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Silent Way and Getting low Intermediate Students to speak

[ HLT wishes to thank Tesol France for permission to republish this report
on a workshop give by Roslyn Young, Besancon , France.]

In this workshop “Getting Low Intermediate Students to Speak” Roslyn Young shared with the participants an experience she enjoyed with adult learners, retired  people with little English - they had only had  between 50  and 100 hours prior to this course. Even though she did not rely on concepts to describe her experience, she obliquely considered the role of teachers and the nature of their input and addressed basic issues faced by teachers on a day-to-day basis in the classroom.

How can teachers act as classroom resources without taking centre stage?  Which tools can they use to become guides-by-the-side, facilitators who actually rely on their students’ resources for learning to occur?
 Let’s find out why the Silent Way approach speaks volumes for Roslyn’s positive experience  with her students who felt that at the end of the course they could now
speak the language (English).  What are her ways of doing, or of being, which empower the learner to the extent that he/she feels at ease and confident using the language?

First of all, the amount of time you spend preparing lessons is no guarantee of success in the classroom (and, may I add, let’s not feel guilty about it!).  Instead of carefully selecting a topic to talk about, she lets her students talk about themselves, hence their daily lives/routines  provide the raw material  for discussion.  Roslyn often stated in her workshop that her students are responsible for the content while she is responsible for the quality.    In fact, I have found out that her students are responsible for almost everything!  Roslyn only makes sure that interaction and understanding occur amongst students - “Does everyone understand what Jean-Pierre  is trying to say?”  If not, what impairs understanding is remedied through collective effort and the use of specific tools such as colour-coded charts and a pointer, together with fingers.

With regard to pronunciation Roslyn never models.  Her students have to work out the pronunciation of unknown, unfamiliar lexical/grammatical units from phonemes materialized  on the colour-coded chart, sometimes previously encountered with other words.  There are twelve original Silent Way word charts (alongside a conversational vocabulary chart and a colour rectangle chart.  An average of thirty hours is usually spent on the first three charts.   I would advise you get familiar with them beforehand to be immediately able to point to the sound that needs to be worked on.

Another appropriate comment made by Roslyn for English pronunciation - she does not refer to syllables in a word but to is beats and frequently asks “how many beats?” and leaves the student confronted with options - “which stress are you most happy with?” - The group works together on pronunciation till it comes relatively smoothly.

She applies the same techniques to grammar.  Besides the charts, she often uses her fingers to repair grammatical mistakes - matching one item to one finger she signals where the mistake is by moving the relevant finger.  I have tried it since her workshop without much success because I have not been quick and nimble enough for on-line feedback.  I should  keep trying as there are enormous advantages to be gained from the Silent Way approach as a whole.

The fact that students have to work on mistakes in a collective manner creates the conditions for genuine group dynamics/interaction - mistakes become opportunities to develop language skills and compel students to reflect on what they are saying.  In this manner they develop a feel for the language they use and become good at guessing what needs to be said.  Within students subsequently emerges a feeling of being empowered.  As they work things out for themselves and are very rarely confronted with the native speaker’s model or so called “perfect model”, students feel neither threatened nor challenged beyond their abilities in learning and speaking the language.

As for writing, Roslyn encourages her students to write letters to her.  She does not correct  but answers their letters. In doing so, she rewrites/reformulates parts of them where students encounter difficulty in expressing themselves. They are usually good  at noticing the gaps between what they initially produced and the teacher’s way of saying it.  Why is that?  First they are personally involved in the text and the exchange becomes the more meaningful as the concern for language performance is superseded by something personal and friendly in the exchange.  She usually limits herself to a page so that feedback remains within reasonable time constraints.

All in all,  this was a workshop where Roslyn genuinely allowed other teachers to sample her experience in the classroom and where she presented ways of teaching through which students not only memorise and learn a second language but also process it and start making their own.