Tips for Designing Opportunities for Skill Development

In addition to promoting noticing and teaching pragmatics, teachers can help students learn to listen and speak in English by giving them time to talk to each other every day (Peregoy & Boyle, 2017). Lightbown and Spada (2000) note that, although students at the same proficiency level usually cannot correct each other’s language mistakes, they do not reproduce each other’s mistakes. Rather, peer interaction provides practice in listening, speaking, and negotiating that learners otherwise might not get. Learners can develop speaking, listening, and oral grammar skills through direct instruction or by participating in content or whole tasks, but most important is that learners have opportunities to practice in a variety of authentic venues where they engage in social interaction and receive feedback from their peers (Baralt, Gurzynski-Weiss, & Kim, 2016). Computers can indeed help provide these opportunities.