Use Focal Skills

Hello and welcome to the Effortless English Podcast. Today's article is titled Intensive English with Focal Skills by Dr. Ashley Hastings of Shenandoah University.

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Okay. Here is the article. Research shows that students in Focal Skills programs learn English language faster than students in most other types of intensive English programs.

A number of studies have found that Focal Skills students gain about 35% more English ability in one semester than other intensive English students. We believe the focal skills advantage is due to a number of factors.

Most researchers agree that comprehensible input is necessary if students are to acquire language proficiency. Following the work of Dr. Stephen Krashen, focal skills regards comprehensible input as essential, super important.

Comprehensible input is the number one job for every focal skills teacher. We have developed a number of important techniques that allow us to provide large amounts of high-quality, comprehensible input to English students.

These include, number one, the focal skills movie technique. The Focal Scales movie technique uses authentic movies to bring an immense variety of meaning into the classroom.

By narrating and talking about and paraphrasing at the appropriate level, the teacher can create a large amount of comprehensible input that is directly connected to what the students are seeing and hearing.

This input is supported by the plot, the story, the appeal of the characters, and the emotional impact of the scenes. Every few minutes, the teacher stops the movie and talks about the action and dialogue using language at the appropriate level for the students.

The teacher then replays the scene again. Most movies can be covered in this way in about 10 hours of classroom work. Technique number two, the talk show.

In the talk show, two native speaker teachers talk and interact with the class while doing some project. This may involve storytelling, how-to classes, cultural lessons, interviews, etc.

Technique number three, interactive reading. Interactive reading is a group activity in which the class, guided by the teacher, explores an authentic text together.

The teacher reads the text out loud first. Students circle words they don't understand. The teacher then reviews the text a second time, allowing students to ask questions.

Finally, the text is read again by the teacher. Authentic texts are always used. These are real English texts. For example, children's books, newspapers, magazines, etc.

Technique number three, personal reading. Personal reading comes from Dr. Stephen Krashen's idea of free voluntary reading. The teacher serves as a guide and resource person.

Each student chooses a book from the library and reads freely on their own. Comic books, simple novels, teenager romance books, and the like are all excellent examples for intermediate level students.

Students read silently at their desk by themselves. The students can come to the teacher one at a time to ask questions or get help with something they are reading.

But mostly, they sit and they read a book alone by themselves, quietly, in the class. All right, finally, the next technique, the mini-course. The mini-course is a short how-to lesson

or advice course on any reasonable topic. These courses include workshops, readings, media materials, discussions, presentations, and other typical activities.

For example, students might take a class on American music history. And they would read articles about American music history, watch movies and TV shows about American music history, have discussions about American music history, etc.

This approach is excellent for high intermediate level students and advanced students. The focus of these classes is on the topic, not on the English language.

Okay, next part of the article. Since all classes in the Focal Skills environment are in English, the ability to understand spoken English is very important.

The student must be able to understand spoken English so they can later improve their reading, writing, and speaking. Likewise, reading ability is essential for the growth of writing.

Speaking skills are built gradually on the foundation of the other skills, especially listening. Students should have good listening comprehension before working on reading, writing, and academic skills.

Listening skills come first, then reading, then writing and speaking. Okay, that is the article by Dr. Hastings about focal skills. Now my commentary, my ideas. What do I think about this article?

Well, I like it. In fact, Dr. Hastings was my teacher. I got a master's degree in teaching English from Shenandoah University, and Dr. Hastings was a teacher there. He retired, actually, recently, but when I was in school, he was the head of the department.

He was the leader of the English teaching department. And I learned about the focal skills approach from him. It's an excellent approach. I use many of the techniques in my classes here in San Francisco, especially the movie technique.

In fact, recently, starting this month, I'm now using the movie technique with the Effortless English Club, my website, teaching site. I'm also using movies for that. I'm using the movie technique in my classes in San Francisco and now also on my website. It is a great technique.

It really is fantastic. The problem is... with listening to articles. It's good. Do it, please. Listen to articles. Listen to audio articles. But there's one problem.

That is written English. The person is reading an article, which means the style of the vocabulary, the phrases, even the pronunciation is different than normal, everyday speech.

Movies, especially romantic comedies, modern movies... They have a much more conversational style. The style of English is closer to normal spoken English. So I like using movies.

So for right now, we're learning Hitch, for example. The movie Hitch with Will Smith. We're doing that movie on my website. And the students are learning a lot of common language.

They're learning the conversational pronunciation, American pronunciation. It's great. The movie technique is fantastic. Students do learn faster. There's a lot of research.

Dr. Hastings has done research. Other professors have done research. And people in focal skills programs, they learn 35% more English than people in normal classes.

What does he mean by more? More. How do you measure more? Well, they, Dr. Hastings measured more, I believe, with a TOEFL test, a practice TOEFL test.

So the students in the focal skills classes, they improved 35% more than students in a normal English class. So that's pretty good. That's very good. When you see my website on my homepage, I have this claim that use effortless English.

You will improve 10, 20, maybe 40% more. Or 40% faster. And maybe you think, where does he get these numbers? What is he talking about? Is he just imagining this?

No, I'm not. I'm not just imagining this. I get these numbers from research. And this focal skills research is one of the places I get that number. 35% faster, 35% more English for students using these techniques.

That's pretty good. That's very good. That's in one semester. Imagine after two semesters, one year, two years. That's a lot more English if you use this approach.

So it's a very, very good approach. That's why I like the focal skills approach. So how can you do this yourself, right? You want to know, how can I do this myself?

Well, you can join my website, and I do it for you if you want something very convenient. Or you do it yourself at home. You get a movie and you buy it probably on DVD and slowly you go through the movie scene by scene. You play each scene three times, four times.

You use the subtitles. You use your dictionary. Now you might have one problem. The problem is you might know every individual word but you still will not understand.

Why not? Why not? Well, it's simple. The reason why not is that in English, in American English especially, British English too, yes, Australian, but in the movie, they're going to use conversational English, a lot of idioms, a lot of phrasal verbs.

That means two-word verbs, three-word verbs. They're using a lot of words. You know the individual words, but you don't know the phrases. right? If I say, he hit on her, for example.

He hit on her. You know the meaning of hit. You know the meaning of on. You know he and her. What does that sentence mean? He hit on her. Well, it does not mean he punched her.

It does not mean he hurt her. In fact, hit on means to talk to somebody and try to get a date. It means you like them, you think they're beautiful or attractive, and you want to date them.

You want to go on a date. So if I say, he hit on her, it means he goes to her, he's talking to her very sweet. Hey, you're really beautiful. I like you.

Do you want to go to dinner? Do you want to see a movie? He is hitting on her. Okay, so that's the problem you might have. That's why your dictionary might not be enough.

In movies, you're going to find a lot of this kind of language. You will know the individual words, but you won't understand the phrases. How do you understand the phrases? Well, you need a native speaker to help you.

Find a friend. Find a native speaker friend. Maybe email a native speaker friend if you can't find one in your town. But find one you can email. Or join some kind of a group.

Anyway, find a native speaker or a teacher who can explain all this conversational English, all these conversational phrases. Find somebody who can do that for you. Then you will learn real English as it is spoken. Not just written English, but actual spoken English.

All right, let's talk about some of the other techniques. Let's talk about the talk show, that second technique. The talk show. The talk show is a focal skills technique where the students listen to two teachers.

Two teachers, not one. Two native speakers. And the two teachers talk to each other while the students listen and take notes, etc. Maybe they record it.

Why is this important? Well, a very, very good reason. When a native speaker speaks to you, including me, including a teacher, they change their English. You might notice this.

If an American person talks to you, you meet them on Skype or you chat with them in person in your city, they change how they speak. They will not speak normally.

They will not speak naturally. They will slow down. They will speak more slowly. They will change their vocabulary. They will use more simple vocabulary.

They will stop using so many idioms. They'll use less slang. They'll generally do everything possible so you can understand more easily. And, you know, that's not bad.

That's good. That's helpful. That's a good thing. Nothing to complain about. But the problem is... Let's say you talk to me, me and you, we have a conversation, and you understand me 100%.

You think, wow, I understand, I can talk, no problem. Then my friend comes and joins us, my American friend. Suddenly, me and my American friend start talking to each other.

Everything changes. Now you can't understand me. And you don't know why. You said, oh, one minute ago I could understand AJ. Now I can't understand him.

Why? Well, now I'm speaking true native conversational American English. I'm talking to my American friend. I change my vocabulary. I speak faster. I use different phrases.

Everything changes. That's why the talk show technique for focal skills is very important. Because now you have two native speakers talking to each other. You're hearing the way native speakers actually speak to each other.

Not in a classroom, not to somebody who's a student, but to each other. And that's quite important. Very important. On my website, I'm going to start recording phone conversations again.

I started doing this and then I stopped. But I think I need to do it again, actually. I think it's very important. So what I do is I call my sister, for example, on the phone.

And I record the conversation. I don't tell my sister I'm doing this. I already asked her in the past, can I do this? She said yes. So now I don't tell her.

I want her to speak... Totally normally. The same way she always speaks to me. And sometimes I call my mom. Sometimes I call my friends. And I record the conversations.

Then you get real conversational English. Two native speakers. They're not reading anything. There's no script. There are no students. This is the real thing.

So I'm going to try to do this more on my website. Okay, how can you do this? Well, you can get a tape recorder and ask your native speaker friend, ask them to record conversations when they talk to their other American friends or British friends or whatever. So see if you can ask your native speaking friends to record conversations between each other.

Okay, and then we had interactive reading was the next technique. That's easy. That's audio articles. That's how, if you need to listen to a native speaker reading something, no problem.

That's easy to find on the Internet. I have these articles on my website. You can find them in a lot of places, no problem. Now, you know... Remember, this is written English.

It's a little more formal. It's different kinds of phrases. It's a different kind of pronunciation when somebody reads. It's still good, however. It is good.

It will help you learn vocabulary, for example. You will grow your vocabulary by listening to audio articles. It will help your pronunciation of individual words.

That's good, too. Okay, next we have free reading, right? Free reading was the next technique they use in focal skills. Personal reading, free reading.

Free reading is fantastic. Free reading is quite simple. It means reading for fun, reading for pleasure. It means reading books. We're not talking about reading one article that's very difficult.

It's the opposite. It means reading a lot, many, many pages, but reading things that are easy. So we're talking about easy books, easy novels. That's free reading.

They might be teenager books, romance, comedy, mystery. It might be for younger children. Maybe you need to read something that is for fifth grade students, books for fifth grade students. But they should be interesting story books.

The rule, my rule, is you should not need a dictionary. Okay? So if you have one word you don't know on each page, that's okay. If you have more than one word on each page that you don't know, it's too difficult, find something easier.

Okay? Do not use a dictionary for free reading. Use it for difficult articles, fine. But when you're reading books... large novels, find things that are easy.

So you don't need a dictionary. You can relax and read quickly and read a lot, many pages. That's a simple thing. You can do that on your own, by yourself, very, very easily.

So please do that. And the good thing, this kind of reading, there is a lot of research about it. It is very, very, very helpful. It will improve your vocabulary and your grammar better than anything else.

Your grammar will improve from reading little novels, easy novels, that your grammar will improve more than if you study a grammar book. This is not just my opinion. Lots of research about this.

Go to Krashen's website. Do a search on Google. Don't trust me. But believe me, if you read a lot of books, your grammar will get better and better and better.

Your writing will get better and better and better. Your vocabulary will grow and grow and grow. Just read, read, read a lot of books for fun that are not difficult.

Okay, finally, the last technique for focal skills. They call it the mini course. Well, it really is quite simple. It just means you pick some topic and you learn a lot about it.

And you don't focus on English. You just focus on the topic that you love. And this is great advice. How can you do this on your own by yourself? Well, quite simple.

Just find a topic you love and collect, get ideas. information in English about that topic. For example, if you love motorcycles, get English magazines about motorcycles. Find easy books with stories about people riding motorcycles.

Find movies about motorcycles. Easy Rider, for example. Find everything you possibly can find about motorcycles. Read about motorcycles. Listen to podcasts about motorcycles.

Watch movies about motorcycles. Read books about motorcycles. When you get bored with motorcycles, pick another topic you like and do the same thing. This is called narrow listening or narrow reading by some language teachers.

It just means you focus on a topic you think is very interesting and you get all the input, the listening and reading that you can. You get a lot of it about this topic.

Okay, that is all for today. As always, if you want my free newsletter, It's free, that's right, free. My free newsletter about how to learn English better, go to www.effortlessenglish.org.

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