Clarifying new language:

Guided Discovery
Read this statement by a student and reflect on whether you think the below text
reflects a common sensation among learners of other languages?

“My teacher is really dynamic and she likes to show visuals to clarify the target
language, using pictures and short anecdotes.
The problem is that the other students are faster than me and they usually
answer quicker than I do. So I rarely have time enough to think about what we
are learning. Therefore I often have difficulties understanding the grammar
clarification stages.”

Those of you who have taught before would probably agree that it is common to
have a couple of students who feel like this when we clarify new language. So the
situational method of clarifying new language, which was clarified in our last
lesson, may not be ideal for this type of students.
But there are various other good reasons for why we should opt for a more
student centred and reflective way of clarifying new language, which we will
look at in at the end of this text.

So one way of clarifying that respects the students´ pace is through guided
discovery, I will try to define this in a sentence:
“We show students an example /examples of correct English. Thereafter we ask
them questions in writing about the language exposed, which should lead them
to a better understanding of the language shown. “
That of course is a bit simplistic so let´s look at an example in a rough lesson plan
form.

Guided discover/Clarifying language from a text.

Lesson aim: By the end of the lesson students will be better able to use present
perfect simple and the present perfect continuous to talk about whether jobs or
tasks are completed in the context of work.

Bjarne Vonsild
 So let us now have a look at the lesson:

Stage:
Lead-in (e.g. Ss discuss questions relating to the theme of the lesson)
Aim:
To generate interest in the theme/context of target language
Procedure:
Students discuss things they are working on this week, and which of their tasks
are, or are not completed.

Stage:
Pre-teach vocabulary (if necessary).
Aim:
To enable Ss to do skills task set.
Procedure: Elicit, concept check, drill and board new vocabulary that might
block general comprehension of the text students are going to read.

Stage:
Gist task
Aim:
To orientate Ss to the overall meaning of the text.
Procedure:
Students read (or listen to) the dialogue below to decide who the people in the
dialogue are and where they are:

a) Hi Rupert, have you finished you lesson plan yet?

b) No, but I have made a really nice warmer. (1)
a) Are you having difficulties with it.
b) Well, a little. I have been working on it for 3 hours so far. (2)
a) I see. Well I hope it turns out really nice.

Bjarne Vonsild
 Stage:
Language Clarification.
Aim:
To clarify the meaning, form and pronunciation of target language.
Procedure:
Students answer the questions below. First they do so individually and then the
teacher can pair them up to answer the following questions about the underlined
parts of the conversation. The teacher will call the two underlined sentences;
sentence (1) and (2).

Aim:
Focus on meaning:
Procedure:
In which sentence (1) or (2) ;
are we focusing on the activity?
are we focusing on the result?
is the action finished?
is the action possibly unfinished?

While students answer these questions the teacher monitors to help/prompt

along students who have difficulties and steer those who are confused on the
right path.

Aim:
Focus on meaning and pronunciation.
Procedure:
In class feedback the teacher will concept check and drill selectively, based on
the difficulties the teacher had expected and the difficulties spotted while
monitoring. As this grammar is related to time the teacher could also use a time
line to visually show how the actions in the text relate to time.

Aim:
Focus on form.
Procedure:
The teacher then highlights the form of the target language on the board for
students to copy, remembering to involve students when creating the board
record.

Bjarne Vonsild
So what happened here?
In a nutshell the teacher did the following:

• After the diagnostic warmer the teacher set the context by having students read
or listen for gist.
• Students would read the text for a 2nd time to identify and answer written
questions about specific language items. This could be grammar, vocabulary or
functions. Students can do this individually and then in pairs while the teacher
monitors closely.
• The teacher would have students answer, and when eliciting feedback he or she
would concept check and drill selectively. By this I mean the teacher would have
both anticipated problems with the target language when planning and detected
other doubts when monitoring to decide what potential problems with meaning
and pronunciation might still persist.
• The teacher would re-elicit the target language to create a board record,
highlighting the same sentences, which had been lifted from the text.
• Students copy the board record.

The potential advantages of this method of clarification are:

• Clarifying through a reading text is advantageous when the form (the way it is
written) of the target language is very complex because the students see the
target language and they can analyse how it is written in their own time.
Examples of structures that have complex forms are “reported speech” and
“passive voice”.
• It is definitely preferable when you have to contrast grammatical structures.
Namely, if you need to contrast the present perfect and the present perfect
continuous, learners will need time to look at the language in context to work
out subtle differences in meaning.
• When clarifying idiomatic expressions, this is probably best done by having
students find them in a text where they are used in a clear context so that
students have time to spot them and deduce their meaning from context by, for
example matching them with brief definitions. So we can say that deducing
meaning of lexis from a text is also guided discovery.

Bjarne Vonsild