Have you ever learned a new technique that sounds so simple that there's no way it could possibly work in your class? In my case this concept is Structured Input and let me tell you it has been a game changer as I teach grammar as a concept. I owe my gratitude to Greta Lungaard's MaFLA presentation Putting Grammar In Its Place and to the king himself Bill Van Patten in his book Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen. In this post I'll try to summarize what I've learned from these two experts and show a few examples of what I've done that has worked. What is Structured Input? If we think of how languages used to be taught, students were typically given some kind of input in the beginning stages, they then take the time to think about what they heard or read and soon after we ask them to begin producing that language they recently heard. The time that it takes to think about the input could take a mere second or could take years for it to become part of what's called the intake or what stays in a learner's working memory. Structured Input takes that same timeline of events but tries to target that development stage with specific activities. BVP calls it manipulating the input so that learners are paying attention to the meaning while processing the forms. This sounds fancy but essentially what this is saying is that Structured Input activities are activities that are designed to help kids process what they hear or read which in turn is helping them better process the meaning of different grammatical structures. What do you need to keep in mind when creating Structured Input Activities? BVP lists a few guiding principles that teachers should keep in mind when creating Structured Input activities.
So what does this look like? Check out this document where I take some examples of structured input that I've done in my classes or that I've made that follow BVP's guidelines. Each one has a description of what makes it work or what elements need to be changed. Are there any steps to creating a Structured Input activity? Here are my step by step guidelines to creating these activities: Step 1: Choose a grammar point that you want students to process •I have done well with present tense, past tense, difference between past tenses, subjunctive, adjective agreement (more to come) Step 2: Create a situation or scenario in which learners will need to process input Step 3: Write simple sentences using the grammar point that you want students to process •Remember to avoid time markers like yesterday or tomorrow •Remember to format them in a way so your subject pronouns aren't the first word they see Step 4: Create an input activity to manipulate the input students are receiving (ex: categorizing) Step 5: Create an extension activity that requires learners to refer to the input and do something with it •Add three more ideas to this list •Decide if you agree or disagree with these statements Once you get the hang of this, they become really easy to write and the kids get into a routine with them. Let me know if you have questions or what you think!
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