The Four Strands a Commonsense Justification of the Four Strands

The activities in a language course can be classified into the four strands of meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning and fluency development. In a well designed course there should be an even balance of these strands with roughly equal amounts of time given to each strand. The research evidence for the strands draws on the input hypothesis and learning from extensive reading, the output hypothesis, research on form-focused instruction, and the development of speaking and reading fluency. The paper concludes with 10 principles based largely on the four strands. The strands framework and the principles provide a basis for managing innovation in language courses. Innovation in language teaching needs to take account of research on language acquisition. One way of doing this is to make the innovation within a framework that fits with research findings. This paper describes a framework for looking at language courses to see if they provide an appropriate balance of opportunities for learning. The opportunities for learning language can be usefully divided into four strands: meaning-focused input, meaning-focused output, language-focused learning and fluency development. These are called strands because they can be seen as long continuous sets of learning conditions that run through the whole language course. Every activity in a language course fits into one of these strands. In a well balanced course roughly equal amounts of time can be given to each of the four strands. In the paper we will look at each of the four strands, their justification and how they can be put into practice. The paper concludes with a set of pedagogical principles based on the strands that can be used to guide the teaching of a language course. The basis of a commonsense approach to opportunities for learning is the time-on-task principle. How can you learn to do something if you don't do that during learning? How can you learn to read if you don't do reading? How can you learn to write without writing? The time-on-task principle simply says that the more time you spend doing something, the better you are likely to be at doing it. This is a very robust principle and there is no shortage of evidence, for example, that those who read a lot are better readers (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1991) and that those who write a lot usually become better writers.