This is the follow-up blog to my previous one summarising Chapter 6 of the book Second language Learning Theories by Mitchell, Myles and Marsden (2013).
So where were we?
The authors go on to look at the Output Hypothesis (Swain) and the role of prompts in corrective feedback. This hypothesis stems from Merril Swain's work with Canadian students learning L2 French through content-based teaching. Although these students developed comprehension abilities close to their native speaker counterparts, their productive abilities were less convincing. Swain assumed this was because they were largely listening and reading, not so much speaking and writing to a high level. Swain believed students were comprehending speech, but only partly processing it, i.e. focusing only on meaning, not form. She thought that only through output did learners carry out complete grammatical processing, leading to improved morphology and syntax. The Output Hypothesis makes these claims about the function of output:
1. A noticing/triggering function, or consciousness-raising role.
2. A hypothesis-testing function.
3. A metalinguistic function, or what might be called its reflective role. (from Swain, 1995)
So Swain believes the process of producing language makes students aware of gaps in their knowledge (1), a chance to reflect on and analyse the problem (3) and opportunities to experiment with new forms (2). She later went on to focus mainly on (3) - collaborative metalinguistic talk which she now calls languaging.
Further studies by Ellis and He and de la Fuente gave support to the idea that what's called pushed output and the chance to talk about language problems enhances acquisition, at least as far as vocabulary is concerned.
Subsequent studies by McDonough and Mackey, for example, demonstrated how getting feedback encourages students to modify their output and improve it. As the authors report:
"...clarification requests (and other prompts such as repetition of learner utterances) perform an indirect role in L2 development, insofar as they promote learner reformulations, self-repair, and the production of modified output." (p.178)
Other studies have shown weaker effects of prompts and recasts on output, however.
The problem of "noticing"
A significant claim of interactionists is that noticing (paying attention to) gaps in one's knowledge and what a learner sees or hears helps with acquisition. The amount of attention paid by the learner should affect the amount of actual L2 "intake". Some have argued that the mixed results produced by studies on feedback may relate to the degree of attentiveness shown by learners. One suggestion is that teachers can encourage noticing if they give students an additional cue to get them to attend to form, not just meaning ("look what happens to the verb ending there"). But one problem insufficiently addressed is precisely what noticing or attention actually mean. Further studies by writers such as Izumi, Mackey, Egi and Philp, have attempted to get to the bottom of how much learners take notice of recasts, for example, but results have been mixed, partly because of the difficulty of measuring what learners may actually be noticing or thinking.
Learner characteristics and engagement
Interactionist researchers have also been interested in individual learner differences. In particular, they have looked at working memory memory capacity and how this affects students' ability to notice and respond to feedback. Unsurprisingly perhaps, higher working memory capacity does promote learning in various ways. For example, one study by Trofimovich et al (2007) investigated the relationship between noticing of feedback and four cognitive characteristics of the target group: phonological memory, working memory, attention control and analytical ability. (Attention control is the ability to allocate attention effectively to different tasks.) Correlations were found between attention control and analytical ability with aspects of language development. This sort of research has been aligning interactionist research with cognitive theory.
Evaluation
First, the authors note how research has extended beyond a mere focus on input to one on both input and output and the relationship between speakers and listeners.
Second, research has tended to focus on the acquisition of limited morpho-syntactic forms. Sociolinguistic and sociocultural research take a broader view.
Third, the many detailed, controlled studies focusing on individual areas of language lead to the conclusion that "interaction plays a strong facilitative role in the learning of lexical and grammatical target items" (Mackey and Goo, 2007).
From the 1990s there has been a tacit move away from the Chomskyan view of the nature of language, the idea of an innate language learning faculty. But on the whole, interactionist researchers don't take a fixed position on this. It is true, however, that researchers have become more focused on the precise workings the "black box" (Chomskyan Language Acquisition Device or otherwise). How precisely do learners process incoming messages? But we don't know why some language features are processed more easily than others. Many puzzles remain.
My own reflection
I feel as though the chapter I have been summarising could have been more clearly written. Maybe I could have been clearer too! But it does demonstrate how complex and difficult the whole interactionist research area has become. This is not particularly easy stuff for a teacher to get their head round. Dare I say it might go some way to explaining the appeal to teachers, often unversed in the detail of applied linguistics, of such an elegantly simple set of hypotheses such as Krashen's, So "clean" yet so unfalsifiable! That simplicity may of course be one of its weaknesses.
But what can we draw from this summary of research? Interaction is important, feedback (both positive and negative) helps, but we don't know how much or in what form it's best delivered and forcing students to speak is probably a good thing. Talk with students a lot, get them talking to each other and make it comprehensible.
References
Mackey, A. and Goo, J. (2007). Interaction research in SLA: a meta-analysis and research synthesis. In Mackey, A. (ed) Conversational interaction in second language acquisition. Oxford; OUP
Mitchell, R., Myles, F. and Marsden, E. (2013). Second Language Learning Theories. Oxford: Routledge.
Swain, M. (1995). Three functions of output in second language learning.. In Cook, G. and Seidhofler, B. (eds.) Input in second language acquisition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Trofimovich, P. et al (2007). How effective are recasts? The role of attention, memory and analytical ability. In Mackey, A. (ed) Conversational interaction in second language acquisition. Oxford; OUP
So where were we?
The authors go on to look at the Output Hypothesis (Swain) and the role of prompts in corrective feedback. This hypothesis stems from Merril Swain's work with Canadian students learning L2 French through content-based teaching. Although these students developed comprehension abilities close to their native speaker counterparts, their productive abilities were less convincing. Swain assumed this was because they were largely listening and reading, not so much speaking and writing to a high level. Swain believed students were comprehending speech, but only partly processing it, i.e. focusing only on meaning, not form. She thought that only through output did learners carry out complete grammatical processing, leading to improved morphology and syntax. The Output Hypothesis makes these claims about the function of output:
1. A noticing/triggering function, or consciousness-raising role.
2. A hypothesis-testing function.
3. A metalinguistic function, or what might be called its reflective role. (from Swain, 1995)
So Swain believes the process of producing language makes students aware of gaps in their knowledge (1), a chance to reflect on and analyse the problem (3) and opportunities to experiment with new forms (2). She later went on to focus mainly on (3) - collaborative metalinguistic talk which she now calls languaging.
Further studies by Ellis and He and de la Fuente gave support to the idea that what's called pushed output and the chance to talk about language problems enhances acquisition, at least as far as vocabulary is concerned.
Subsequent studies by McDonough and Mackey, for example, demonstrated how getting feedback encourages students to modify their output and improve it. As the authors report:
"...clarification requests (and other prompts such as repetition of learner utterances) perform an indirect role in L2 development, insofar as they promote learner reformulations, self-repair, and the production of modified output." (p.178)
Other studies have shown weaker effects of prompts and recasts on output, however.
The problem of "noticing"
A significant claim of interactionists is that noticing (paying attention to) gaps in one's knowledge and what a learner sees or hears helps with acquisition. The amount of attention paid by the learner should affect the amount of actual L2 "intake". Some have argued that the mixed results produced by studies on feedback may relate to the degree of attentiveness shown by learners. One suggestion is that teachers can encourage noticing if they give students an additional cue to get them to attend to form, not just meaning ("look what happens to the verb ending there"). But one problem insufficiently addressed is precisely what noticing or attention actually mean. Further studies by writers such as Izumi, Mackey, Egi and Philp, have attempted to get to the bottom of how much learners take notice of recasts, for example, but results have been mixed, partly because of the difficulty of measuring what learners may actually be noticing or thinking.
Learner characteristics and engagement
Interactionist researchers have also been interested in individual learner differences. In particular, they have looked at working memory memory capacity and how this affects students' ability to notice and respond to feedback. Unsurprisingly perhaps, higher working memory capacity does promote learning in various ways. For example, one study by Trofimovich et al (2007) investigated the relationship between noticing of feedback and four cognitive characteristics of the target group: phonological memory, working memory, attention control and analytical ability. (Attention control is the ability to allocate attention effectively to different tasks.) Correlations were found between attention control and analytical ability with aspects of language development. This sort of research has been aligning interactionist research with cognitive theory.
Evaluation
First, the authors note how research has extended beyond a mere focus on input to one on both input and output and the relationship between speakers and listeners.
Second, research has tended to focus on the acquisition of limited morpho-syntactic forms. Sociolinguistic and sociocultural research take a broader view.
Third, the many detailed, controlled studies focusing on individual areas of language lead to the conclusion that "interaction plays a strong facilitative role in the learning of lexical and grammatical target items" (Mackey and Goo, 2007).
From the 1990s there has been a tacit move away from the Chomskyan view of the nature of language, the idea of an innate language learning faculty. But on the whole, interactionist researchers don't take a fixed position on this. It is true, however, that researchers have become more focused on the precise workings the "black box" (Chomskyan Language Acquisition Device or otherwise). How precisely do learners process incoming messages? But we don't know why some language features are processed more easily than others. Many puzzles remain.
My own reflection
I feel as though the chapter I have been summarising could have been more clearly written. Maybe I could have been clearer too! But it does demonstrate how complex and difficult the whole interactionist research area has become. This is not particularly easy stuff for a teacher to get their head round. Dare I say it might go some way to explaining the appeal to teachers, often unversed in the detail of applied linguistics, of such an elegantly simple set of hypotheses such as Krashen's, So "clean" yet so unfalsifiable! That simplicity may of course be one of its weaknesses.
But what can we draw from this summary of research? Interaction is important, feedback (both positive and negative) helps, but we don't know how much or in what form it's best delivered and forcing students to speak is probably a good thing. Talk with students a lot, get them talking to each other and make it comprehensible.
References
Mackey, A. and Goo, J. (2007). Interaction research in SLA: a meta-analysis and research synthesis. In Mackey, A. (ed) Conversational interaction in second language acquisition. Oxford; OUP
Mitchell, R., Myles, F. and Marsden, E. (2013). Second Language Learning Theories. Oxford: Routledge.
Swain, M. (1995). Three functions of output in second language learning.. In Cook, G. and Seidhofler, B. (eds.) Input in second language acquisition. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Trofimovich, P. et al (2007). How effective are recasts? The role of attention, memory and analytical ability. In Mackey, A. (ed) Conversational interaction in second language acquisition. Oxford; OUP
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