Teach English in BaishA Zhen - Qingyuan Shi

As a follow-up to Unit 11, Unit 12 teaches productive skills, namely speaking and writing. The unit differentiates the objectives of the activities employed in teaching these skills, by those that focus on accuracy and those that focus on fluency. The activities that focus on fluency should concentrate on the flow of the language without hindering students? reproduction with excessive correction. Those activities that focus on accuracy will be the ones to actually check for students? understanding of the structures and will attempt to correct mistakes before being attempted in fluency activities. Because of their differing objectives, each type is performed in different phases of the process. Accuracy activities are associated with the study phase, while fluency activities are associated with the activate phase. The Unit argues that both skills are equally important. While I agree that both activities should be equally emphasized in the classroom, after all, students want to improve both fluency and accuracy, I believe that the emphasis in these objectives depend largely on the student. In teaching business students, I tend to start my classes by stressing the importance of fluency. These students are already using the language, sometimes on a daily basis, therefore it is important for them to be able to communicate as quickly and effectively as possible. While it is true that accuracy can make some language confusing, more often than not, using the incorrect structures do not prevent them from being understood. For this reason, I correct for accuracy but emphasize fluency in their interactions. On the other hand, I particularly enjoyed the small section on giving feedback. I look forward to reading more on this subject.