Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Fluency vs Accuracy

Someone who is very experienced in teaching, shared with me that fluency in language learning is built over time and that accuracy can be mastered very quickly by just-in-time teaching, and that teaching grammar should be incidental. Perhaps I am taking things out of context but this idea might not be well-taken by the curriculum planning division, especially the English unit, as the latter appears to be advocating explicit teaching of grammar.

This line of thought runs in concordance with how I was taught when I was schooling as I felt having the foundation did help. Nonetheless I also knew reading many storybooks helped and I was a voracious reader (not so sure how I developed this habit) and that helped with my fluency, I guess.

So how do we strike a balance between fluency and accuracy? Do we need to strike a balance? Or is one more important than the other? Or are both equally important?

I am not so sure but I am very interested to know how we could develop students' fluency and accuracy in innovative and effective ways.