4), 29.
(Electronic resource : http://tereomaori.tki.org.nz/Teacher-tools/Te-Whakaipurangi-
Rauemi/Examples-of-second-language-learning-tasks/4-3-2-Maurice-1983)
Nation, I. S. P. (1989). Improving speaking fluency. System, 17 (3), 377–384.
(Electronic resource : http://www.melta.org.my/ET/1991/main1.html)
Nation, P. (1994). Teaching listening and speaking. Tokyo : Temple University
Japan.
Nation, P. (1995). Language teaching techniques. Tokyo : Temple University
Japan.
Schmidt, R(1992). Psychological mechanisms underlying second language
fluency. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 14(4) 357-385. (Electronic
resource : http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?
fromPage=online&aid=2685356)
Retrieved on 4 June, 2011 from
http://www.teachenglish.org.uk/think/article/teaching-speaking-skills-2-
overcoming-classroom-problems (submitted by TE Edition on 16 February, 2004-
13:00)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction

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II. Rationale and Justification

III. Literature Review

IV. Methodology

V. Conclusion

VI. References

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