IN THE CLASSROOM
with one question, which includes a new
The miller’s tale
Jane Neill drives home the need to marry fluency and accuracy
to communicate well.
R
ecently, a group of us were making
analogies between teaching and
learning and various everyday
activities. We had run through baking and
sports and moved on to learning to drive.
Teaching students to manipulate the tense
system was happily equated with changing
gears, though someone also suggested
that gear-changing was analogous with
register: choosing the right gear for the
right speed. I particularly enjoyed the
comments made about an emergency
stop. If your language students have a
terrible time with a production activity,
slam on the brakes and return to
concept checking and analysis of form!
The conversation ended with this
question: Is learning to drive primarily
about accuracy or fluency? Most of my
friends decided strongly in favour of
accuracy, from the point of view of road
safety, but I’m not so sure that the lines of
demarcation are so clear. Isn’t changing
gear well an example of fluency rather
than accuracy? Admittedly, each separate
action must be executed in the right order
and correctly (accuracy), but the series
must be connected and performed at a
reasonable pace (fluency). Is it possible to
divide the two with such relentless finality?
Accuracy versus fluency
Many colleagues talk about the focus of
their lessons being either on accuracy or
on fluency. Newly-trained teachers will
probably look at their lesson plans,
decide what the students are practising
at each stage and label it either accuracy
or fluency.
But are we really so dogmatic? There
are many activities where the students are
practising both quite happily. Consider
the drilling of linking sounds. Is it simply
a focus on accuracy? Surely there is also
an element of fluency, as we are trying
to develop a native-speaker rhythm and
reasonable speaking speed.
Accuracy and fluency
A milling activity, which is often a
disguised drill – hence the term ‘mill drill’
– is a great way to encourage accuracy,
8 • Issue 93 July 2014 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • www.etprofessional.com •
1 I give each person in the class a card
whilst at the same time allowing space for
the students to be creative. The more
confident students will often give longer
answers to questions on cue cards and ask
secondary questions from the outset.
However, because of the repetitive nature
of the task, those students who are less
sure of themselves will gain in confidence
and you will find that they, too, will go
beyond what is on the card, spontaneously
using agreement expressions such as Me,
too and explaining their likes and dislikes
to each other. Not only is this providing
the students with the time and space to
become more confident and creative in
their use of language, but it is also giving
them opportunities for communication
which will build class cohesion.
We are all curious, and in order to
foster a good learning environment, our
students need to know something about
each other. A milling activity provides
some privacy for them to speak without
obvious teacher attention. Moreover, the
simple fact of just walking around
imbues the task with a sense of
informality, which in turn engenders
confidence and risk-taking. The better
we get to know each other, the more we
trust each other. The essential element
to any successful teaching and learning
exchange is that the students feel safe.
They need to trust you as the professional
and each other, so that they will not be
afraid to try out new language.
Another practical aspect of milling is
that it varies the pace of the lesson and,
when things are flagging, it is very often
a good idea to move people around.
It is, of course, a good idea to listen
in as unobtrusively as possible and to
collect examples for praise and
anonymous correction at the end. Don’t
forget to ask for feedback and a selection
of answers from different members of the
class. Everyone wants to feel that there is
a purpose for doing different tasks, and
feedback affords that sense of value.
Going through the mill
Here are a few ideas I have used for
setting up and performing a mill drill:
piece of vocabulary. In a recent lesson
on shopping they asked each other:
1 How often do you go to the
supermarket?
2 How many jeweller’s are in the town
centre?
3 What can you buy at the greengrocer’s?
2 In a lesson on adverbs of frequency, I
got the students to answer three questions
about their own habits and then to ask
everyone those questions, to see who
had the same routine. For example:
1 How often do you go to the gym?
2 How many times a year do you go to
the dentist?
3 How often do you eat in a restaurant?
3 After teaching the future perfect and
continuous, I gave each student a card
with one question and got them to ask
each other about ten years from the
present. For example:
1 Will you still be living in the same
place? Why / Why not?
2 Will you be using English in your work?
Why / Why not?
3 Will you have changed your hairstyle?
Why / Why not?
4 For a lesson reviewing advice
exponents, each student was given a card
describing a person or a group of people
and told to ask everyone in the room to
recommend a pet for the individual or
group on their card. For example:
1 A 25-year-old couple with a five-year-
old child living in a flat in Barcelona.
2 A retired couple about 65 years old
living in a house in a village in Britain.
3 A family with three children (5, 8 and
14) living on a housing estate in Britain.
I am quite sure that communication
activities cannot be rigidly consigned to
boxes in the accuracy/fluency debate.
Take the ‘kangaroo start’ that results from
a driver’s poor gear change: is it down to
a mistake in accuracy, or fluency? I
believe it is a little bit of both.
Jane Neill is a teacher,
teacher trainer and EAP
lecturer at the University
of Gloucestershire, UK.
She has been teaching
for 20 years, both in
Europe and the UK.
jneill@glos.ac.uk