Nice to meet you my dear old and new friends.
I have been missing you a lot. You can not imagine how much!
I´d like you to accompany me today in order to discover an amazing world of Second Language Acquisition.
Are you interested in learning English or other foreign languages ?
As you have noticed, nowadays foreign languages are of enormous relevance and they are learned all over the world with huge enthusiasm by a great nimber of people.
The fact of the matter is , second language learning is one of the most popular disciplines in lots of countries.
By and large, bilingualism and pluriligualism are of great value these days as being able to communicate efficiently in many languages give us a lot of opportunities to work where we like and to create uncomparable masterpieces that nobody till now could be able to produce.
Today, I would like to share with you a piece of my work about second language acquisition.
Especially, I recommend my work to teachers of English and to those who is currently studing to be teachers of foreign languages.
Here you are!!!
According to Swain,
..producing the
target language may be the trigger that forces the learner to pay attention to
the means of expression needed in order to successfully convey his or her own
intended meaning. (Swain 1985: 249)
In Swain's view, learners need not only input,
but output: they need to use language in order to learn it.
To my way of thinking
both views can be true, that is to say, input and output are equally important
so as to achieve successful speaking proficiency and to be a competent
communicator. Any extreme is dangerous. That is why I am inclined to believe
that Swain´s views can be successful or not. In other words, the result depends
on various factors which interfere with the process of second language
acquisition.
First, we should bear in
mind learners´ needs, their expectancies as well as their demands are o be
taken into account.
Secondly, pushing
students to speak, forcing them to produce output in the target language make
no good to them. As a consequence, learners feel themselves frustrated being
unable to give any comprehensible output. Moreover, some of them can lose their
motivation and, as a result, their progress will be impeded.
Finally, there is no
direct evidence that comprehensible output
leads to language acquisition.It is a fact that high levels of
linguistic competence are possible without output. Indeed, there are cases that
learners could work out a considerably high level of communicative competence
from input alone.I firmly believe that the role of input is as relevant as the
role of output. Thus both of them are o be practised simultaneously.
1. An independent role of output in relation to
comprehensible input in the process of second language acquisition.
Some investigations which
have been made in the field of second language acquisition make it clear that
the development of a student´s communicative competence does not depend on
comprehensible input entirely.. The learner´s output plays a self-contained
part in the process of second language acquisition.
With reference to Krashen
(1987) ´´comprehensible input´´ and the affective condition are the actual
causes of language acquisition. On this hypothesis, exercises that stimulate
students to produce output would be considerable to language acquisition
insofar as they take into account atmosphere development takes place in or
provide with further comprehensible input.
Nevertheless, Swain
(1985) states that there are certain roles that have to do with output in
second language learning which are autonomous in relation to comprehensible
input´´. The output in Swain´s scrutiny confirms that French immersion students
manage to act as well as the native speakers on the points of sociolinguistic
competence and discourse. For producing those points learners do not need grammar a lot, although their
grammatical acting is not equal in value to the one of native speakers.
Students, in Swain´s investigation, were provided with enough comprehensible
input, regardless of the fact that their comprehensible output was scarce.
Swain assumes that language production as opposed to just language comprehension, push the students to
indict the language syntactically, and
not only semantically, consequently facilitating students´ grammatical
proficiency.
I am of the same opinion
here. I do totally agree with Swain´s point of view. My own experience as a
self-directed learner showed me that the desire to communicate effectively
stimulate us to shift from semantic processing
to syntactic one of the language produced. In other words, the development of
our communicative competence does not merely depend on input.
2. Comprehensible input versus comprehensible
output.
Krashen claims that´´ acquisition occurs with
reference to the input for meaning, not when
students produce output and focus
on form´´ (Krashen, 1982)
On the contrary, sources
on learning strategies emphasize the importance of students´conscious efforts
that are led towards production of output as well as grasping of input (Chamot,1987,
Dickinson,1987, Holec , 1985, Rubin , 1987 )
Opponents of practising
output argue that production of output and focusing on form are of great
advantage to students on the grounds that comprehensible input supply them with all the indispensable sources to
develop or improve the second language acquisition.
According to Swain (1985),
getting interlocutor´s message across
does happen with grammatically erroneous forms and sociolinguistically
inappropriate language. What is more, she points out that negotiation of
meaning pushes learners towards the comprehensible output which is conveyed accurately and
appropriately.
Being put in output, to
my mind, is a notion that has a lot in common with the ´´ i ± 1 comprehensible
input´´. In my case of self-directed learning, I had to direct myself to
comprehensible output, to put it another way, to meet social and practical
needs in the foreign language setting.
3. Second language acquisition without output. Is
it an effective way to learn foreign languages?
There are a great deal of
studies about acquisition without any output. The researchers claim that
learners are able to achieve high results in second language acquisition and communicative
competence without language production at all ( Krashen, 1994 )
Numerous studies confirm
that learners normally acquire a small but important portions of new vocabulary
knowledge being exposed only once to an unknown word in a comprehensible
context sufficient for predicted vocabulary growth ( Anderson, Herman, and
Naggy, 1985 )
Apart from the
abovementioned investigations, Krashen and Dupuy ( 1993 ) obtained similar
results in second language development.
Ellis ( 1995) gives
another example of acquisition without output. The participants of his scrutiny
were divided into two groups. The first one produced no output , however made
moderate , but
significant gains related to vocabulary, acquiring, in practice, more lexical
units per minute than the group that had to interact with the native speakers.
Though we have some
surveys that support the abovediscussed views, I strongly disagree with that
point of view due to the fact that my own experience as a learner and a teacher
confirms that without comprehensible output as well as input would be impossible
to acquire the target language, not to mention successful speaking proficiency.
For instance, I am
Ukrainian and had to learn Spanish due to the fact I had to live and work here.
As you know, all the Slavic languages are quite conservative,
particularly in terms of morphology (the means of inflecting nouns and verbs to
indicate grammatical differences).As a result, I found myself in trouble quite
often when I had a conversation with native speakers. First, I had merely been
engaging in semantic processing of the desired grammatical forms. Later, I found
out that I had to analyze thoroughly the
grammar of the language, that is ,to do grammatical analysis of the received
input. My further understanding of the syntactic rules was derived from the
comparison between the incomprehensible output and comprehensible input.
Therefore,
it seems to me that syntactic rather than semantic analysis of input for
grammatical structures might be essential for correcting incomprehensible
output.
Reconciliation between the two seemingly various
views as to what constitutes second language learning, as Swan puts it, is possible.
All things considered, I
would like to summarize that both views expressed by Swain can be reconciled.
Though seemingly different as to what constitutes second language acquisition
or learning, both points of view are of great relevance and must be taken into
account by foreign language teachers.
´´Rome was not built in a
day´´. With respect to the comprehensible output hypothesis, it still has some
points to be discussed, some problems to be solved out:
- comprehensible output
is far too rare in practice. It is not enough to make a considerable
contribution to linguistic competence
- relatively high levels
of communicative competence are possible without any kind of output
-We still have no direct
data stating that comprehensible output leads straight to language acquisition
Furthermore, there is
some evidence that confirm the fact that the majority of students can not stand
being forced to speak. Not to mention the fact that some of them feel lots of
times totally frustrated being unable to make themselves understood. Such
situations must be avoided, of course. Instead, the stress should be made on the needs of
students. With reference to the input hypothesis, need can be of some help when
it puts the learner in a position to get comprehensible input. Moreover,
stimulating and comprehensible input
will result in language acquisition through negotiation of meaning .It will
help learners to polish their output, improving at the same time the level of
their communicative competence.
Related to input, I want to mention the fact
that students in French immersion, in spite of years of input, were not as good
as observers planned they should be in grammatical aspects of their target
language ( Swain, 1985 )
To a certain extent this
is true, but I am inclined to believe that though the input is considered as insufficient in
the abovementioned case, I think, it helps learners to pay attention not only
to meaning, but also to form of the target language. In this way learners can
elaborate the proper comprehensible output , which will be understood by native
speakers, providing at the same time acquirers with the opportunity to interact
successfully and feel themselves,indeed, proficient speakers.
It can be argued
,nonetheless, that we have not yet given comprehensible input a true chance.
For the above stressed
reasons , we still have to see how
learners will progress in case their environment is filled with comprehensible
input. Therefore the following point must be taken into account – second
language acquisition is a process that evolves constantly,not a product. It is
impossible to stop it growing, since all the parts that are involved in this
incessant process tend to be shaped by interlocutors according to their needs:
pragmatic and social. Littlewood(1987)
divided communication needs into pragmatic and social.
According
to Littlewood, the former refers to the desire to communicate effectively
in a pragmatic sense´´,the latter to ´´the desire to communicate appropriately
in a social sense´´
Problems
that students often encounter are problems of social needs on the
interpersonal level as well as,on occasions, learners are conscious that their communicative
competence is not strong enough to cope with pragmatic needs.
Taking
everything into consideration, we need to upgrade and enrich constantly our knowledge and awareness of
pragmatic and social needs as suggested in Littlewoods model in order to be really competent communicators.
All
in all, acquirers who are motivated and
have access to a variety of interesting
reading and listening sources, being able to choose when they want to produce
output and when to keep silent elaborating their speech are bound to succeed in
acquiring target language. Only then, their efforts will bring the desired
result and they convert into real competent communicators.
Producing
language has vital and very important functions in the process of
second/foreign language learning and teaching which need to be investigated in future.
´´The
process of rendering thinking into speech is not simply a matter of memory
retrieval, but a process through which thinking reaches a new level of
articulation´´ ( Smagorinsky, 1998 )
On
balance, output is as relevant as input in second language acquisition. Both of
them are needed :
-to
have ideas crystallized;
-to
elaborate one´s own rules and sharpen understanding of ambiguous points;
-to
make more obvious inconsistencies and work on them;
-to
be able to reflect on errors;
-to
externalize thinking and have problems resolved;
-to
control the process of acquiring languages;
-to
analyze one´s one progress in second language acquisition
Waiting for your feedback, my dear friends !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kind regards .
Kate.
It´s strikingly surprising ...as a rule,people who accompany us for a brief moment,even for a few seconds, leave a profound trace in our mind. What is more, normally we change our perception of the world to such an extent that we take into account the least important things.
Students give up their time
with enthusiasm and interest participating in the web-quests, and for me- it´s
a sign that my pupils are motivated .They feel that their effort was
worthwhile. I expect that in the future students will not lose their motivation
and will even work more productively.
