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ADQUISICIÓN DEL INGLÉS COMO SEGUNDA LENGUA I
4º Grado en Estudios Ingleses
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Universidad de Granada
Reservados todos los derechos.

No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
Topic 2. Input, output and interaction
INPUT
What is input?
Language available to language learners through any medium.
• Listening / reading
• Gestural / visual language (sign languages)
Linguistic evidence used to formulate hypotheses about the second language system, that is,

linguistic hypotheses.
Basic component in the acquisition process: acknowledged in all SLA theories.
Input vs. Intake
Corder (1967) made an important distinction between what he called INPUT and INTAKE.
Input: What is available to the learner
Intake: What is actually internalised (“taken in”)
Anyone who has been in a situation of learning a second / foreign language is familiar with the
situation in which the language one hears is totally incomprehensible, to the extent that it may not
even be possible to separate the stream of speech into words.
• That is INPUT as it is available to the learner.

• It is not INTAKE as it is not integrated into the learner-language system.
This sort of input appears to serve no greater purpose for the learner than does that language that
is never heard.
Conceptually, one can think of the input as that language (in both spoken and written forms) to
which the learner is exposed.
“The simple fact of presenting a certain linguistic form to a learner in the classroom does not
necessarily qualify it for the status of input, for the reason that input is ‘what goes in’ not what is
available for going in, and we may reasonably suppose that it is the learner who controls this
input, or more properly his intake.”
Corder 1967 (p. 165)
a64b0469ff35958ef4ab887a898bd50bdfbbe91a-6454790
Input types
Input
Medium Nature
Oral Written Multimodal Authentic Modified
Input types – Medium
ORAL INPUT WRITTEN INPUT

Ephemeral Permanent
Phonological processes Graphic representation
Deliverate rate control by speaker Deliverate rate control by reader
Faster More lexically dense (generally)

Multimodal input
It combines different media (text, audio, image).
Advantage:
• It may facilitate acquisition insofar as the different media contribute to meaning.

• It may enhance interest (active attention)
Disadvantage:
• It may hamper acquisition insofar as different media compete for attentional resources.
• If text, sound and image do not agree, it may make comprehension more complicated.
Input types – Nature
Authentic / Natural input
Modified / Pedagogical input
• Pre-modified
• While-modified: ‘interactionally modified input’
- Simplified
✓ FLA – Speech directed toward young children
✓ SLA – Speech directed toward NNs
- Elaborated
✓ Input flood
✓ Semantic info
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Authentic / Natural Modified / Pedagogical
Pre-modified While-modified
Simplified Elaborated
FLA SLA

Baby talk,
motherese,
Foreigner
caretaker
talk,
speech, child-
teacherese
directed
speech
Authentic input
1. Authentic / Natural input
• Language that is way beyond learners’ current level – Impossibility to focus attention,
so no meaning can be understood.
• Beyond learners’ current competence – Does not promote interaction / Output
• Difficulty in turning natural input into intake.
2. Modified / Pedagogical input

• NNs make adjustments to their speech in the areas of pronunciation, grammar, and
lexicon in language directed toward linguistically deficient individuals (young children
and NNSs of a language).
• Various means of altering the speech that would normally be expected in situation in
which only fully proficient NSs are conversing.
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Speaker Addressee Modified input
Caretaker Children acquiring L1 Baby talk
NS NNS Foreigner talk
Contrastive features of FLA AND SLA
FLA SLA
No conscious choice Choice made by learner
Very rapid Relatively slow
No instruction Instruction is common
High competence reached Competence attained varies greatly
• SLA occurs against the background of FLA (interference hypothesis).

• FLA takes place before puberty (adulthood).
• FLA takes place before lateralization of brain (just before puberty).
Modifications may be in the form of…

SIMPLIFICATION
Less elaborated speech to facilitate
2.1. Simplified speech
“All speech communities have registers of a special kind for use with people who are regarded
for one reason or another as unable to readily understand the normal speech of the community
(e.g. babies, foreigners, deaf people). These forms of speech are generally felt by their users to
be simplified versions of the language, hence easier to understand, and they are often regarded
as imitation of the way the person addressed uses the language himself.”
Ferguson (1971, p.143)
The baby talk which is used by adults in talking to young children is felt to be easier for the child
to understand and is often asserted to be an imitation of the way the children speak. Such registers
as baby talk are, of course, culturally transmitted like any other part of the language and may be
quite systematic and resistant to change.
Another register of simplified speech is the kind of foreigner talk which is used by speakers of
a language to outsiders who are felt to have very limited command of the language or no
knowledge of it at all.
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Foreigner talk
Language directed towards linguistically less competent individuals (L2 learners).
• (Typically) native speech adapted in all areas (pronunciation, grammar and lexicon) to
make language more comprehensible.
• Making the language more comprehensible enables them to construct their L2 grammars.
Used by speakers of a language to outsiders who are felt to have very limited command of the
language or no knowledge of it at all.
Ferguson (1971, p.143)
Let´s see some examples…

Speech to NSs Speech to NNSs
Yo veo al soldado Mi ver soldado

SPANISH I I see DO soldier Me to see soldier
(DO = direct object marker)
Ya’rif Ya’rif
ARABIC He knows Used to mean: He/she/I/you
know
Many languages seem to have particular features of pronunciation, grammar and lexicon which
are characteristically used in this situation.
For example, a speaker of Spanish who wishes to communicate with a foreigner who has little or
no Spanish will typically use the infinitive of the verb or the third singular rather than the usual
inflected forms, and they will use mi 'me’ for yo 'I' and omit the definite and indefinite articles:
mi ver soldado ‘me see soldier' for yo veo al soldado ‘I see the soldier’. Such Spanish is felt by
native speakers of the language to be the way foreigners talks and it can most readily be elicited
from Spanish-speaking informants by asking them how foreigners speak.
In both baby talk and foreigner talk the responses of the person addressed affect the speaker, and
the verbal interaction may bring some modification of the register from both sides. The normal
outcome of the use of baby talk is that as the child grows up they acquire the other normal, non-
simplified registers of the language and retain some competence in babytalk for use in talking
with young children and in such displaced functions as talking to a pet or with a lover. The usual
outcome of the use of foreigner talk is that one side or the other acquires an adequate command
of the other's language and the foreigner talk is used in talking to, reporting on, or ridiculing
people who have not yet acquired adequate command of the language.
Let´s see now a kindergarten teacher´s instructions to her students.
To an NS kindergarten class:
These are babysitters taking care of babies. Draw a line from Q to q.
From S to s and then trace.
To a single NS:
Now; Johnny, you have to make a great big pointed hat.
To an intermediate level NS of Urdu:
Now her hat is big. Pointed.
To a low intermediate level NS of Arabic:
See hat? Hat is big. Big and tall.
To a beginning level NS of Japanese:
Big, big, big hat.
To a beginning level NS of Korean:

Baby sitter. Baby.
There is a gradation from talk to NSs to non-proficient L2 speakers.
The teacher adjusts her speech depending on the proficiency of her students.
Let´s see some examples…
NS speech Foreigner talk
D’yu wanna go? Do you want to go?
No I can´t. No, I cannot.
Features of foreigner talk
• Slow speech rate

• Loud speech
• Long pauses
• Simple vocabulary
• Repetitions and elaborations
• Paucity of slang
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During the course of a conversation, NS´s assessment of the language ability or proficiency of
an NNS is likely to change. SO, there will be changes in the speech patterns during the
conversation.
Now, STOP thinking of simplifications…
If we go back to modified input, modifications may also be in the form of…
ELABORATION
Speech provides more detailed information – Greater amount of detail
2.2 Elaborated input

Let´s see more examples…
NNS: Now have increasing food costs changed your eating habits?
NS: Well, I don´t know that it´s changed THEM. I try to adjust.
NNS: Pardon me? (Expressing lack of understanding)
NS: I don´t think it´s changed MY EATING HABITS.
NNS: How have increasing food costs changed your eating habits?
NS: Oh, rising costs we´ve cut back on the more expensive things. GONE to cheaper foods.
NNS: Pardon me?
NS: WE´VE GONE to cheaper foods.
• Features of elaborated modified input

o Slower speech
o Clearer articulation and emphatic stress
o Paraphrases
o Synonyms and restatements
o Rhetorical signalling devices
o Self-repetition
o Suppliance of optical syntactic signals (e.g.. relative and complement clause
markers)

• They serve neither to “simplify” nor to “complexify” the surface form… rather, they are
clarifications of meaning only, opportunities for the listener/reader to better decode the
communication (Parker and Chaudron 1987: 110)
So… what?
Why is foreigner talk useful in language learning?
• It facilitates L2 acquisition
• By hearing speech that has been simplified the L2 learner will be better able to
understand what is said.
Without understanding the language, no learning can take place. (Gass and Selinker, 2008,
p.309)
INPUT HYPOTHESIS

Views on input
There are two broad views on input leading to acquisition
• Input is both necessary and sufficient for L2 acquisition.

o The frequency hypothesis
o Input processing theory
o Input hypothesis
• Input is not sufficient on its own but interaction/output are also required
o Interaction hypothesis
o Comprehensible output hypothesis
o Gass’ model of L2 acquisition
o Sociocultural theory
Input hypothesis (Krashen)
• L2s are acquired ‘by understanding messages, or by receiving comprehensible input’

(Krashen 1985:2)
• Comprehensible input is that bit of language that is heard/read and that is slightly
ahead of a learner´s current state of grammatical knowledge.
• Language containing structures that a learner already knows essentially serves no
purpose in acquisition.
• Similarly, language containing structures way ahead of a learner´s current knowledge
is not useful. A learner does not have the ability do ‘do’ anything with those
structures.

• Main claim: The sine quo non of acquisition is input that is slightly beyond the
learner´s current level of grammatical knowledge, i.e. comprehensible input.
• Given the right kind of input, acquisition will be automatic.
• Krashen defined a learner´s current state of knowledge as I and the next state as I +
1. Thus, the input a learner is exposed to must be at the i + 1 level in order for it to
be of use in terms of acquisition.
• “We move from I, our current level to i + 1, the next along the natural order, by
understanding input containing i + 1” (Krashen 1985:2)
• Krashen assumed a Language Acquisition Device, that is an innate mental
structure capable of handling both first and second language acquisition. The input
activates this innate structure. But only input of a very specific kind (I + 1) will be
useful in altering a learner´s grammar.
• When L2 learners process these messages for meaning, grammar learning will
naturally occur.

o Input that is I +1 activates UG (also known as LAD)
o Krashen proposed this role for input on the assumption that the mechanisms
of L2 learning are essentially similar to the mechanisms of L1 learning.
In order to build and L1 grammar, children only need to be exposed to the
language that parents or caretakers direct to them for the purpose of meaning
making.
• The Input Hypothesis is central to all of acquisition and also has implications for the
classroom (Gass and Selinker 2008)
• Speaking: result of acquisition
o It cannot be taught directly but emerges on its own as a result of building
competence via comprehensible input.
• If input is understood and there is enough of it, the necessary grammar is automatically
provided.
o Teachers do not need to teach the next structure along the natural order – it
will be provided automatically if the student receives a sufficient amount of
comprehensible input.
• Therefore → the teacher´s main role is to ensure that students receive comprehensible
input.
• Limitations
1. The levels of knowledge are not defined in the hypothesis. It is not specific as to
how to define levels of knowledge. Thus, if we are able to validate this hypothesis,
we must know how to define a particular level (say, level 800) so that we can know
whether the input contains linguistic level 1905 and, if so, whether the learner, as a
result, moves to level 801.
2. What is sufficient quantity? Krashen states that there has to be sufficient quantity
of the appropriate input. But what is sufficient quantity? How do we know whether
the quantity is sufficient or not? One token, two tokens, 777 tokens?
o Perhaps the quantity necessary for change depends on developmental level, or
how ready the learner is to acquire a new form.
Input in different theories
Contrastive analysis (Behaviourism)
• L1 and L2 language acquisition – seen as a process of learner´s imitation (Lado 1957;

Skinner 1957).
• Input → Of primary importance since it is essential for habit formation. Therefore, it is
sufficient for language acquisition.
• It implies: repetition without cognitive work behind or mental processing.
• Learning a language involved repetition as its primary mechanism.
Universal Grammar
• Input
o Because the poverty of the stimulus (POS) → regarded as a characteristic
feature of the input, leading to the logical problem of language acquisition
(White 1989)

o Only a few instances of exposure are sufficient to trigger appropriate language
forms.
o Trigger that interacts with an innate system and / or the L1 to promote language
learning.
• Different focus
o The internal mechanisms a learner brings to the language-learning situations
(focus on innateness and the nature of the innate system):
o Learners=creators of language systems: input received minor importance.
Input-based emergentist perspectives:
• Input – Highly significant.

• Learners are seen to extract regularities from the input as opposed to regularities being
imposed by UG grammatical rules → formal aspects are constructed and abstracted from
the input, they emerge from it, from language use and experience (usage-based).
Comprehension
• Crucial to the success of any conversation is the ability to understand and to be

understood.
• Lack of comprehension is a characteristic of many conversations involving NNs.
• What factors determine comprehensibility?
• The first area of concern is a discussion of comprehension is the NS´s ability to
understand the NNS´s pronunciation.

• However, this is clearly not the only factor; the NNS´s ability to use the second
language grammatically is yet another.
• In fact, in a research study, one NS listeners were asked to judge sentences read by the
same NNS (each of 14 NNSs read one pair of sentences, all of which were then
randomized). The sentences varied according to whether or not they were grammatical.
One version was grammatical and the other was not. Given that one speaker read both
versions, pronunciation remained constant.
Grammatical: It is unusual for him to have a new car.
Ungrammatical: He is unusual to have a new car.
Grammatical: He always spends his holidays at home
Ungrammatical: He does spend his holidays always at home.
• When asked to judge the NNS´s pronunciation (“good” and “not good”), NSSs for the
most part judged the grammatical sentences as being spoken by a speaker with good
pronunciation and the ungrammatical sentences spoken by a speaker with bad

pronunciation.
• Although grammaticality had an influence on the majority of the responses, there were
some speakers for whom grammaticality had little effect on NS judgement.
• These were the speakers who were judge, on an independent rating, to have very good or
very bad pronunciation; that is, the two extremes.
• Thus, understanding an NNS´s speech is dependent on at least the grammaticality
of the NNS´s speech as well as the pronunciation.
• An additional factor determining comprehensibility is the NNS´s ability to contextualize
the language by using appropriate vocabulary and linking devices.
Dear Mr. Brown,
I´m very glad to receive your good request about expending for language. I looked it
hardly and found that late.
• These two sentences are interesting in that they are grammatically correct, but
semantically anomalous. What makes it semantically anomalous? The choice of
vocabulary items, namely expending, language, hardly make them difficult to understand.
• It seems, then, that vocabulary choice is much more central to assigning meaning than
is correct grammar.
• The second area of concern in a discussion of comprehension is the NNS´s ability to

understand.
• In conversation, indications of understanding are given in a number of ways. Most
common are what are called backchannel cues. These are generally verbal messages, such
as uh huh or year, which are said during the time another person is talking. When a
conversation is face to face head nods can also serve the same function.
• NNSs of a language quickly learn how to give appropriate backchanneling cues without
the concomitant ability to actually understand the conversation.

• The more familiar NSs are with the NNS speech, either through individual contact or
through language background, the easier it is for NS comprehension to take place.
• In particular, comprehension appears to be facilitated by three factors:
a) Familiarity with a particular NNS.
b) Familiarity with non-native speech in general.
c) Familiarity with the discourse topic.
• This is not unlike what happens with child speech, as it is frequently the case that young
children are only understood by their caregivers.


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ADQUISICIÓN DEL INGLÉS COMO SEGUNDA LENGUA I

4º Grado en Estudios Ingleses

Facultad de Filosofía y Letras

Reservados todos los derechos.

Language available to language learners through any medium.

Reservados todos los derechos.

Basic component in the acquisition process: acknowledged in all SLA theories.

Input vs. Intake

Input: What is available to the learner

Intake: What is actually internalised (“taken in”)

• That is INPUT as it is available to the learner.

Corder 1967 (p. 165)

Oral Written Multimodal Authentic Modified

ORAL INPUT WRITTEN INPUT

Reservados todos los derechos.

It combines different media (text, audio, image).

• It may facilitate acquisition insofar as the different media contribute to meaning.

Input types – Nature

Authentic / Natural input

Modified / Pedagogical input

Este Black Friday ¡650€ de descuento!

Reservados todos los derechos.

1. Authentic / Natural input

2. Modified / Pedagogical input

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Contrastive features of FLA AND SLA

• SLA occurs against the background of FLA (interference hypothesis).

Modifications may be in the form of…

Reservados todos los derechos.

2.1. Simplified speech

Ferguson (1971, p.143)

Llévate 1 año de WUOLAH PRO con BBVA. ¿Cómo? ¡+Info aquí!

Ferguson (1971, p.143)

Let´s see some examples…

Reservados todos los derechos.

Yo veo al soldado Mi ver soldado

These are babysitters taking care of babies. Draw a line from Q to q.

From S to s and then trace.

Now; Johnny, you have to make a great big pointed hat.

Now her hat is big. Pointed.

To a low intermediate level NS of Arabic:

See hat? Hat is big. Big and tall.

To a beginning level NS of Japanese:

Big, big, big hat.

To a beginning level NS of Korean:

Reservados todos los derechos.

There is a gradation from talk to NSs to non-proficient L2 speakers.

Let´s see some examples…

NS speech Foreigner talk

D’yu wanna go? Do you want to go?

No I can´t. No, I cannot.

Features of foreigner talk

• Slow speech rate

Now, STOP thinking of simplifications…

If we go back to modified input, modifications may also be in the form of…

2.2 Elaborated input

Reservados todos los derechos.

NNS: Pardon me? (Expressing lack of understanding)

NS: I don´t think it´s changed MY EATING HABITS.

NNS: Pardon me?

NS: WE´VE GONE to cheaper foods.