An overview of the linguistic and pedagogical theories that underpin Off2class' educational materials and help us create lesson content that works.
Theory of language acquisition
From a language acquisition perspective, Off2Class lessons are inspired by Stephen Krashen’s theory of comprehensible input. Comprehensible input is language input that can be understood by students despite them not understanding all the words and structures in it. According to Krashen, giving learners this kind of input helps them acquire language naturally, rather than learn it consciously.
We have incorporated into our lessons Krashen’s philosophy that the best [teaching] methods are those that supply comprehensible input in low anxiety situations, containing messages that students really want to hear. These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow students to produce when they are ready, recognizing that improvement comes from supplying communicative and comprehensible input, and not from forcing and correcting production.
Our integrated skills lessons provide meaningful interaction in the target language, offering opportunities for natural communication. The focus is not with the form of the utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding. The vocabulary incorporated into Off2Class lessons is often deliberately above level to encourage students to use natural learning strategies such as guessing words from context and inferring meaning.
Theory of learning
Off2Class lessons are based on the ESA sequencing: Engage, Study, Activate, first proposed by Jeremy Harmer in his book, How to Teach English (1997). The ESA approach breaks lessons down into three stages that can be used multiple times throughout a single lesson:
Engage: The teacher captures the learners’ interest via pictures, realia, a discussion, an anecdote, etc., aiming to get the students thinking and speaking in English. This phase gives students a glimpse as to what a lesson will cover and teachers an inkling of how much students already know.
Study: Learners analyze the target language and process how it looks or sounds, aiming to reproduce it. Activities could include a grammar chart, an exercise, a reading text, a listening dialogue, etc.
Activate: Students participate in activities that elicit communication—written or spoken. For example, dialogue creation, role-plays, email exchanges, debates, etc.
There is flexibility in the movement between the E-S-A stages. Through each phase, the teacher acts as facilitator as students learn aspects of language to be able to actively use it. The ultimate aim is doing what is most helpful for students at a given stage of a lesson to bring them closer to the learning outcomes and not following a predetermined sequence or structure for a lesson.