‘The time to improve and upgrade the flow is during the flow, not when the flow has stopped.’ The no-interruption rule for fluency work can produce ‘demand low’ conversation. Silent, minimal interventions upgrade language without breaking the flow.
Minimal interventions
- “Yes, but in English please”: join words up, speed up.
- A gesture to link words; “OK, now faster”.
- Point at a phoneme or chart item; silently supply a word from a chart.
- Wordlessly invite a repeat for self-correction, or a change (add, delete or reorder a word).
- Ask the speaker to summarise what they just said.
Counter-arguments (comments)
Delayed error logs rarely work (Barros); interrupting mid-sentence never works. Learners with a history of being scolded need gentler, delayed feedback (Pugliese). Written error sheets go unread (Wade).
Apply in my context (Claude)
- This needs a phonemic chart on the wall or smartboard. Underhill’s Sound Foundations chart, as a permanent smartboard overlay, makes pointing-correction possible.
- The trade-off in the comments mirrors the SLA debate on online (in-flow) vs offline feedback. Both appear in Lyster’s work; pick based on learner anxiety.
Connections
One-to-one-in-a-group - stop rubberstamping answers · Focus on form vs focus on formS · Fluency rests on memorised word-groups