Build student confidence with this simple output activity

Output (speaking and writing) is not the center of a comprehensible input class for a good reason; linguists who specialize in second language acquisition emphasize that language is acquired through a steady stream of listening and reading. Students do not learn to write by writing; they learn to write by reading.

We do not worry about the silent student in level one, as long as that student can demonstrate that she understands the messages received in class. When we ask kids to output before they are ready we risk invoking the monitor, that part of their brain that closely monitors output for correctness, choking their output and raising their affective filters.* The monitor is helpful eventually, but first we want the language to flow freely and unconsciously. In class I do not explicitly correct student output until my level 3 students start writing essays, and even then I am careful. Krashen states that explicit correction is only useful in specific situations: mostly during the editing process when the student has the time to reflect. Researcher John Truscott famously argued that not only does grammar correction not work, but it may even be harmful to students. During conversation learners consciously attend to meaning, not structure. They rely on their unconscious understanding of the language to structure the way the language is put together. That unconscious understanding is built through much listening and reading.

All of this is to caution the language teacher against using fluency writing as a tool to “teach writing”. Fluency writing is a technique that empowers learners by making them aware of the impact that all of the input has had. The texts produced by learners might also be used to lead teachers to reflect on the quality of input that they provide in class. However, a fluency write should never be graded for grammatical accuracy. That would be missing the point. I assign a fluency write about once every three weeks starting three weeks into the school year. If you and your students are organized enough to keep them, they provide a convincing document of progress that will make most students and parents proud. Routine fluency writing, when spaced out between several weeks so that improvement is perceptible, can lead students to reflect on their increased proficiency and thus develop intrinsic motivation to continue acquiring the language.

The process is simple: students write on a blank page as quickly as they can for between 5 to 10 minutes. Their goal is to write at least 100 words. The first time students are asked to write, many may only produce 30 words in 10 minutes because they are worried about grammatical accuracy. When the time is finished have students count the number of words on the page. I usually exclude proper nouns from the count. Then have students close their eyes and raise their hands to indicate how many they have written. Start low, asking students to raise their hands if they wrote 30 or less words, then 30-50 words, 50-70 words, 70-90 words, more than 90 words. Marvel at the high counts. Since it is the first time your students have done the activity, give them a 50 word bonus to add to their count so that the students who only wrote 30 are boosted up to 80. Have them write that final number on the top of their paper; that is their grade. Obviously many will have over 100 with the bonus… the highest grade I record in my grade book is 100.

This process leads students to write with fluency and, with more input, their accuracy improves. You might think that students would just write unintelligible lists or copy random words posted on word walls, but if they have been exposed to Write and Discuss every day you will find that it is a lot easier to write simple sentences than scan the room for words. I occasionally get a new student from a different school system who writes a verb conjugation chart on their first fluency write, but that quickly is replaced by simple sentences. It is wonderful to keep that first fluency write as a baseline to compare to future fluency writes.

As a new CI teacher, these texts might help the observant teacher reflect on the input that they are providing in class. For instance, I realized that I was not using the first and second forms of verbs enough in class conversations. I was constantly using the third-person “he/she” forms, but I need to also talk about myself and address a specific student as “you”, plus write those forms on the board so that students would get broader exposure to how the Spanish language is put together. As a result I started to consciously use myself as a parallel character whenever we discussed student lives. If a student revealed that they played the guitar every Sunday at church, I would comment that I play the harmonica in my bathroom and my cat screams when I do that. All lies, but just a way to get the first person yo form into the conversation. I would caution against looking too closely at these texts; some errors will not be corrected until students have received hundreds of hours of input. The research strongly suggests that the order of acquisition cannot be altered by focusing the input, so while you may use the verbs ser and estar in many comprehensible situations students will acquire them later in their journey. In fact, the intricacies of ser and estar are said to be among the latest language features fully acquired.

A few pieces of advice:

• You may be tempted to do a fluency write whenever your activity is losing steam… avoid this temptation! Look at the list of bailout moves and the list of extension activities instead. I schedule a fluency write once every three weeks, sometimes once a month, so that there is observable growth between each text.
  
  
• The first few times you might want to schedule the fluency write immediately after a long session of input. This will be easier for students because the language will still be sloshing through students short-term memory and many students will write a summary of what you just spoke about. This is great for their self-confidence, but eventually you will want to switch to schedule the fluency write on a Monday at the beginning of class. You want to see what is in their long-term memory! Try doing immediately after an input activity for the first several writes, and perhaps late October switch to Monday before any input.
  
  
• I have Craig Klein’s poster of characters posted on my wall and, of course, the Sweet 16 verbs. For students who are truly “stuck”, I tell them to copy one of the characters and then choose a verb to make a sentence. These are just visual cues to give students ideas. Most often a student will write two or three simple sentences and then create their own sentences… but they just need a sentence starter.
  
  
  
• At first I do not require that students write about a specific theme or prompt. “Write about anything, but keep writing. Your grade is based on number of words written. It is okay to repeat phrases, just keep writing”. Later, once everyone can easily write 100 words in 10 minutes, I may start giving specific prompts but only to serve as inspiration, never to require that they use specific vocabulary. In order to see what is truly acquired on an unconscious level we do not want them pausing and editing their writing; instead we want a ‘brain dump’ of text.
  
  
• Do not worry that in November there is a student writing 78 words and another writing 210 words. People naturally develop at different rates. As long as they are both putting an honest effort into the work, both deserve a decent grade.

Here are a few sample fluency writes that were completed mid-year:

*summarizing the ideas of linguist Stephen Krashen

---