50 CHAPTER 3 TABLE 6. Main characteristics of the DUB approach First three years: AIM principles · Activities target the development of listening and speaking first, achieved through exclusive use of the L2 in the classroom, facilitated by the use of gestures to enhance and consolidate meaning. · Highly controlled and repeated L2 exposure through carefully structured teacher scripts that build on stories, classroom language and the introduction of linguistic items. · A restricted vocabulary (Pared Down Language - PDL) of 2000 words is offered to students in three years. The selection of the words is not only based on frequency, but also on functionality and scope2, in order to enhance input and output repetition, and henceforth facilitate a more solid entrenchment of form-meaning mappings. · A lexical and inductive approach to basic grammar and verb conjugation is offered through the use of oral routinization activities. · Most activities focus on oral skills. Other skills are expected to develop implicitly. · Development of productive fluency is facilitated by a focus on creative sub-skills, (like improvising and paraphrasing) and anxiety reduction (absence of corrective feedback and focus on positive reinforcement). · Introduction of reading and writing occurs only after six months and after associations between sounds and meaning are fully entrenched. · Students develop their writing skills through free narrative writing assignments based on the stories introduced in class. Final three years: AIMe (modifications of AIM principles): · L2 exposure through teacher scripts is replaced by extensive and authentic oral and written input through online learning systems like FluentU (www.fluentu.com) and Zeeguu (www. zeeguu.org). · L2 exposure, as provided through online learning systems, is now provided at home in order to have more classroom time available for speaking activities. Teacher dashboards in all systems guarantee quantitative and qualitative teacher control. · The use of gestures is now limited to routinization activities with the AIM vocabulary of the first three years in order to keep form-meaning mappings of this basic vocabulary entrenched. · In terms of writing skills, students first participate in guided writing tasks and subsequently in free narrative and argumentative writing tasks. MEASURING EFFECTIVENESS E ectiveness is generally measured in terms of language pro ciency attained by the students and pro ciency is usually taken to comprise both receptive and productive skills. Receptive skills of reading and listening are traditionally measured using objective (o en multiple choice) tests and are easy to use. In the Netherlands, the national testing agency (Cito) designs and validates reading and listening comprehension tests that are compulsory for all schools (reading skills form the main component of the written nal Central Examination for the modern foreign languages in the Netherlands) or recommended but administered by almost all schools (listening skills as tested in the School Examinations). erefore, measuring the e ectiveness of the SB and DUB 2 For instance, instead of more speci c words like ‘mer’ (sea), ‘ étang’ (pond), ‘fosse’ (ditch), ‘canal’ (canal), ‘ euve’ (river), a more generic word like ‘eau’ (water) is used which can be used in a large number of contexts, providing a lot of opportunities for repetition.
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