Thunk 3 - Input and Output

Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 11:00:00 +0200

From: Timothy Mason To: Foreign Language Teaching Forum FLTEACH@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

Students and pupils in most FL classrooms are expected to speak and/or to write the language as well as listen to and read it. Much energy is expended by teachers trying to persuade reluctant pupils to participate and to create conditions in which they can speak as much of the FL as possible. According to Stephen Krashen, they are, on the whole, wasting their time.Acquisition is powered by input alone, and output is simply what occurs after acquisition has been achieved.

As you may imagine, there have been many voices raised to object to this position. I think we can break the objections down into two main classes. First, there are those who object on pragmatic grounds, and then there are those whose disagreement is more theoretically based.

The pragamatists point out that even if SK is correct in his characterization of the relationship between input and output, nevertheless, output is necessary to enable teachers to identify how much progress pupils have made, and to determine what kind of material would be appropriate to their present level of linguistic development. (This problem is particularly acute within compulsory school systems, which are expected to grade and certify pupils according to their achievement levels, and which often stream (track or set) children in order to prevent excessive social mixing).

Such objections may be met by the suggestions that : a) learners should be permitted and even encouraged to choose their own material. b) school should stop grading pupils. Certification may be safely left to external examining bodies who will intervene at the end of schooling. Educators have far more important things to do. Moreover, evaluation can occur without necessarily calling upon output by individual pupils.

Theorists, on the other hand, will insist that the production of output is in itself part of the learning process. It is not until the learner has struggled to make herself understood, has had to recognize the need for accuracy on such and such a point, that she will approach mastery. For instance, Jacqueline Boulouffe - in the same collection as the Lightbown paper on the New Brunswick experiment - argues that we need to distinguish between surface processing - in which a person simply picks out the informational content of an utterance - and deep processing, in which a person recognizes the implication of the speaker in what is being said - that is to say, modality.

So, for example, if we hear the utterance : "I'd like to go to the cinema", surface processing will return 'like + go + cinema'. Deep processing would reveal the value of the modal verb 'would'. Now, as modality represents the insertion of the speaker in what is being said, it is only when we struggle to express ourselves, only when we are thoroughly personally implicated in the language, that we will be lead to process it in depth.

Boulouffe offers no experimental evidence for what she says ; it is an argument from the nature of language, and from a psychology of meaning. I believe that, for a number of reasons, it would be difficult to imagine how to test this thesis, but I do find it an interesting thunk.

Regards

Timothy Mason

iufm de versailles

tmason@timothyjpmason.com

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