ENHANCING ADULT LEARNERS SPEAKING FLUENCY USING 4/3/2

TECHNIQUE
A FINAL PAPER
A Fullfilment Assignment of Foundations of English Language Education
Submitted to : F.X. Mukarto, Ph.D.

By
Daniel Ari Widhiatama
Student Number: 11 6332 038

ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDIES

SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY
YOGYAKARTA
2011
ENHANCING ADULT LEARNERS SPEAKING FLUENCY USING
4/3/2 TECHNIQUE

Daniel Ari Widhiatama

English Education Technology, English Language Studies
Sanata Dharma University
danielwidhiatama@yahoo.com
Abstracts
Fluency is one of important aspects in language use. It is related to
the ability to control many languages lexical and syntactical devices
and being able to decide readily the language when it is appropriate
and efficient to use them. Adult learners also need to master speaking
fluency since nowadays it will be a part of the assessment in English
language skill at any workplace and area. This paper discusses 4/3/2
technique as a teaching technique which is effective to improve adult
learners speaking fluency by giving them a push to enhance their
skill.

I. Introduction
English is a global language, which means that it is used officially as a
medium of communication in such domains as government, the law courts, the media,
and educational system (Crystal, 2003). This situation demands people from any age
to be able to speak using English appropriately if they want to compete with each
others. It starts from the early age until adults. Adult language learners cannot escape
from this situation since they have to struggle with their limitation, both physically
and mentally, which is different from young learners.
This condition also demands educators, especially those who are responsible
to teach English for adult learners, to find the best way to improve students English
language skills. One of English language skills which is crucial and always be a
challenge for teachers to develop is speaking skill. With a good speaking skill, adults
will be able to transfer their idea. Adult learners should be able to not only have a
good grammatical competence, but also well-developed speaking fluency. Al-Sibai
(2004) says that we live at time where the ability to speak with L2 fluently has
become a must, especially for those who want to advance in certain fields of human
endeavor. This paper focuses on how to teach speaking to adult learners using 4/3/2
technique which is considered effective and applicable to improve adult English
language learners speaking fluency.
II. Theoretical Discussion
In this theoretical discussion, the writer would like to elaborate the meaning of
adult learners, speaking fluency and 4/3/2 technique.
II.1. Adult learners
II.1.2. Adult English Language Learners

It has been stated above that adults is also required to learn English so that
they are able to compete with each others in this working world. According to Gerber
and Reiff (1994), students who are over the age of 21 are included as adult learners
and they tend to have a particular problem in learning language.
Therefore, this part mainly discusses the theory of adult learners. According
to Lado (1961), adults and older people have the problem of transfer of the habits of
the native language more severely than younger people. To be sure, the adult may be
less motivated than the schoolboy (Cronbach, 1963). They, sometimes, do not want to
experience something new which needs accuracy and concentration. Besides, Lado
(1961) states that they have maximum difficulty in remembering the sounds, they
finally learn to hear and to produce, and they have the same difficulty establishing the
new sounds as habit of speech. Knowing this idea, it is significance to discover a
technique which will help and facilitate adults to learn English especially for
speaking skill. Lightbown (1999) supports this idea through his statement that there is
a time in human development when the brain is predisposed for success in language
learning. Developmental changes in the brain, it is argued, affect the nature of
language acquisition.
Now, we will discuss further the characteristics of adult learners. Despite the
fact that adults have a lot of limitations, they, actually, still have big motivation to
learn. Motivation is one of the greatest influences of effective learning. Knowles
(1977) describes that adults are motivated to learn because of a concern with upward
occupational mobility, and a sense of personal achievement, satisfaction and self
fulfillment. Based on Knowles Andragogy theory, adult learners have several
characteristics which are defined as follows:
1. Need to know. Adults need to know why they learn something, how they learn
it and what benefit they may achieve.
2. Self-Concept. Adults should be moved into self directed learner, they should
be responsible on what they are doing and the direction it takes.
3. Role Experience. Adult experience and knowledge should be used in their
new technique which is as a tool to succeed their new learning process
4. Readiness to learn. Adults seek out learning as a way to better real life task
and problem.
5. Oriented to learning. Adults want their learning to have an immediate
usefulness to them to be applied in their daily life.
6. Motivation to learn. Adults need more internal motivation which comes from
their self-esteem, increased job satisfaction and quality of life.
It is also possible that they feel unconfident with who they are, since it has
been a belief in the old stereotype that old dog cant play new trick
(Knowles,1977). That is teachers duty to always support them and provide the best
circumstance to learn English. By knowing this character, then, teachers are able to

adjust the teaching technique with their students so that learning goals can be
achieved completely.
II. Speaking Fluency
II.1. Definition of Speaking
Speaking is a productive skill which enables someone to produce words as a
means to communicate with others. Rivers (1986) argue that through his speech, a
man is able to express his emotions, communicate his intentions, react to other
persons situations, influences other human beings, and finally enable him to examine
and rearrange impressions and associations so that he involves new relationship and
purposes. In a certain form of communication, such as in presentation, telephone
conversation, or even simple daily communication, people should think about the way
they speak. Burns & Joyce (1997) defines a good speaker as someone who is able to
anticipate and then produce the expected patterns of specific discourse situation.
Besides, he also has to manage discrete elements such as turn taking, rephrasing,
providing feedback or redirecting. These all abilities should be accompanied with the
ability to give a direct response with the right pattern, called fluency. Have they
spoken fluent enough? And why is fluency important?
II.1.2. Definition of fluency
When people hear the word fluency, most of them will mean it as the speed of
speaking. Fillmore (1979) in Nation (1989) states that fluency is the ability to fill tie
with talka person who is fluent in this way does not have to stop many time to
think of what to say next or how to phrase it.
II.1.3. The Importance of Fluency in English Language Use
In English language teaching, being able to speak grammatically correct is
not enough without any speaking fluency. It has been a problem for some people that
they could not speak using English fluently. They always have pauses in most of
words they spelled. Al-Sibai (2004) states that it is better to make a few mistakes
along the way rather than to speak too slowly which may cause the speaker to be
perceived as boring, tired, or less intelligent than he or she really is. Besides, fluency
is an important characteristic of L2 speech, which is often be the object of evaluation
in L2 skills (Derwing et al. (2004) in Al-Sabai (2004)). Let us see in some areas
which fluency has been assessed in high stakes-tests that have tangible effects on
university admissions, employment decisions, etc.
For adult learners, speaking fluency is one thing that they really want to
achieve. Sometimes they have difficulties in finding the right diction or produce a
certain phrase. It really burdens them and makes them unconfident because they feel
like they cannot make communication goes well. Hartman and Stork (1976) in AlSabai (2004) argues that a person is said as a fluent speaker of a language when he
can use its structure accurately whlist concentrating on content rather than form,
using the units and patterns automatically at normal conversational speed when they

are needed. From the definitions above, Nation (1989) concludes that fluency can be
measured by 1) the speed and flow of language production 2) the degree of control of
language items, and 3) the way language and content interact. Nation, then,
introduces a technique called 4/3/2 to enhance students mastery of fluency which can
also be applied for adult learners to train learners concentrate on the content of their
speech rather than its form.
II.2. 4/3/2 Technique
This technique is carried out by the following steps. Firstly, the students are
decided into some groups contains of three persons in each group. Secondly, the
teacher will give them a topic; let us say global warming. Thirdly, each of them
should think about some idea related to that topic. Thirdly, start talking. The first
speaker will talk about that topic in 4 minutes. Fourthly, he should move to another
group (and so do the other first speaker) and talk about the same topic in 3 minutes. It
means that he will get some new listeners. Fifthly, he has to talk to the other group in
2 minutes still in the same topic.
II.2.1. Three Important Features in 4/3/2 Technique
This technique has three important features which is important to enhance
adult learners speaking fluency as suggested by Nation (2004). Those features are:
1) The speaker has different audiences each time she speaks, so her
concentration will be on communicating the message. Adult learners will not
consider grammar much. Allwright (1979) in Nation (2004) also supports this
idea by saying that activities with the message focus are all that are essential
for all language learners.
2) The speaker repeats the same talk which means that she will develop
confidence in her ability to deliver the talk and will have less difficulty in
accessing the language she needs to deliver the talk. Repetition delivers
opportunity to develop fluency.
3) The time available to deliver the talk is reduced each time the talk is given. It
also means that as the speaker delivers her talk more fluently there is no need
to think of new material to fill the available time. They are also intended to
speak efficiently without using a lot of unimportant words.
With those three features, Nation believes that those will develop speaking
fluency since the speaker will be pushed with the existence of time limitation. This
idea is supported by Swain (1985) in Nation (1989) who says that in order to achieve
speaking fluency as what a native speaker has, a person should be pushed towards
the delivery of message which is not only conveyed, but also conveyed precisely and
appropriately Swain also adds that this technique is parallel to Krashens theory
about i+1 comprehensible input since it also pushes the input.
III. Discussion

In this stage, the writer would like to focus on some questions. The first one is
how 4/3/2 technique can affect on adult learners fluency, grammar accuracy, and
control of content. And how 4/3/2 technique can match with adult learners characters
III.1.1 4/3/2 Technique Improves the Adult Learners Fluency, Grammar
Accuracy and Control of Content
Some researches which are related to the development of learners speaking
fluency has been conducted by several educators. The difference of this technique
with the others is on the aspects which it develops, which contains fluency, grammar
accuracy and control of content.
III.1.2 4/3/2 Technique Enhances Adult Learners Fluency
There are eight case studies which show that 4/3/2 technique has successfully
enhanced adult learners fluency. The result from one case study shows there is an
improvement of speaking rate the first delivery to the third chance. Speaker P spoke
at a rate of 86 words per minute (wpm) in her first delivery, 100 wpm in the second
delivery which is in 3 minutes, and 127 wpm in her third version which lasted 2
minutes.
Nation (1989) also mentions that this technique also decreased the number of
hesitation from 1 percent to 67 percent which was analyzed from the first to the third
version. The decrease can be analyzed from the number of false starts, hesitation
items, such as er, um, ah. Besides, there was also a decrease in the repetition use of
some words like then I, I said. Nation (1989) says that the result can be evidence that
4/3/2 technique affect on speaking fluency as measured by speed and occurrence of
hesitation procedure.
III.1.3. 4/3/2 Technique Enhances Adult Learners Grammatical Accuracy
This technique requires learners to talk about the same topic with the same
talk with different time allotment. Of course there will be repetition performed by the
speakers from the first delivery to the last since the topic is the same and there should
be no new information. Nation (1989) informs that from eight studies, four of them
showed the reduction of errors in each delivery of each talk, three showed an increase
and the other one showed no change. This affects on grammatical accuracy in two
ways. First, Nation (1989) concludes that repetition improves students confidence
while they are monitoring their own mistakes. That condition brings an overall
decrease in errors. Second, Nation (1989) states that repetition may have a local
effect, allowing monitoring of repeated items.
Here, Nation (1989) provides some examples how repetition occurred in a study. On
the first delivery, speaker V made this error:
Reading out
Next the door

Got down the bench

In the third delivery, the speaker corrected them:

Reading on
Next to the door
Got off the bench

When repetition happened, the speaker would have a chance to correct his
grammatically incorrect sentence.
However, there was also evidence in which speaker made mistakes in the first
and it was not corrected in the third delivery. This type of error involved plural s, the
past tense or third person s. The last on is when speaker had a correct grammatical
sentence in the first deliver but not in the third delivery. Knowing this result, Nation
(1989) suggests a conclusion that 4/3/2 technique provides some small improvement
in certain aspects of grammatical accuracy during the activity. It only does not work
for error involving inflections because the speaker repeated the same grammatical
context.
III. 1.4. 4/3/2 Technique Enhances Adult Learners Control of Content Ability
When we are speaking, we often use some words or even phrases which tend
to be unimportant to use. By giving limited time allotment in each talk delivery, the
speaker are intended to transfer the message straightforwardly without using any
unimportant details which will increase complexity instead and even ambiguity.
Besides, simplifying the language is also meant to form more efficient talk (Nation,
1989). For example is when a student used this technique and he reduced as many as
144 unimportant words in her third delivery. He did so because the time limitation
made him pushed to transfer information briefly and effectively.
This result shows that 4/3/2 technique encourages learners to make fuller use
of the complex rather than compound construction of English. However, an increase
in complexity can also be considered as development of students interlanguage
(Nation, 1989).
III.2.1 How Can 4/3/2 Technique Match and Significant for Adult Learners
This stage will discuss how 4/3/2 technique matches with adult learners
characters and also provides the benefits that adults can get.
III.2.2 4/3/2 Technique Improves Adults Motivation to Speak Up
One character of adult learners is the lack of confidence when they are
supposed to talk as said by Lado (1961). Through this technique, adults are motivated
to produce sounds since they have to talk with different audiences. They are

encouraged to speak more, moreover, when they only have limited time allotment.
This technique also soon will erase a paradigm that old dog cant play new trick!
III.2.3 Their Speaking Fluency Improvement of Using 4/3/2 Technique Will Be
Useful for Their Life
As stated by Knowles (1977), adults always seek something which is
applicable and useful for their daily life. This technique surely will challenge them.
The instructors can provide some topics which stimulate their interest. The progress
and fluency improvement they achieve after using this technique will be seen
apparently and they can start applying it in their daily life. They will have sufficient
speaking skill fluency as long as they keep practicing more with the right pattern.
III.2.4 4/3/2 Technique Enables Them to Make Use of Their Knowledge in Using
English and Their Life Experience
Knowles (1977) said that adults experience should be engaged when a new
learning is held. It is a quite sure thing that everybody has their own experience
which is different from others and they consider them amazing. Using this technique,
adults will have chance to recall again their knowledge in using English and also their
life experience. It can be some language features such as vocabularies, grammatical
competence and also their communicative competence which will help them in
conveying a message. Besides, their life experience will be useful in this practice
because they can talk about anything related to a certain topic supported with their
life experience.
III.2.5 4/3/2 Technique Focuses on the Message Content, Not Language Forms
Many educators have realized that most of adult learners have a lack of
grammatical competence as well as communicative competence simply because they
have not learned about it for so long. This technique is not focus on the language
forms (let us say grammar), but it is more on the content being delivered. Therefore,
adults should not be afraid if their English language competence is not welldeveloped. They can concentrate on the content of message they share. They are also
allowed to use the same talk to convey their message. It means that repetition will
help them constructing their fluency. However, there will be feedback from the
instructor towards the language they perform.

IV. Conclusion
Teaching speaking in English, especially for adult language learners, should
be differentiated from teaching young learners. Adult learners have some unique
characters which need to be treated carefully. Before teaching adult learners, teachers

should consider the technique they are going to use and also reckon whether the
technique is applicable and suitable with adults characters. Teachers also need t
consider the benefits that adult learners may get so that the teaching and learning
process will be useful. Guidance and motivation giving is important to succeed the
learning process. 4/3/2 technique is effective to enhance adults speaking fluency
because it is not only focus on the fluency but also grammatical accuracy and control
content ability. The difference between this technique with the others is on the push
given on the activity and also repetition which will build their fluency.
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