1. Counterbalance in the Immersion Classroom
Dissemination of learning from CARLA 2012
Presenter: Roy Lyster, Ph.D.
Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University
Montreal, QC
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

2. Teaching in a DLI classroom is like…
because…
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

3. Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

4. Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

5. Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

6. Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

7. Content Objective Language Objective
Students are scaffolded to ensure their participation and appropriation of new content
Students are pushed towards accuracy and beyond use of interlanguage forms.
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

8. Dr. Roy Lyster
Roy Lyster's research examines content-based second language instruction and the effects of instructional interventions—such as teacher scaffolding and corrective feedback—designed to counterbalance form-focused and content-based approaches. His research interests also include collaboration among language teachers for integrated language learning and biliteracy development. He was co-president then president of the Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics from 2004 to 2008 and serves on the Advisory Committee of Studies in Second Language Acquisition and The Canadian Modern Language Review and on the Editorial Board of The Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education. He is author of Learning and Teaching Languages Through Content: A Counterbalanced Approach, published by Benjamins in 2007.
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

9. Main Topic:
To address the challenges inherent in teaching languages through content, this institute is designed to familiarize immersion teachers with a counterbalanced approach that integrates content-based and form-focused instruction as complementary ways of promoting continued second language growth in the immersion classroom. (Meeting the Challenges of Immersion Education: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom, CARLA, U. of Minnesota.)
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

10. Explicit v. Implicit
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

11. Explicit v. Implicit (Deyser, 2003; Norris & Ortega, 2000; Schmidt, 1994)
Teaching
Learning
Explicit
Learners are given rules or asked to attend to particular forms
Learners are aware of what is being learned
Implicit
Learners are neither given rules nor asked to attend to forms
Learners are unaware of what is being learned
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

12. Possible shortcomings
Immersion education was initially based on the premise that:
Students learn language primarily through rich exposure to massive amount of comprehensible input via subject-matter instruction
therefore, language per se does not need to be taught
Yet student can bypass much of the grammar while still understanding the content
“We can understand discourse without precise syntactic and morphological knowledge” (Swain, 1988)
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

13. Sponge Theory Works when truly immersed in language and culture
School discourse cannot truly recreate this environment
Question…have you ever
met a bilingual sponge?
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

14. Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

15. Teacher Talk Tends to be too much
Tends to lack linguistic complexity and diversity
“Functionally restricted input” (Swain 1985, 1988)
Restricted in the range of forms and functions it contains
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

16. Example
T: Europe didn’t have sugar cane. Why didn’t they have sugar cane? S: It’s too cold T: It’s too cold… S: The climate is not good.
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

17. Restricted input Verbs used by teachers: 75% in the present/imperative
15% in the past
3% in the conditional
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

18. Immediate future in the past?
What do you think? How do you think these plantations… are going… to change…life in the Antilles?
These people are going to sell their sugar, rum, molasses, brown sugar.
They are going to make money.
With the money, they are going to buy clothes, furniture, horses, carriages…all they want and they are going to bring them back to the Antilles.
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

19. So which one is it? Immersion education must contain both
There must exist a counterbalance of explicit and implicit teaching and learning of language
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

20. Explicit teaching and learning
…asks learners to attend to language
…involves being aware of learning
…fits well with school-based educational objectives promoting:
Inductive learning experiences
Meta-cognitive strategies that lead students to become autonomous lifelong learners
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

21. Forms Language
Forms of a language deal with the internal grammatical structure of words. The relationship between boy and boys, for example, and the relationship (irregular) between man and men would be forms of a language.
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

22. Functions of Language
A language function refers to the purpose for which speech or writing is being used.
In speech these include:
• giving instructions
• introducing ourselves
• making requests
In academic writing we use a range of specific functions in order to communicate ideas clearly.
These include:
• describing processes
• comparing or contrasting things or ideas, and
• classifying objects or ideas (Pozzi, D.C. 2004)
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

23. Table Talk
In what ways are your students learning the forms and functions of the target language?
In what ways are you explicitly teaching the forms and functions of language in your daily instruction?
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

24. Counterbalanced Instruction
Gives language and content objectives equal and complementary status
Integrates content instruction and form-focused instruction
Content Objectives
Language Objectives
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

25. 3 Key areas of curriculum
Instructional input
Student production
Classroom interaction
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

26. Form-focused Instruction
draws learners’ attention to problematic L2 forms that are misused or avoided and often go unnoticed.
Not memorization of forms outside of context
Delivered during content-based or meaning-oriented tasks through two approaches:
Proactive approach:
Noticing, awareness, and practice activities
Reactive approach:
Corrective feedback
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

27. Selecting features to be taught (Harley, 1993)
Some features need to be taught
Other features can be learned incidentally
Those influenced by L1, especially if the similarity is misleading
Irregular or infrequent features and those lacking salience
Features with little communicative value
Grammatical patterns congruent with the L1
High-frequency vocabulary items
Phonologically salient features
Blanca casa
Gender/ irregular forms/a personal/ tiene v. tienes
Usted, future tense
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

28. Noticing, Awareness, Practice
Receptive to Productive
Content provides context
Gradual Release
Promote accuracy
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

29. Noticing Activities
Designed to help students to notice L2 features contrived to appear more salient in oral and written input.
Enhanced written input
Color coding
Italics
Bold
CAPS
Enhanced oral input
Increased frequency
Intonational stress
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

30. Awareness activities
Students need to do more than just notice enhanced forms in the input
They need to engage in metalinguistic reflection or analysis:
Rule-discovery (inductive) tasks
Opportunities to compare language patterns, including L1-L2 contrasts
Metalinguistic information
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

31. Drawing attention to possessive determiners (White, 1998)
Once upon a time, there was a king. He had a beautiful you daughter. For her birthday, he have her a golden ball that she played with every day. The king and his daughter lived near a dark forest. One day, the princess threw her golden ball in the air… The girl looked around, and she saw a frog. He was in the well, his head sticking out of the water…
Who does the underlined word refer to?
For her birthday, he had given her a golden ball.
The princess lived with him near a dark forest.
She played with her golden ball.
She dropped her golden ball in the well.
He was in the well, sticking his head out of the water.
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

32. Practice Activity
As a group, brainstorm a couple of ideas for oral practice as an extension of the noticing and awareness activities.
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

33. Grade-Alike Task
Identify a problematic linguistic feature or grammatical subsystem that is challenging for L2 learners.
To provide a meaningful context into which you will integrate a focus on your chosen language feature(s), select a topic or theme related to a subject-matter discipline.
Justify (if possible) how the language and content are connected.
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

34. Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

35. Classroom Interaction
Teacher-student interaction plays a pivotal role in promoting continued L2 growth as teachers scaffold the interaction with:
Effective questioning
Corrective feedback
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

36. Questions
Fewer questions eliciting facts (which tend to result in minimal responses)
More questions about students’ beliefs and opinions that require them to explain, define, or provide rationale
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

37. IRF Exchanges (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975)
The most typical teaching exchange consist of a three-part sequence:
Teacher’s initiating (I) move
“What’s the capital city of Spain?”
Student’s responding (R) move
“Madrid?”
Teacher’s follow-up (F) move
“That’s right!”
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

38. IRF Exchanges Now imagine this: From teacher to student
T: How did you come to school today?
S: I came by bus.
T: Yes, that’s right!
Now imagine this:
S: How did YOU come to school today?
T: I came by car.
S: Yes, that’s right!
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

39. IRF Exchanges Criticism:
Teacher-centered transmission model of teaching
Engages students only minimally and maintaining unequal power relationships between teachers and students
Still predominant because they help teachers to:
Monitor students’ understanding
Initiate discussion
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

40. Follow-up
Can be more important than initial question if they (Nassaji & Wells, 2000) :
Avoid judgment
Request justification or counter-arguments
Effective follow-up questions (Echevarria & Graves, 1998) :
What do you mean by that?
Why do you think that?
How do you know?
What makes you think that?
Tell me more about that.
Why might that be?
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

41. Table Talk
How can Bloom’s Taxonomy serve as a resource for follow-up moves?
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

42. Corrective Feedback (CF)
“responses to learner utterances containing an error” (Ellis 2006)
also a “complex phenomenon with several functions” (Chaudron, 1988)
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

43. Corrective Feedback
Research has revealed a clear tendency for learners to express a preference for receiving CF over having their errors ignored.
The extent to which learners want to be corrected is generally higher than that of teachers’ wish to do so.
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

44. Types of Corrective Feedback (Lyster and Ranta, 1997)
Reformulations
Reformulate learners’ non-target output
Explicit correction
Recasts
Prompts
Push learners to self-repair without providing the correct form:
Clarification requests
Metalinguistic clues
Elicitation
Repetition of error
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

45. 1. Explicit Correction
The teacher supplies the correct form and clearly indicates that what the student had said was incorrect.
Example:
S: We cut the straws into six different thicknesses and attach the straws with tape.
T: Henry, excuse me, I want you to use the word length. You cut the straws into different lengths. Not thicknesses.
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

46. 2. Recasts
The teacher implicitly reformulates the student’s utterance, minus the error
Example:
S: Yo me gusta jugar.
T: A mí me gusta jugar.
S1: Why you don’t like Marc?
T: Why don’t you like Marc?
S2: I don’t know I just don’t like him.
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

47. 3. Clarification requests
The teacher pretends that the message has not been understood:
Example:
S: Yo soy seis años.
T: ¿Cómo? No te entendí.
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

48. 4. Metalinguistic Clues
Without providing the correct form, the teacher provides comments, information, or questions about the form of the student’s utterance.
Example:
S: Nouvelle Ecosse…
T: Oh, but that’s in French.
S: We found out that the south and the south don’t like to stick together
T: Now let’s start using our scientific language
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

49. 5. Elicitation
The teacher elicits correct forms by asking questions like “What’s a better way of saying that?”
Example:
S: El niño fue al bathroom.
T: ¿Cómo se dice eso en Español?
S: Pásame esa cosa.
T: ¿Hay otra palabra mejor que “cosa” para describir lo que quieres?
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

50. 6. Repetition of error
The teacher repeats the student’s error, adding intonational stress.
Example:
S: ¿El…el mano?
T: ¿El mano?
S: Yo tienes hambre.
T: ¿Yo tienes hambre?
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

51. Recasts v. prompts Shoot for a balance of both types of CF
Both have their place
Recasts are much more frequently used (Lyster and Mori, 2006)
Dr. Lyster promotes a more extensive and intentional use of prompts
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

52. Pedagogical perspectives
Prompts
Promote automization and control over already-internalized forms
Provide opportunities for pushed output
Well suited to instructional discourse
Resemble a “clueing” or “withholding” phenomenon
Don’t signal errors as embarrassing
Recasts
Pedagogically expeditious
Help to move lessons forward
Well suited to communicative classroom discourse
Don’t interrupt communication
Deep students’ attention focused on meaning
Learners participate in interaction beyond current abilities
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

53. When it is best to use… Recasts Content is new to students
Prompts
students in control of content
Students already familiar with the form
Error is caused by “binary distinction” (ser/estar, his/her)
Error is recurrent
Recasts
Content is new to students
Error is beyond student’s abilities
Context allows student to notice the focus on language
Error is phonological
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

54. Counterbalanced options for interactional feedback
Recasts negotiate meaning while confirming the content of student utterances.
Prompts negotiate form while providing opportunities for contextualized practice.
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

55. Team Task Identify the CF type
Respond to discussion questions as group
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN

56. Thank you!
Adapted from Roy Lyster: Counterbalanced Instruction in the Immersion Classroom: Presented at CARLA Summer Institute, August 2012, Minneapolis, MN