The program was based on the
principle that ‘less is more’ (ibid.:
189), and that effective writing
instruction involves simply:
Motivating students to want to
practise and improve
Giving students control of
decisions about their work
Limiting teaching to what students
need or want to learn.
Teaching ‘at the point of need’ is,
of course, a principle that
underpins the whole language
learning movement, including
‘reading recovery’ programs.
Courtney Cazden (1992: 129), for
example, writes about
‘recognizing the need for
temporary instructional detours in
which the child’s attention is called
to particular cues available in
speech or print’ (emphasis
added). It would also seem
analogous to the reactive focus on
form promoted by proponents of
task-based learning, described by
some researchers as ‘leading
from behind’ (e.g. Samuda 2001),
whereby the teacher intervenes to
scaffold the learners’ immediate
communicative needs. As Long
and Norris (2009: 137) write:
Advantages of focus on form
include the fact that attention to
linguistic code features occurs just
when their meaning and function
are most likely to be evident to the
learners concerned, at a moment
when they have a perceived need
for the new item, when they are
attending, as a result, and when
they are psycholinguistically ready
(to begin) to learn the items.
‘Point of need’ teaching also
shares characteristics of what are
known as ‘just in time’ (JIT)
interventions, as when the user of
unfamiliar computer software
refers to a Help menu or seeks
online support. Thus, in noting
how video games embed sound
pedagogical principles, James
Paul Gee (2007: 142) identifies
what he calls the Explicit
Information On-Demand and Justin-Time Principle, which goes:
‘The learner is given explicit
information both on demand and
just in time, when the learner
needs it or just at the point where
the information can best be
understood and used in practice.’
This is a principle both of good
video games and of good
teaching. Gee makes the point
that ‘Learners cannot do much
with lots of overt information that a
teacher has explicitly told them
outside the context of immersion
in actual practice. At the same
time, learners cannot learn
without some overt information;
they cannot discover everything
for themselves’ (ibid.: 120).
Gee gives the example of good classroom science instruction, where ‘An instructor does not lecture for an
extended period and then tell the learners to go off and apply what they have learned in a group science activity …
Rather, as group members are discovering things through their own activity, the good science instructor comes up,
assesses the progress they are making and the fruitfulness of the paths down which they are proceeding in their
enquiry, and then gives overt information that is, at that point, usable’ (ibid. 120).
How does this principle apply to grammar teaching, as in the hypothetical case we started with? I.e.
Teacher 2: ‘Tell me something I don’t know, and I’ll help you to say it better.’
In teaching one-to-one, it is relatively straight-forward and easy to manage. The learner performs a task (perhaps
something they will need to do in their work), and the teacher provides corrective feedback, either during or
immediately afterwards. The corrective feedback may be overt (‘You said X, but you should have said Y’) or covert,
in the form of a recast: Student says ‘He go to work by bus’. Teacher says, ‘Ah, he goes to work by bus’. The
feedback may involve explanation (‘We use –s on third person simple present verbs’), or it may not. And the lesson
sequence may require the student to repeat the task, incorporating the corrections. But with a single student, none
of these procedures is necessarily very difficult to engineer.
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