What is the ULAT's progression
of skill development?

(Ten Stages of Language Acquisition)

    FIRST SEMESTER (ORAL FOCUS): Stages 1 through 4 below are accompanied by daily, intensive oral participation activities, some of which drill the structures presented and others being open-ended discussions on topics of significance to the students.

  1. OBSERVATION AND SYMBOLIZATION: Vocabulary is presented in context and in a visual and auditory manner and a key still image is selected to represent the the word thereafter.
    (See video at 3:10 mark.)

  2. REINFORCEMENT OF SYMBOL: A variety of types of exercises are employed to reinforce the meaning and identity of the representative gestures.

  3. CONTEXTUALIZATION AND VERBALIZATION: The symbolic image is placed in relationship to other images, comprised of vocabulary already learned, to form a complete idea (parts of speech distinguished by the color of the shirt worn in the representative image). The complete statement is linked to its corresponding sound file.

  4. DEVELOPMENT OF LINGUISTIC REFLEXES: The statements are place in a gradually accelerating PowerPoint presentation that requires the learners to form the statements without the leisure time required to think about them in their native language to the end of forming "linguistic reflexes".

    SECOND SEMESTER (FOCUS IS ON LISTENING, SPEAKING AND READING): Stages 1 through 4 continue, as new structures and vocabulary are added, and phonics instruction and elementary reading are introduced.

  5. PASSIVE PHONICS INSTRUCTION: The students first observe and listen to the sounds produced by individual letters or letters in combination.

  6. ACTIVE PHONICS INSTRUCTION: The students begin reading isolated syllables and words aloud.

  7. READING ALOUD: The students read entire elementary sentences aloud.

    THIRD SEMESTER (FOCUS IS ON LISTENING, SPEAKING, READING AND WRITING): Stages 1 through 4 continue, as new structures and vocabulary are added, and engage in elementary reading and writing)

  8. ELEMENTARY WRITING: The students begin hypothesizing regarding spelling on the basis of their phonics knowledge.

  9. WRITING COMPLETE SENTENCES: Having practiced hypothesizing, observing and correcting regarding elementary sentence components, the students now begin writing entire sentences.

    FOURTH SEMESTER (FOCUS IS ON LISTENING, SPEAKING, READING AND WRITING): Students read more advanced selections and engage in extended writing activities based on developmentally appropriate literature and videos. New vocabulary is explained in the target language and students are presented with more traditional written exercises of the grammatical structures employed during the first three semesters.

  10. ADVANCED READING AND OPEN-ENDED WRITING ASSIGNMENTS: After having read a selection from a book or having seen an episode from a movie, the students read a summary, study new vocabulary, respond in writing to questions and write oral summaries.