Investigation A
Work with a colleague to analyse some of your bilingual Pasifika students’ language production, so that you get a picture of their relative strengths in accuracy, fluency, and complexity. If you have a bilingual colleague who can help, you may be able to get a picture of their relative strengths in accuracy, fluency, and complexity in two languages and compare these. You might ask, for example:
- Is the student who is fluent in English also fluent in Sāmoan?
- Does the student who uses complex language in Tongan also use complex language in English?
When you have collected your data, analyse the results and interpret them.
- Do these students have strengths and needs in different areas?
- Does your data suggest that you should target particular aspects for further development?
Improving learners’ fluency, accuracy, and complexity
Different input, conditions, and output requirements promote fluency, accuracy, or complexity in the language students produce as they carry out a language-learning task. If you want to help your students become more fluent in using the language they know, the task should:
- have contextual support, such as a diagram, picture, or table
- have limited input (only a few elements)
- be based on familiar topics and/or generate debate or conflict
- require only one thing to be done, rather than several
- have only one correct answer or correct solution
- require the use of a clear structure (for example, a list of items, steps in a process, or a table or simple diagram to be completed)
- allow for planning time.
The associated material Characteristics of language-learning tasks has a table which shows the characteristics that best promote accuracy or complexity.
