Factors that promote SLA development.

Factors that promote SLA development.

Input and Interaction

Input features that promote SLA

• Ellis stated that input needs to contain a new linguistic feature and that it must be frequent, salient and noticeable so as students become aware of it.

• Mackey A.: "Pre-modified input is generally operationalized as input that has been carefully targeted at the level of the learner in order to facilitate learner comprehension".

• Spencer: " To facilitate language acquisition, input must be comprehensible".

• As Ioup quoted Smith in her paper: "(...) input enhanced refers to the explicit structural information given to the learner".

POSITIVE INPUT ENHANCEMENT: explicit information or saliency.

NEGATIVE INPUT ENHANCEMENT:

tell sts explicitly what is not possible -provide negative evidence.

I believe that providing our students with input is fundamental to promote SLA because students need to be exposed in order to learn the language. In a natural setting the amount of linguistic features is higher and richer and that is why I decided to use L2 most of the time.

While I was planning my first lessons, I included base line input and as my tutor suggested me, I started modifying it because sts were not going to able to understand it.

So, during the whole internship I used pre-modified input. I created my own reading texts to make the new linguistic features frequent and salient and also to facilitate students comprehension. I think it was a good decision to modify input before presenting it to the sts because they were all able to notice the new linguistic features. If I wouldn't have modified it, they may have lost many linguistic features when trying to comprehend the material.

As there is a need for conscious awareness of form in adult language learning, I've provided some input enhancement during the focus on grammar giving explicit information to sts on the use of the If conditional zero. I believe that input enhancement techniques contribute to learners noticing and helps the development of L2 grammatical competence.

Gass Model

• Apperceived input (Awareness of L2 information- new info is not part of their repertoire yet)

• Comprehended input (One step before recognition)

• Noticing ---> Intake (psycholinguistic processing -new info may be matched to existing stored knowledge)

• Interaction ---> Integration (storage of info for later use/ negotiation of meaning, hypothesis formulation and confirmation or reformulation of existing hypothesis)

• L2 output (Overt manifestation of L2 knowledge)

Her model was acquainting for me because it helped me to understand our students silent period. We pretend our students to use the new lexical items as soon as we present them and this is something that cannot be possible. Learners need time to become aware, process, store and hypothesize about the new linguistic item or grammatical structure before they can actually use it.

Gass model can be related to Ausubel's process of meaningful learning because both authors agree on the fact that acquisition takes place when new information becomes part or integrates to previously stored knowledge.

Input must be purposeful and properly selected according to the group's needs in order to foster L2 acquisition.

This can be also connected to Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development:

Assimilation --> using an existing schema to deal with a new object or situation.

Accommodation --> existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed to deal with a new object or situation.

Adaptation --> New schema adapts to the one that already existed in our brain.

Cooperative Learning (Spencer)

INPUT

• Comprehensible
• Developmentally appropriate
• Redundant

OUTPUT

• Functional/ Communicative
• Frequent
• Identity congruent

CONTEXT

• Supportive/ Motivating
• Communicative/Referential
• Developmentally appropriate
• Feedback rich

INPUT --> When I plan my lessons, input is carefully selected and manipulated to make it comprehensible. But, as Vygotsky stated "Even if language is comprehended it will not stimulate the next step in lg acquisition if it is not in the zone of proximal development". During the internship I made sts work in groups or pairs and I realized that the most skillful classmates helped the less skillful ones to develop skills and strategies. This can be connected to scaffolding that means to help sts become aware of how to accomplish a certain task by using different techniques as providing cues, examples or helping them to think out loud. Of course I used scaffolding at some moments but as they became acquainted with the task I left sts working alone and I just monitored what they were doing and provided help if they really needed it.

I made input redundant by using it along many lessons but I presented it in many different ways so as students didn't get bored. In this way, I helped them to move this new information from the short-term comprehension to long-term acquisition.

OUTPUT --> I never asked them to memorize vocabulary. I expected from sts to relate and contextualize their productions so as to make output communicative and representative. They were asked to speak in many occasions about the same topic along the unit of work. In this way I made their output to become redundant what will help them to become more fluent. Output was also identity congruent and that is why they were always willing to participate and share - we created a less formal atmosphere in which they could feel identified and share their knowledge in a comfortable way.

CONTEXT --> Sts were asked questions all the time and they needed to communicate to be able to accomplish the tasks. The context was always motivating because materials were specially chosen for their age and needs and by doing this I ensured their active participation in class. I spoke in real time to the sts and we set together real goals which were possible to accomplish by negotiating meaning. I gave each of them the opportunity to speak at their own pace. At the beginning of the internship I didn't correct them so often while they spoke or read but after my tutor highlighted it in my assessment copybook, I started giving them feedback and corrections in their process of communication and I could notice some students improvement.

Variation in interaction patterns

During the internship I could notice that some students didn't take any risks and never initiated interactions with me but when working in pairs or groups they shown they were highly competitive demonstrating superiority and speaking more fluently. As it was stated in Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics by Widdowson "Interaction with classroom peers is conductive to giving commands, arguing and insulting which are not culturally appropriate in interactions with the teacher". This was clearly perceived while some sts were discussing what to include in their pair or group work and they frequently used our famous word B...O which they couldn't use while they were interacting with me.

Types of feedback and students' uptake

FORMATS

• Clarification requests

• Comprehension checks

• Confirmation checks

• Choice questions

• Negotiation of meaning (test hypothesis and noticing the gap)

• Recasts (way of showing learners that there is a difference between their production and the real form of the language as a natural part of the conversation)
• Purposes
• Morphosyntactic
• Phonological
• Semantic
• Lexical
• Formats
• reformulating or paraphrasing
• repeating with certain stress or intonation

UPTAKE

• Ignore and continue
• Repeat
• Modify

With my sts I never use explicit corrections of their mistakes because I believe this leads to a negative attitude towards the language from the students part. I rather use choice questions so as they become aware of their mistakes without being so exposed. I also used comprehension checks after explaining something or after giving instructions.

During my internship I used recasts because it was stated that they promote L2 development since they enhance the salience of target forms in the context of meaning-based communication rather than marking learner's production as problematic. With the internship group I used them mainly for morphosyntactic and phonological purposes. In some cases I reformulated or paraphrased what the student said and in some other cases -generally when they were reading short passages aloud- I repeated with certain stress or intonation. I avoided excessive feedback because it was proved that it causes student's irritation and this can interfere negatively in the acquisition of the language. There are moments when it is better not to recast mainly when you are focusing on communication because if you recast all the time the focus is changed to form. The students' responses to recasts were varied in the class. Some sts continued, others repeated the recast and few sts modified the original utterance after the recast.

Negotiation of meaning --> When students interact they find opportunities to correct their own mistakes and test their hypothesis about their target language. The more self-initiated, self-completed content and pragmatic repair, the more native-like the interaction will be.

Communication tasks

-production based taks-

Focused

In this tasks a linguistic feature is made prominent but in a way that doesn't cause the learner to pay more attention to form than meaning.

• Tasks that require the use of a grammar structure but can be performed without using it (E.g.: describing pictures)
• Tasks which make performance easier if a specific grammatical structure is used but can be performed without it. (E.g. retelling a story that is in the past, in the present simple)
• Tasks in which the use of a specific grammar structure is essential and cannot be performed without using it. (E.g. reporting what sb told you in which inevitably you must use reported speech).

Unfocused

No effort is made in the design or execution of these tasks to give prominence to any linguistic feature.

I mostly planned focused communication tasks of the second type. As it was stated by Ellis, it is extremely difficult to bring about a focus on a specific linguistic feature while at the same time maintaining true communicativeness. If learners realize that the task is intended to provide such a focus, they are likely to stop treating it as an opportunity to communicate and switch into a "learning" mode. We teachers can prevent this by inducing the focus methodologically -requesting for clarification directed at utterances containing errors in the feature that has been targeted.

We should give our students the opportunity to maximize their linguistic competence under real operating conditions.

help to

Noticing and Output

Factors that influence noticing linguistic features in the input

• Input salience (more prominent the ling item, greater chance it will be noticed)

• Instruction (structured input by which sts focus attention on language)

• Attention
• Alertness (be ready to deal with new input)
• Orientation (aligning attention to new stimulus)
• Detection (cognitive registration of the stimulus)

• Awareness ( condition for converting input to intake)

• Task demands (how prominent are the features to be noticed)

• Comparing (noticing the gap between observed input and typical output based on their IL)

During my internship the factors that mostly influenced noticing were input salience and task demands. Examples of these characteristics can be seen in the following activities done by my sts during the internship:

Input enhancement techniques used to enhance my sts' noticing.

• Textual enhancement (fill in the blanks)

• Metalinguistic explanation (students were asked to underline linguistic items in a text and then we carry out the focus on grammar)

• Increase in the frequency of the target form (grammatical tasks as error correction, choosing the correct verb)

• Implicit or explicit error correction (when checking answers after solving activities and analyzing possibilities)

• Oral and written simplification of texts ( text manipulation in order to make sts comprehension easier)

During the internship I used both positive and negative input enhancement. Among the positive techniques I have used I want to highlight the following ones:

I increased the frequency of the target form, I provided explicit information on how language is structured and I simplified written texts.

Relevant characteristics of output

Functions (Ellis)

• It promotes noticing the gap (between what they want to say and what they are able to say)

• It serves as a means of hypothesis testing (if output elicits feedback indicating that rules are incorrect sts will use feedback to modify the rules)

• It serves as a means of reflection of sts own output (as a result of this reflection they develop their metalinguistic understanding)

• It develops fluency

• It engages students to take an active role in the classroom

Roles for output (Skehan)

• To generate better input (listener would use speaker's output to ask for specific input)

• To force syntactic processing (when sts are expected to answer they pay attention of what is said and also how it is said)

• To test hypothesis (their production makes them think and confirm or reformulate hypothesis about their output)

• To develop automaticity ( the frequent use of the language leads to develop learner fluency and independence with the language)

• To develop discourse skills (discourse skills are only acquired in active use of the language an example would be turn taking)

• To develop personal voice (expressing individual meaning about a topic)

Students during my internship played an active role in all the classes. As regards the roles for output taken into account to plan my lessons, I want to mention that I just took into account the ones related to communicative competence that are the last two in the list.

I realized when preparing this final task that some of my students could generate better input after they heard what I have said. (Micaela's example with the word MEAN). But, I did not take it into account when planning and it just came out from the classroom interaction.

Pushed output can foster IL development

According to Swain, producing the target language may be the trigger that forces the learner to pay attention to the means of expression needed to successfully convey his or her intended meaning.

I think that pushed output contributes to language acquisition because it makes learners to produce precise and sociolinguistic acceptable messages. It helps learners to achieve higher levels of linguistic knowledge and sociolinguistic competence and increases accuracy with which existing knowledge is used. We teachers must push our students output but without making them feel exposed.

Enhancing learners' output through planning time

Comprehensible input is not enough to reach learners' IL. They also need to produce output so we can say that planning time for output is crucial if we want our students to develop their IL system.

Planning time helps students to focus their attention strategically on what they are going to produce later and it lessens communicative stress.It also reduces the cognitive load of the task.

If we don't give them time to plan, they will feel frustrated because they will feel lost and the wont be able to produce an accurate output.

Ellis: "Modified output does not occur in a vacuum- it occurs as a response to input and the opportunity to interact".

It is not enough to plan motivating activities and select proper material according to our students' age and needs. We should also guide our students and we must give them time to think and to process information. By doing this, we will help them to develop their IL system and acquire the language in a meaningful and interactive way.

English Language Teaching III

Final Integration

Tutor: Elizabeth White

Student: Varela, Maria Laura

Year: 2013

Interactive model

These stages may be influenced by saliency, frequency, prior knowledge, attention and also affective factors.

These type of tasks are focused on meaning rather than on form.