2-90-60

A Fluency Building Storytelling Routine

adapted from Paul Nation’s 4:3:2

• Students make 3 brief presentations.

• Students work in pairs three times.

• 4/3/2 refers to “4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes”.

• I do a 2 min/90/60 (seconds) with beginning/intermediate level students.

• Lines of communication or Concentric Circles works well for this—but it can work at desks (did it with 50 at fixed desks).

• The activity involves known vocabulary, grammar and discourse.

• The learners have a high chance of performing successfully at a higher than normal speed.

• There are repeated opportunities to do the same thing.

• Research on this activity shows that the learners' speed of speaking increased during the talks (as measured by the number of words per minute), the hesitations they make decrease (as measured by hesitations per 100 words), and surprisingly their grammatical errors in the repeated parts of the talk decrease and they tend to use several, more complex grammatical constructions in the last of the three talks than they did in the first talk" (Nation, 1989, p. 381).