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Productive and Receptive Skills in the ESL Classroom - Accuracy vs. Fluency

 

Before we move on to the planning of a lesson for speaking skills, something that we need to look at first is the idea of the accuracy versus the fluency of speaking. Accuracy relates to the correct usage of grammar and vocabulary, whereas fluency relates to our ability to continue speaking without any interruption. Now, ultimately within a whole ESA lesson or within language learning itself fluency and accuracy are equally important. Within an ESA lesson, however, depending upon which stage we're at in that lesson, then we're either focusing on accuracy or we're focusing on fluency. Remember in the ESA lesson, in the study phase, this is where we're looking at the target language where we're doing our language learning, so it's very important in this stage that we focus on the accuracy of the language, whereas in the activate stage we're trying to get the students to use the language in the realistic way and what we want them to do there is to focus on fluency.


Below you can read feedback from an ITTT graduate regarding one section of their online TEFL certification course. Each of our online courses is broken down into concise units that focus on specific areas of English language teaching. This convenient, highly structured design means that you can quickly get to grips with each section before moving onto the next.

In this unit I have learnt about four aspects of the present tense, that is: present simple, present continuous, present perfect and present perfect continuous. This unit featured the following issues: the form and usages of each aspect of the present tense, common student errors and examples of activities that can help understand this subject.In this unit I have known about troubleshooting. I have known about common problem situations. I have known some recommendations for first lesson. I have known some recommended activities for first lesson. I have known some recommendations for large classes. I have known some recommendations about correct way of using student's native language.

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