Extensive Processing Instruction runs Modelling, Awareness-raising, Receptive processing, Structured production, Expansion, Autonomous recall, then Routinisation and Spontaneity. Input-heavy, chunk-based and recycled across a whole term.
Claim
A unit lasts a term with 5 sub-units. Sub-units 1–4 each run a MARSEA cycle on new material. Sub-unit 5 is Routinisation + Spontaneity, interweaving the unit with earlier units. Recycling core items across contexts is non-negotiable.
The sequence
- Modelling: chunks and patterns presented in sentence builders.
- Awareness-raising: “pop-up grammar” / “pop-up phonics”, brief pointers to features.
- Receptive processing: many listening/reading tasks on the same patterns. Narrow listening/reading at ≥90% comprehensible input. Listening for learning before listening for testing (Listening-As-Modelling).
- Structured production: chunking-aloud games (Sentence Stealer, Mind-reading, Lie Detector), then structured retrieval, then student-run oral games.
- Expansion: explicit morphosyntax after chunks are processed (deductive, guided discovery or inductive).
- Autonomous recall: short, low-stakes checks (3 receptive, 2 productive).
- Routinisation & Spontaneity: timed fluency with familiar language, then unplanned tasks under time pressure (“Real Operating Conditions”).
Mechanism / theory
Implicit–explicit synergy, input flooding and enhancement, depth of processing (Leow 2015); Nation’s fluency strand; Transfer Appropriate Processing; interference and decay; Bjork’s “new theory of disuse”.
Limits & critique
- Long: structured production alone may need 1.5–2 lessons with average groups. Fluency can’t come from “a couple of lessons”.
- A description of practice, not an outcome study. Partisan framing (“the real Conti method”).
- Assumes 20–24 lessons a term and whole-curriculum recycling.
- Transfer caveat: written for UK secondary MFL (French/Spanish/German) with ~2–3 lessons a week and minimal out-of-class exposure. Tashkent EFL learners get far more ambient English (YouTube, games), so input-scarcity arguments apply less strongly. (Claude)
Apply in my context (Claude)
- Maps well onto Prepare 2e if you treat each unit’s vocabulary + grammar pages as M–A and add the R and S stages the book underdoes. Most coursebooks jump from presentation to production with too little receptive processing in between.
- For Movers/Flyers: R-stage narrow listening = several short texts recycling the same 6–8 chunks. This fits Cambridge YL Listening Part formats.
- DELTA M2 angle: an LSA framed as “increasing receptive processing before production” is a well-scoped, researchable claim.
Connections
- Counter-model: Grammar emerges from usage (emergentism) · Dogme and TBLT share a philosophy, not a methodology
- Components: Sentence builders and patterns-first lexicogrammar · Spaced retrieval is the best-supported technique · Scaffolding dictation for beginners
- Theory link: Fluency rests on memorised word-groups