21

Is practice good and what is good

practice?

A Swiss student who I was teaching online produced the following short text, in response to an
invitation to introduce himself:

I like to play piano very much. I enjoy to watch TV. I love really to eat pizza. I don't like to
drink tea at all. I like to read newpapers and magazins a lot.

This is how I responded:

Thanks H***. Nice to hear from you, and to get an idea of your interests. What kind of
music do you like playing, by the way – classical or modern?

Just note that verbs like like, love usually are followed by the -ing verb. Enjoy is always
followed by the -ing verb. So: I like playing the piano (note the use of the here, too); and
I enjoy watching TV, etc. Speak to you soon. Scott

The next day I received the following (Task 2: Describe your computer and what you use it
for):

My computer is 2 years old. He has a Pentium Processor. The harddisk is unfortunately to

small. My children filled the disk always with computer games. So I have not anough free
disk space for important software. I really like to work with computer. My wife enjoyes to
send Email to her friends. Our computer is in our lumber room, so I can work also early in
the morning.

It appears that the student only then received my feedback on his first task, because he
immediately re-sent the above work, self-corrected, thus:
 Thanks for your Email!

Dear Scott

My computer is 2 years old. It has a Pentium Processor. The harddisk is unfortunately to

small. My children filled the disk always with computer games. So I have not enough free
disk space for important software. I really like working with the computer. My wife
enjoyes sending Emails to her friends. Our computer is in our lumber room, so I can work
also early in the morning.

Notice how the student has picked up on the -ing errors, and self-corrected them. This would
seem to be an example of what, in sociocultural learning theory (e.g. Lantolf 2000), is called
self-regulation. According to this view, learning is initially other-regulated (as in the first
feedback I gave the student) and then it becomes increasingly self-regulated. (Note that in the
process of regulating the -ing forms the student has noticed other minor errors in the text and
corrected these, too.)

Central to the notion of this transfer of control is the idea that aspects of the skill are
appropriated. Appropriation has connotations of taking over the ownership of something, of
‘making something one’s own’.

This is a very different process to what is often called controlled practice. What I’m describing
might better be termed practised control.

Controlled practice is repetitive practice of language items in conditions where the possibility of
making mistakes is minimized. Typically this takes the form of drilling. And typically the item that
is drilled is pre-selected by the teacher, irrespective of the learner’s present degree of control
over it. Effectively, the teacher is in control.

Practised control, on the other hand, involves demonstrating progressive control of a skill where
the possibility of making mistakes is ever present, but where support is always at hand. Those
aspects of the skill that are targeted for appropriation are selected by the learner. Effectively,
the learner is in control.

In practised control, control (or self-regulation) is the objective of the practice, whereas in
controlled practice, control is simply the condition under which practice takes place.

My interest in the notion of practised control (as opposed to controlled practice) dates back to
an article by Keith Johnson called ‘Mistake correction’ (1988). In this article, Johnson
extrapolates from his experience of learning to ride a horse. He describes how he found it
difficult to know what to focus on if a particular behaviour (e.g. how to sit when trotting) was
first modelled for him by the instructor. But when he’d had a trial run himself, he could then
watch his instructor with focused attention (‘it’s all about the knees!’) before having another shot
at it. Johnson uses this (skill-learning) example to argue for a task-based model of language
teaching.

Johnson situates his theory of practice within a cognitive, information-processing view of

learning: by practising in ‘real operating conditions’ we learn to pay attention to those aspects of
the skill that we need to take control of. But it also fits with the notion of self-regulation that is
enshrined in sociocultural learning theory. However, the difference is that in the sociocultural
paradigm the instructor’s role is less as a model of skilled performance and more as a co-
performer in a process of skill transfer. Not for nothing is this kind of intervention sometimes
called ‘assisted performance’.

To use another analogy – that of learning to ride a bicycle – it is like being allowed to pedal
freely, but with someone running along right behind, just in case.

A good example of practised control in language learning is the technique that Stevick describes
in his book Success with Foreign Languages (1989: 149):

Another of my favourite techniques is to tell something to a speaker of the language and have that
person tell the same thing back to me in correct, natural form. I then tell the same thing again,
bearing in mind the way in which I have just heard it. This cycle can repeat itself two or three
times … An essential feature of this technique is that the text we are swapping back and forth
originates with me, so that I control the content and do not have to worry about generating non-
verbal images to match what is in someone else’s mind.

Similarly, through drafting and redrafting a text in the context of a supportive feedback loop, my
Swiss student is practising control of -ing forms – and a lot else besides.

Questions for discussion

1. What is ‘controlled’ in ‘controlled practice’?

2. Are ‘controlled practice’ and ‘practised control’ mutually exclusive? Are they perhaps different
sides of the same coin?

3. What are the limitations of drilling?

4. What is a supportive feedback loop, and what kind of feedback is supportive?

5. Does practice (of whatever kind) imply repetition?

6. What constitutes practice in task-based instruction?

7. If learning is ‘assisted performance’, what implications does this have for the role of the
teacher?

8. Apart from those activity types I have described, what other kinds of activities are consistent
with the notion of practised control?

References

Lantolf, J. (ed.) (2000) Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Johnson, K. (1988) ‘Mistake correction’, ELT Journal, 42, 2.

Stevick, E. (1989) Success with Foreign Languages, Hemel Hempstead: Prentice-Hall.

To see how readers responded to this topic online, go to

http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/p-is-for-practised-control/