Input and Interaction in SLA
Input and Interaction in SLA
LING6005
How does the (linguistic) environment contribute to the language learning process?
- What kind of language is available to learners?
- What are the theoretical consequences?
- What is the significance of language use?
What do learners need to construct L2 grammars?
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Learners need input and interaction to construct L2 grammar, somewhat of output
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Starting out…
- Do learners come to learning task with innate knowledge of language (UG)…
- Is language development inspired and conditioned by the environment…
- What are the implications of these views for SLA?
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Language learning as stimulus-response
‘every member of the social group must upon suitable occasion utter the proper speech-sounds and, when he hears another utter these speech sounds, must make the proper response’ (Bloomfield, 1933:29)
- Language ‘habits’(e.g. Bloomfield, 1933; Skinner, 1957)
- Input was hypothesised to form the basis of what was imitated
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Input – different types of evidence
- Positive evidence
Basically the input, ‘language’, that learners are exposed to.
- Negative evidence
NNS: There’s a basen of flowers on the bookshelf
NS: A basin?
NNS: base
NS: a base?
NNS: a base
NS: oh, a vase
NNS: vase
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Negative evidence is information that concerns the incorrectness of an utterance. This may be explicit such as telling someone it’s wrong.
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Why distinguish between positive and negative evidence?
- Different evidence types have theoretical ramifications for LA
- negative evidence is questioned in SLA (e.g. Schwartz, 1993)
- Is it consistently available?
- Do learners engage with it/notice it?
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Theorising input in SLA
- From the 1980s Stephen Krashen attempted to conceptualize the role of input and language use in SLA.
- As regards input, Krashen claimed that learners move along a developmental continuum by receiving comprehensible input.
- Comprehensible input = L2 input just beyond the learner’s current language competence.
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- ‘Speaking is a result of acquisition and not its cause. Speech cannot be taught directly but ‘emerges’ on its own as a result of binding competence via comprehensible input’
- ‘If input is understood, and there is enough of it, the necessary grammar is automatically provided. The language teacher need not attempt deliberately to teach the next structure along the natural order’
(Krashen, 1985:02)
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Input Hypothesis (Krashen, 1982, 1985, 1998)
- Humans acquire language in only one way – by understanding messages, or by receiving ‘comprehensible input’.
- We move from i, our current level, to i + 1, the next level along the natural order, by understanding input containing i + 1.
(Krashen 1985)
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- Does the input hypothesis make sense?
- Is it a testable hypothesis?
- How could you test it?
- How do we determine level i and level i+1?
- Is it circular?
-> acquisition takes place if the learner receives comprehensible input, but comprehensible input is only provided through acquisition…
- What is comprehensible input?
(see McLaughlin, 1987)
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Interaction
- Krashen’s investigations encouraged other researchers to examine the role of input in SLA.
- Long (1985) proposed a more systematic approach to the link between input and L2 development:
1. show that (a) linguistic/conversational adjustments promote (b) comprehension of input.
2. Show that (b) comprehensible input promotes (c) acquisition.
3. Deduce that (a) linguistic/conversational adjustments promote (c) acquisition
(Long, 1985:378)
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- What is the role of conversation in SLA (Long, 1980; Wagner-Gough and Hatch, 1975)?
- Confirmation checks.
- Clarification requests.
- Comprehension checks.
- Other repetitions and paraphrase (Pica 1994).
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The interaction hypothesis (first version: Long, Pica and others)
- Modification of the interactional structure of conversation… is a better candidate for a necessary (not sufficient) condition for acquisition. The role it plays in negotiation for meaning helps to make input comprehensible while still containing unknown linguistic elements, and, hence, potential intake for acquisition.
(Larsen-Freeman and Long 1991, p. 144)
(Pica et al., 1987:74)
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| NS | NNS |
| And right on the roof of the truck place the duck. The duck. | I to take it? Dog? [Confirmation check] |
| Duck. | Duck. |
| It’s yellow and it’s a small animal. It has two feet. | I put where it? [Clarification request] |
| You take the duck and put it on top of the truck. Do you see the duck? | Duck? [Confirmation check] |
| Yeah. Quack, quack, quack. That one. The one that makes that sound. | Ah yes. I see in the – in the head of him. |
| OK. See? | Put what? [Clarification request] |
| OK. Put him on top of the truck. | Truck? [Confirmation check] |
| The bus. Where the boy is. | Ah yes. |
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Do interactional adjustments promote L2 comprehension?
First trial (Gass and Varonis 1994)
Jane: All right now, above the sun place the squirrel. He’s right on top of the sun
Hiroshi: What is … the word?
Jane: OK. The sun.
Hiroshi: Yeah, sun, but …
Jane: Do you know what the sun is?
Hiroshi: Yeah, of course. Wh – what’s the
Jane: Squirrel. Do you know what a squirrel is?
Hiroshi: No.
Jane: OK. You’ve seen them running around on campus. They’re little furry animals. They’re short and brown and they eat nuts like crazy.
continued
- Second trial:
Hiroshi: The second thing will be … put here. This place is … small animal which eat nuts.
Jane: Oh, squirrel?
Hiroshi: Yeah (laughter)
Do interactional adjustments promote L2 acquisition?
Pretest (Mackey 1999)
55 NNS: The meal is not there?
56 NS: No it’s gone, what do you think happened?
57 NNS: Happened? The cat?
58 NS: Do you think the cat ate it?
59 NNS: The meal is the is the cat’s meal?
60 NS: It’s not supposed to be the cat’s dinner. I don’t think so.
61 NNS: But although this, this cat have eaten it.
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Treatment
4 NNS: What the animal do?
5 NS:They aren’t there, there are no bears.
6 NNS:Your picture have this sad girl?
7 NS:Yes, what do you have in your picture?
8 NNS: What my picture have to make her crying? I don’t know your picture.
9 NS:Yeah ok, I mean what does your picture show? What’s the sign?
10 NNS: No sign? … No, ok, what the mother say to the girl for her crying?
11 NS: It’s the sign ‘no bears’ that’s making her cry. What does your sign say?
12 NNS:The sign? Why the girl cry?
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Posttest 1
NNS: What do your picture have?
Posttest 2
NNS: What has the robber done?
NNS: Where has she gone in your picture?
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NNS previously used canonical word order with question intonation in order to ask questions. During the treatment the learner produced wh-fronting, but still with canonical word order. However, by the time of the 2nd post test, the learner was correctly placing an axillary verb in the 2nd position.
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- Mackey (1999:565) concludes: ‘taking part in interaction can facilitate second language development’
- However, researchers were drawing links between attention, noticing and L2 development leading to a rethinking of the Interaction Hypothesis.
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Feedback, recasts and negative evidence
- Student: Why does the aliens attacked earth?
- Teacher: Right. Why did the aliens attack earth? (Mackey et al 2000)
- Teacher: What did you do in the garden?
- NNS student (child): Mm, cut the tree
- Teacher: You cut the trees. Were they big trees or were they little bushes?
- NNS student (child): Big trees
(Oliver 2000)
The Interaction Hypothesis
(revised version)
It is proposed that environmental contributions to acquisition are mediated by selective attention and the learner’s developing L2 processing capacity, and that these resources are brought together most usefully, although not exclusively, during negotiation for meaning. Negative feedback obtained during negotiation work or elsewhere may be facilitative of L2 development, at least for vocabulary, morphology and language-specific syntax, and essential for learning certain specifiable L1-L2 contrasts.
(Long 1996, p. 414)
What’s different?
- Contribution of negative evidence is highlighted
- Attempts to clarify the processes by which input becomes intake (through selective attention)
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Output
- Swain (1985, 1995) and Swain and Lapkin (1995, 1998) argue that language use/production is required for ‘successful second language learning’
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The output hypothesis
(Swain 1995)
- Swain (1995, p 128) proposes three functions for learner output:
- the ‘noticing/ triggering’ function, or what might be referred to as the consciousness- raising role
- the hypothesis-testing function
- the metalinguistic function, or what might be referred to as its ‘reflective’ role.
The role of ‘feedback’
- ‘Interactionist’ approach to SLA
- If acquisition is a process of ‘skill acquisition’ then feedback is crucial for establishing ‘declarative knowledge’ (Ranta & Lyster 2007)
- Ellis (2007):
- Scaffolding→ learner attention → explicit knowledge → explicit memory → implicit learning → implicit memory, automatization and abstraction
Attention, consciousness-raising and ‘focus on form’
- Noticing is the necessary and sufficient condition for the conversion of input to intake for learning … more noticing leads to more learning.
(Schmidt 1994, pp. 17-18)
- Recasts in L2 classrooms are effective if they are accompanied by some additional cue, telling learners that it is the form and not only the meaning of their utterance that is in focus.
(Nicholas et al 2001, p. 748)
(see Philp 2003 and Leeman 2003 for recent empirical studies)
Input Processing Theory
(VanPatten 2002)
Intake is defined as the linguistic data actually processed from the input and held in working memory for further processing. As such, Input Processing attempts to explain how learners get form from input and how they parse sentences during the act of comprehension while their primary attention is on meaning.
(VanPatten 2002, p. 757)
Some IP suggestions accounting for ‘inefficient’ L2 learning:
- Learners process content words in the input before anything else
- Learners prefer to extract semantic information from lexical items rather than grammatical items (such as inflections)
- Learners prefer to process ‘meaningful’ morphology rather than ‘nonmeaningful’ morphology.
Conclusions
- NS and NNS work actively to achieve mutual understanding
- Negotiations involve both linguistic and interactional modifications
- NNS in ‘negotiating for meaning’ and interactions can attend to, take up and use language items made available by NS
- In some circumstances negative feedback can advantage learners
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Readings for this week
- M,M & M: Chapter 6
- Mackey (1999): available in BB.
References
Carroll, S. 2000: Input and evidence: The raw material of second language acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Carroll, S. 2007: Autonomous induction theory. Chapter 9 in VanPatten, B and Williams, J. eds Theories in Second Language Acquisition: An introduction. Lawrence Erlbaum, 155-176.
Gallaway, C. and Richards, B. J. (eds) 1994: Input and interaction in language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gass, S. M. and Mackey, A. 2007. Input, interaction and output in second language acquisition. Chapter 10 in VanPatten, B. and Williams, J. eds Theories in Second Language Acquisition: An introduction. Lawrence Erlbaum, 175-201.
Gass, S. M. and Varonis, E. M. 1994: Input, interaction and second language production. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 16/3, 283-302.
Izumi, S., Bigelow, M., Fujiwara, M. and Fearnow, S. 1999: Testing the output hypothesis: effects of output on noticing and second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 21, 421-52.
Izumi, S. and Bigelow, M. 2000: Does output promote noticing and second language acquisition? TESOL Quarterly 34, 239-78.
Krashen, S. D. 1985: The input hypothesis: Issues and implications. Harlow: Longman.
Larsen-Freeman, D. and Long, M. H. 1991: An introduction to second language acquisition research. Harlow: Longman.
Leeman, J. 2003 Recasts and second language development: Beyond negative evidence. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 25, 37-64.
Long, M. H. 1996: The role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition. In Ritchie, W. C. and Bhatia, T. K. (eds), Handbook of second language acquisition. San Diego: Academic Press, 413-68.
Mackey, A. 1999: Input, interaction and second language development: an empirical study of question formation in ESL. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 21, 557-88.
Mackey, A., Gass, S. and McDonough, K. 2000: how do learners perceive implicit negative feedback? Studies in Second Language Acquisition 19, 37-66.
Nicholas, H., Lightbown, P.M. and Spada, N. 2001: Recasts as feedback to language learners. Language Learning 51, 719-58.
Oliver, R. 2000: Age differences in negotiation and feedback in classroom and pairwork. Language Learning 50, 119-51.
Philp, J. 2003: Constraints on ‘noticing the gap’: Nonnative speakers’ noticing of recasts in NS-NNS interaction. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 25, 99-126.
Pica, T. 1994: Research on negotiation: what does it reveal about second-language learning conditions, processes and outcomes? Language Learning 44, 493-527.
Pica, T., Young, R. and Doughty, C. 1987: The impact of interaction on comprehension. TESOL Quarterly 21, 737-58.
Pienemann, M. and Johnston, M.: 1987. Factors influencing the development of language proficiency. In Nunan, D. (ed.) Applying second language acquisition research. Adelaide, Australia: National Curriculum Resource Centre, 45-141.
Schmidt, R. 1994: Deconstructing consciousness in search of useful definitions for applied linguistics. AILA Review 11, 11-26.
Snow, C. E.1994: Beginning from baby talk: twenty years of research on input and interaction. In Gallaway, C. and Richards, B.R. (eds) Input and interaction in language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3-12.
Swain, M 1995: Three functions of output in second language learning. In Cook, G. and Seidlhofer, B. (eds) Principle and practice in applied linguistics: studies in honour of H. G. Widdowson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 125-44.
VanPatten, B. 2002: Processing instruction: an update. Language Learning 52, 755-803.
VanPatten, B 2007. Input processing in adult second language acquisition. In VanPatten, B and Williams, J. eds Theories in Second Language Acquisition: An introduction. Lawrence Erlbaum, 115-136.
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