Retrieve, Repeat, Recast, Report, Recycle: five moves from Teaching Unplugged (Meddings & Thornbury 2009, p. 60) for working with emergent language.
The moves
- Retrieve: capture what a learner said (board, notes) so it doesn’t vanish as noise.
- Repeat: say it again, or have others repeat it, to make it salient.
- Recast: “I know what you’re trying to say; this is how I’d say it”. Keep the flow going.
- Report: learners report what was said in groups, so they attend to each other’s language.
- Recycle: push the item into a new context (ask for a new example).
Why it works (mechanism)
Converts incidental episodes into repeated, noticed encounters: salience (noticing) plus frequency (usage-based) plus pushed reuse (output).
Limits
- Needs a teacher with strong language awareness to choose which emergent items are worth the 5 Rs.
- Recasting alone is weak for teens/adults (see Focus on form vs focus on formS).
Apply in my context (Claude)
- A “board-right column” routine: retrieve 4–6 items during speaking. Then do a 5-minute Recast + Recycle round at the end, plus a 2-minute Recycle at the start of the next lesson. This is a ready-made observable procedure for a DELTA M2 lesson.