Accuracy versus fluency activities

One of the goals of CLT is to develop fluency in language use. Fluency is natural language use occurring when a speaker engages in meaningful interaction and maintains comprehensible and ongoing communication despite limitations in his or her communicative competence. Fluency is developed by creating classroom activities in which students must negotiate meaning, use communication strategies, correct misunderstandings and work to avoid communication breakdowns.

Fluency practice can be contrasted with accuracy practice, which focuses on creating correct examples of language use. Differences between activities that focus on fluency and those that focus on accuracy can be summarized as follows:

Activities focusing on fluency

• Reflect natural use of language
• Focus on achieving communication
• Require meaningful use of language
• Require the use of communication strategies
• Produce language that may not be predictable
• Seek to link language use to context

Activities focusing on accuracy

• Reflect classroom use of language
• Focus on the formation of correct examples of language
• Practice language out of context
• Practice small samples of language
• Do not require meaningful communication
• Choice of language is controlled