B-SLIM: Bilash's Success-Guided Language Instructional Model
What are the goals of the B-SLIM model?
1. to develop self directed learners, especially in second languages
2. to ensure that every learner succeeds at each phase of the learning process by maximizing exposure to concepts through all learning styles/intelligences and encouraging intellectual/thinking growth in systematically developed steps
3. to help students develop all aspects of language by applying research findings from all areas of second language learning and acquisition (language awareness, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, situations- fluency-accuracy, culture and Culture, learning strategies, listening comprehension, speaking, writing, reading, forms, skills, content, motivation-attitude)
4. to ensure that learners can transfer what they have learned in one familiar context to new contexts.
5. to learn language and to learn through language.
6. to identify success in learning in concrete provable terms (assessment for learning and assessment of learning).
Giving It: What to Teach and How to Teach It
Miss Patcharin Sinjapo
In Giving It stage, teachers present material in the target language in a way that students understand, which involves the provision of context, visuals, gestures, examples and anecdotes.
Getting It: Understanding and Remembering
Miss Supawan Parnkaew
This stage of the model helps students to LEARN; that is to understand AND remember. This is important because if one cannot remember a concept- whether it be vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, cultural points or learning strategies- one cannot use it! Getting It activities help students understand the concept being taught at their own rate (self-paced) and through a variety of learning styles
Using It: Learning Through Language
Miss Ladda Khajornmot
During the Using it stage of B-SLIM students engage in activities that require them to USE or apply what they have learned from memory. Students solve problems, create, use their imaginations and are put in new situations or contexts in order to ‘transfer’ what they have learned.
"PPP" (or the "3Ps") stands for Presentation, Practice and Production - a common approach to communicative language teaching that works through the progression of three sequential stages.
Presentation
Miss Ladda Khajornmot
represents the introduction to a lesson, and necessarily requires the creation of a realistic (or realistic-feeling) "situation" requiring the target language to be learned. This can be achieved through using pictures, dialogs, imagination or actual "classroom situations".
Practice
Miss Patcharin Sinjapo
usually begins with what is termed "mechanical practice" - open and closed pairwork. Students gradually move into more "communicative practice" involving procedures like information gap activities, dialog creation and controlled roleplays.
Production
Miss Supawan Parnkaew
is seen as the culmination of the language learning process, whereby the learners have started to become independent users of the language rather than students of the language. The teacher's role here is to somehow facilitate a realistic situation or activity where the students instinctively feel the need to actively apply the language they have been practicing.
Content based instruction (CBI) is a teaching method that emphasizes learning about something rather than learning about language. Although CBI is not new, there has been an increased interest in it over the last ten years, particularly in the USA and Canada where it has proven very effective in ESL immersion programs. This interest has now spread to EFL classrooms around the world where teachers are discovering that their students like CBI and are excited to learn English this way.
The Natural Approach was developed by Tracy Terrell and Stephen Krashen, starting in 1977. It came to have a wide influence in language teaching in the United States and around the world.
Theory of language
The communicative view of language is the view behind the Natural Approach. Particular emphasis is laid on language as a set of messages that can be understood.
Theory of learning
The Natural Approach is based on the following tenets:
Language acquisition (an unconscious process developed through using language meaningfully) is different from language learning (consciously learning or discovering rules about a language) and language acquisition is the only way competence in a second language occurs. (The acquisition/learning hypothesis)
Conscious learning operates only as a monitor or editor that checks or repairs the output of what has been acquired. (The monitor hypothesis)
Grammatical structures are acquired in a predictable order and it does little good to try to learn them in another order.(The natural order hypothesis).
People acquire language best from messages that are just slightly beyond their current competence. (The input hypothesis)
The learner's emotional state can act as a filter that impedes or blocks input necessary to acquisition. (The affective filter hypothesis)
CLIL aims to introduce students to new ideas and concepts in traditional curriculum subjects (often the humanities), using the foreign language as the medium of communication - in other words, to enhance the pupils' learning experience by exploiting the synergies between the two subjects. This is often particularly rewarding where there is a direct overlap between the foreign language and the content subject.
How does the CLIL approach benefit pupils?
Although it may take a while for pupils to acclimatise to the challenges of CLIL, once they are familiar with the new way of working, demonstrably increased motivation and focus make it possible (and likely) that they will progress at faster-than-usual rates in the content subject, providing that the principles of CLIL teaching are borne in mind during planning and delivery. CLIL aims to improve performance in both the content subject and the foreign language. Research indicates there should be no detrimental effects for the CLIL pupils (and often progress is demonstrably better).
Other advantages include:
• stronger links with the citizenship curriculum (particularly through the use of authentic materials, which offer an alternative perspective on a variety of issues)
• increased student awareness of the value of transferable skills and
knowledge
• greater pupil confidence.
