INPUT, OUTPUT, INTERACTION, ACQUISITION, LEARNING

Which of the following characteristics of caretakers’ talk do you feel are possible to
become adopted in the classroom and could contribute to acquisition in the classroom?

a) they do not follow the syllabus, while in the classroom …

b) caretakers do not normally provide explanations for their offspring (e.g. of how to use
the past simple tense), while teachers …
c) Harmer: they use language that fits the situation, rough-tune what they say to match the
child’s age and situation, while the teacher, and the input they use, as well as the
speakers in recordings …
d) they do not drill, while teachers …
e) they do not often correct errors of grammar, but only the ‘truth value’ of what a child
says, while teachers …
f) their communication is message-focused, while in the classroom, communication is …
g) Harmer: In the end, it is their desire to communicate needs, wants and feelings that
seems to matter most, while in the classroom …
h) Harmer: children have a strong motivational urge to communicate in order to be fed and
understood, while learners in the classroom …
i) Johnson: caretaker talk is intelligible and grammatically well-formed, while…
j) Johnson: caretakers often talk to children about objects that can be seen, and events
that are happening in front of their eyes. They talk about the here-and-now, while…
k) Cross 1977: 169, in Johnson 2008: “the vast majority of expressions the child hears
encode events that are perceptually, cognitively and semantically available and salient to
the child”, while …
l) Caretakers simplify, use fewer grammatical morphemes in speech; sentences tend to be
shorter
m) Child-directed speech includes a lot of redundancy; caretakers often repeat things
several times; they often point to things, while

Acquisition and learning from Jeremy Harmer How to teach English:

1. Look at the following statement about acquisition and think of possible benefits and
impediments:

Teachers should concentrate on acquisition rather than learning and the role of the teacher is to
provide comprehensible input, and thus learners will acquire the language the way children do and
when they want to say something, they will be able to retrieve the language they need from their
acquired- language store.

2. Look at the next statement about learning

Learning: the learner has to think more consciously about what they want to say as the language is
not available for use in the same way as via acquisition. The principal function of learnt language is to
monitor what is coming from our acquired store to check that it is correct. As a result, learnt
language tends to ‘get in the way’ of acquired-language production and may inhibit spontaneous
communication.

3. What consequences may evolve if we decide upon acquisition:

Now, in the classroom, if we believe that acquisition is superior to learning, we will spend all our time
providing comprehensible input but we will not ask the students to focus on how the language
works. Yet, there are problems with this approach:

a) the ability to acquire language easily tends to deteriorate with age

Q 2 U: Are you young enough for acquisition only?

b) teenagers and adults have perfectly good reasoning powers and may want to think
consciously about how language works

Q 2 U: Are you the person who prefers to know how language works, know the rules and the system,
or do you prefer to be provided with carefully graded material in which vocabulary and grammar are
explained in order to understand the language and communicate in it?

C) the amount of exposure they get (in terms of hours) and the situation in which this language
is used are different

Q 2 U: Is there enough time for acquiring all the information you are supposed to know from classes?

c) mere exposure to comprehensible input is not enough perhaps to older children and
adults, who should have their attention drawn to aspects of language and can notice these
aspects so that the next time the learners come across these, they will recognize the
aspects.

Q 2 U: Would you prefer the input which is on your level + slightly above (Krashen’s n+1) rather
than challenge yourself with more difficult material yet authentic and with the task adjusted to
your level?

e) a good language classroom should simply create plenty of opportunities to activate the
language knowledge; learners should also be given chances of studying language and the
way it works – both acquisition and learning have their part to play for students after
childhood.

Q 2 U: Do you feel that your language absorption comes more from activities directed at
acquisition or at learning? How can you help yourself in acquiring natural language in home
conditions?

The Silent Period

Quite a considerable period of time may pass between the acquirer’s first being exposed to a
new language item and their beginning to produce it. According to Krashen, output is evidence
that input has done its job and that acquisition has occurred. To sum up, we need to answer the
question of whether teachers should modify and simplify their speech for the learners to
enhance comprehension?

HYPOTHESES

Long (1983) wanted to show a distinction between native speakers’ talks and NNs –NSs talks.
They modify speech to make it more comprehensible. Gass (2003) points to interaction
modifications: confirmation checks, clarification requests and ‘topic-focused questions’.

Pica et al. (1987) refer to this Interaction Hypothesis and say that learners and their interlocutors
negotiate the meaning of messages (NfM ) by modifying and restructuring their interaction in
order to reach mutual understanding.
 Imagine the following experiment (carried out by them):

It involved native speakers of English directing non-native speakers on how to do a task. Half the
pairs were asked to modify their input, but interaction was not allowed. The other pairs did not
modify input, but NfM through interactions was allowed. The latter (ta druga) group scored much
higher in the comprehension test.

The conclusions can be as follows:

a) both interaction and negotiation for meaning play an important role

b) avoiding complexity is not necessarily important,
c) learners may need an increase rather than a decrease in input to make something clear, as
repetition turned out helpful in the experiment,
d) simplified texts are not natural or authentic

Q2U: Think about the following statement:

“if oral interaction between students and teacher is encouraged, even ungraded syllabuses and
materials may provide input that will become comprehensible” (ibid: 755).

The Output Hypothesis, in the 1990’s, associated with the name of the Canadian linguist Merrill
Swain (woman), claimed that output is often more challenging for the learner than understanding
input. Producing language, and not just understanding, is important. Therefore, the idea of learning
by doing is in sympathy with Swain’s message. (Mind you Krashen paid attention only to
comprehensible input.)

Fossilization

Q2U: Think about it yourself: is producing output more challenging for the learner than
understanding it?

Q2U: Will plenty of input plus opportunities for output produce acceptable language use?

Q2U: Will learners who acquire the language in the natural environment without tuition make
sufficient progress? (experiment, p. 92 Johnson) Most do, without any corrections at all, yet some
people will end up fossilized in their attempts. Why is it so?

Fossilization takes place when the language a learner has acquired is sufficient to meet his/ her needs
and there is no reason for the learner’s language to continue to progress towards the ‘norm’.

Schumann’s (sociolinguistic) approach to SLA:

Where the learner wishes to integrate with the speakers of the FL, to be considered as one of them,
there is a motivation for fossilized forms to be replaced by the standard ones. Schumann uses the
term acculturate to express his central idea, and his theory is referred to as the acculturation model.
The idea is that the occurrence or otherwise of fossilization will depend on the degree to which the
learner wishes to acculturate to the FL language and society.

Q2U: Can you think of any ways that classroom language teaching can either stop fossilization from
happening, i.e. attempt to ‘deffossilize’ the fossilized learner?

To move learners’ language along, Swain suggests creating language teaching tasks which not only
provide opportunities for output, but also push the learner to notice aspects of how the target
language ‘works’, and focus attention on elements of ‘form’, rather than just message.
SLA as a subconscious process: Krashen’s i and i+1

1. Is ‘noticing the gap’ in language learning a conscious or a subconscious process: does the learner need to notice a gap? Will this
process will normally a conscious one?
2. How does I turn into i+1? Does it occur on a subconscious level?
3. What factors can make noticing happen?
4. You may admit that noticing and consciousness raising are important in language learning. But how can they be introduced into
the classroom? Try to think of some ways this might be done.
5. Is there a distinction between ‘knowing about’ and ‘knowing how to’? Provide examples.
6. Why is automization important and what role does it fulfil?
7. Think about coordinating all actions while car driving – what is it like?
8. Which of the following skills related to English might be considered ‘lower level’ and which ‘higher level’?
- differentiating the two ‘th’ sounds
- understanding the main message the speaker is conveying
- understanding the difference between ‘I have seen’ and ‘I saw’
- describing what you want sufficiently accurately to ensure that you get it
- forming correct past tenses
- add one more example of your own…
9. What could pre-automization stage be like? Think of the speaking skill.
10. How does the learner move from the first stage of full conscious attention to the stage of effortless production?
11. How can proceduralization be facilitated?

3. Schmidt’s 1990 paper develops the noticing idea discussing what factors can make noticing
happen:

- frequency in input

- perceptual salience in input: when a form is ‘reduced’ in some way it becomes less noticeable

- task demands: setting up activities that rely on something understood or used

5. Is there a distinction between ‘knowing about’ and ‘knowing how to’? Provide examples.

Declarative and procedural knowledge: distinction between ‘knowing about’ and ‘knowing how to’.
Having a declarative knowledge of a language is quite different from being able to speak it.

Automization equals making automatic. Shiffrin and Dumais (1981) describe it as ‘a fundamental
component of skill development’ – the skill of using a foreign language.

6. Why is automization important and what role does it fulfil?

When a skill is newly learned, its performance takes up a great deal of conscious attention, which is
sometimes called channel capacity (‘room in the mind’).

7. Think about coordinating all actions while car driving – what is it like?

In fact, ‘higher level skills are involved in it. Coordinating all actions in car driving together is a lot. In
fact, ‘higher level skills are involved in it, which require available channel capacity. Yet, channel
capacity can only be made available to handle such matters as paying attention to what is happening
around you, anticipating the movement of other traffic and of pedestrians if ‘lower-level’ skills like
changing gear have been made so automatic that they occupy no ‘room in the mind’. When novice
drivers have automated it, they will be able to perform the action without even being aware that
they are doing it. The role of automization in skill learning is therefore to free valuable channel
capacity for those more important tasks which require it.

8. Which of the following skills related to English might be considered ‘lower level’ and which ‘higher
level’?

- differentiating the two ‘th’ sounds

- understanding the main message the speaker is conveying
- understanding the difference between ‘I have seen’ and ‘I saw’
 - describing what you want sufficiently accurately to ensure that you get it
- forming correct past tenses
- add one more example of your own…

9. What could pre-automization stage be like? Think of the speaking skill.

Language learners first struggle so hard with the mechanics of the language that holding a
conversation with them is very hard work indeed. All their attention seems to be focused on trying to
produce the correct tense. It is the pre-automization stage. Over time the learner will come to use
that tense so automatically that it occupies no thought space for them to do so, at which point they
are free to think about what they are saying, not how they are saying it.

10. How does the learner move from the first stage of full conscious attention to the stage of
effortless production?

Anderson and his colleagues describe how the learner moves from the stage of conscious attention
to the stage of effortless production. Anderson’s model conceptualizes automization as the process
of converting that declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge.

Stage 1 is called the declarative stage: the learner is given knowledge that is memorized. When they
want to perform an action, the stored knowledge has to be dragged from memory. It’s done
consciously.

Stage 2 is called proceduralization stage, in which the learner converts ‘knowledge about’ into
‘knowledge how to’. The knowledge becomes proceduralized or automized. It has been described as
DECPRO, meaning ‘from declarative to procedural’.

When a skill is newly learned, its performance takes up a great deal of conscious attention –
which is sometimes called channel capacity (‘room in the mind’)...The role of automization in
skill learning is therefore to free valuable channel capacity for those more important tasks
which require it. (Johnson 2008: 102-106)

12. How can proceduralization be facilitated? Pp. 106-109 Johnson

https://books.google.pl/books?id=DbmDhwWV4CkC&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=hitomi
%27s+example+in+acquisition&source=bl&ots=LtdGuz5KGi&sig=9IGIiJdUnJy0S4qyqzQ9T4vpiZ0&hl=p
l&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiT-
1.12 Automization1 or automaticity2
Listening comprehension belongs to ‘higher level skills’ and it requires to “free valuable channel capacity” in the mind for message
comprehension, which Johnson (2008: 102-106) classifies under higher-rank goals. Some learners, however, even at quite advanced
proficiency degrees of English may still be at the novice levels, the latter called “pre-automization stage”, which is specifically the stage of
learning whereby former skill instruction is being linked with declarative knowledge.

In Johnson (ibid.: 105-106) declarative knowledge is understood as knowledge about the stored knowledge since with respect to a skill it
cannot entail all information that listeners encounter in the texts they are exposed to, as this knowledge is simply not targeted, but the
knowledge about the process of comprehension. In contrast, procedural knowledge stands for the know-how, knowledge of how to
approach the process, an equivalent of strategies. During the second stage of automization, called “proceduralization stage”, the
declarative knowledge “becomes proceduralized or automized.”
However, McLaughlin (1990 in ibid.) claims that “there is more to learning a complex cognitive skill than developing automaticity
through practice”, and claims that “automization alone, without restructuring, cannot account for skill learning.” Not only is it necessary to
automate each of the micro-skills separately but also to master the combination of a few at a time, in other words a listener needs to
restructure his way of dealing with a comprehension act. (ibid.)
Apparently, what seems to be obvious to effective learners does not often appear as such to ineffective listeners, who without any
training are frequently unable to define their own ways of learning the skill. The school, however, is responsible for ensuring, instead of
assuming, that the obvious natural processes that need to be applied are well-known and familiar to both effective and ineffective students
to such a degree that they will know just as much about how to study the material as about what to study.
Shiffrin and Shneider (1977 in Robinson, 1995: 305) argue that “controlled processes activate sequential and temporary links in short-
term memory”, then “ongoing practice in consistent environments” establishes more permanent links in long-term memory, which are
afterwards mobilised by automatic processes when encountering new input.
Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (2010: 45) claims that a person’s language introspection (or metacognitive analysis) is strictly connected with
incorporating the type of attention called focal attention, the closest to awareness, and the other level of attention that is reflective and
directional.

1
“Automization means ‘making automatic’, a process described by Shiffrin and Dumais as “a fundamental component of skill
development”. (Johnson 2008: 102)
2
According to Field (2009: 345), ‘automatic’ means “employed in a way that is rapid and accurate, and that makes minimal demands upon
attention.”