Extensive Processing Instruction (EPI) is strongly aligned with Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction, although EPI goes considerably further by providing a language-specific, psycholinguistically informed instructional sequence which operationalises many of those principles through the MARS EARS framework.
The important distinction is that, whereas Rosenshine identifies broad principles of effective instruction, EPI translates many of them into a coherent progression from modelling and input processing to structured production, automatisation and spontaneous communication.
Table 1. How EPI aligns with Rosenshine’s 10 Principles of Instruction
| Rosenshine’s principle | How EPI operationalises it through MARS EARS |
|---|---|
| 1. Begin a lesson with a short review | Systematic retrieval of previously taught chunks, vocabulary and structures through starters, cumulative listening and reading, recycled sentence builders and interleaving. Retrieval is distributed throughout the lesson, not confined to its beginning. |
| 2. Present new material in small steps | New language is introduced through carefully selected high-frequency chunks and sentence patterns. Cognitive load is managed by controlling novelty and gradually increasing processing demands, moving from supported recognition to independent production. |
| 3. Ask many questions and check all responses | Frequent comprehension checks, meaning-focused questioning, aural discrimination, mini-whiteboards, true/false tasks and error detection ensure active participation and provide evidence of learning across the class. |
| 4. Provide models | Sentence builders, teacher modelling, aural input, worked examples and repeated encounters with target patterns establish accurate phonological, lexical and syntactic representations before independent production. |
| 5. Guide student practice | Structured Production progresses through paired chunking and reading aloud, vocabulary building and micro-writing, paired oral retrieval, mini-roleplays, automaticity activities and communicative tasks. Scaffolding is progressively withdrawn. |
| 6. Check for student understanding | Diagnostic checks during Awareness-raising and Receptive Processing, alongside Autonomy checkpoints, establish whether learners can recognise, understand, manipulate and independently retrieve the target language. |
| 7. Obtain a high success rate | Comprehensible input, carefully controlled task demands, extensive scaffolding and gradual increases in difficulty maximise successful processing and retrieval without eliminating appropriate challenge. |
| 8. Provide scaffolds for difficult tasks | Sentence builders, narrow input, partially completed texts, visual support, substitution tables and guided production reduce unnecessary cognitive demands. Scaffolds are systematically faded as competence increases. |
| 9. Require and monitor independent practice | Autonomy, Routinization and Spontaneity progressively require learners to retrieve, assemble and use language without sentence builders. Teachers monitor accuracy, fluency, retrieval speed and independent communicative performance. |
| 10. Engage students in weekly and monthly review | Spaced retrieval, cumulative recycling, interleaving and recurring high-frequency constructions ensure previously taught language is revisited across lessons, units and terms in varied communicative contexts. |
Where EPI goes beyond Rosenshine
Although the correspondence is substantial, EPI should not be presented merely as Rosenshine applied to languages. It offers several additional dimensions which Rosenshine’s principles do not explicitly specify.
| Additional dimension | What EPI contributes |
|---|---|
| Psycholinguistic sequencing | A principled progression from phonological and meaning-focused processing to syntactic encoding, retrieval, automatisation and spontaneous production. |
| Listening-first instruction | Systematic development of phonological representations, speech segmentation and aural processing before learners are expected to produce unfamiliar language independently. |
| Input processing before output | Extensive sentence-level and connected-text receptive work designed to strengthen form–meaning mappings before learners undertake increasingly demanding production. |
| Lexicogrammatical instruction | Vocabulary and grammar are taught together through high-frequency constructions and chunks, with explicit grammatical awareness developed in context. |
| Automaticity and fluency | Dedicated Routinization activities aim to increase retrieval speed, processing efficiency and the automatic deployment of familiar language. |
| Spontaneous communication | The instructional sequence culminates in less predictable communicative performance, requiring learners to retrieve, assemble and adapt language with decreasing external support. |
| Diagnostic autonomy checkpoints | Low-stakes assessments at the end of MARSEA sub-units check independent listening, reading, writing and speaking performance, generating evidence for responsive teaching. |
An important qualification
The alignment is both conceptual and pedagogical, but, of course, not evidence that Rosenshine experimentally validated EPI. Whilst Rosenshine’s principles synthesise broad findings about effective instruction, EPI goes much further by integrating those principles with solid theories and evidence concerning second-language acquisition, cognitive processing, skill acquisition and memory.
In other words Rosenshine tells teachers what effective instruction should generally involve; EPI provides language teachers with a more specific account of how to sequence instruction so that learners move from understanding language to retrieving, assembling and using it fluently and spontaneously.
In that sense, Rosenshine provides many of the instructional principles, while MARS EARS provides a language-specific instructional architecture through which those principles can be enacted.
