Intensive input-output work

In my keynote talk to teachers at the NSW Department of Education French Teachers’ Conference in Parramatta (western Sydney) last week I mentioned a phrase I often think of when talking about classroom language learning: intensive input-output work. The phrase was used by ELT writer Michael Swan, for example in an article here: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/teachers/knowing-subject/using-texts-constructively-2-intensive-input

The idea of intensive input–output work lies at the heart of a long-running debate in second language teaching: how learners move from understanding language to actually using it accurately and confidently.  Michael Swan often pushed back against the assumption that exposure alone is enough for language learning to happen. Most of us would think this is obvious, but keep in mind that some scholars argue that it is only input which builds the language system. Output may play a supporting role in other respects, but input is king. Most of us happily accept that hearing or reading a language, even in meaningful, communicative contexts, does not guarantee that learners will internalise its patterns or reproduce them correctly.

What Swan supported instead (and I agree wholeheartedly) is a more deliberate, focused cycle of learning. Learners need rich input, but they also need to work intensively with that input and be pushed to produce it themselves - this known as “pushed output” or even “forced output”. This is not just about repetition, but targeted repetition: encountering the same feature multiple times, noticing how it works, and then attempting to use it under guidance. This is intensive input–output work and, by the way, it is in line with Conti’s EPI approach - Gianfranco likes to talk of thorough (intensive) and extensive processing. The intensity is generated by multiple re-used of language constructions and vocabulary across the four skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing.

In practice, this means that teaching does not move too quickly from one structure to another. A class focuses on a single tense, construction, vocabulary item, and return to it across several tasks. Learners first meet it in context, perhaps in a short text, dialogue or sentence builder. Scaffolded activities, moving from modelling gradually to fluent output. In other words, this means moving from controlled to freer practice. Feedback helps learners reshape their output and notice the gap between what they want to say and what they can currently say.

Typical tasks include question-answer, drills, gap-fill, translation, transcription and structured games. The aim is to constantly recycle the language, with the hope that it will become internalised for future use.

The teacher’s role is to plan and deliver sequences that bring input and output together purposefully, scaffolding where needed, managing cognitive load while all the time encouraging enjoyment and a sense of competence (self efficacy).  

As an example. class group of A2 (GCSE) learners working on the past tense in French, for example, might read a short account of someone’s day, then do activities in an order something like this:

• Choral repetition (e,g, delayed choral repetition)
• “Find the French”
• Questions in English.
• Question-answer in French  (using all question forms with skill)
• Aural gap-fill (sentence completion from memory)
• Gap-fill
• Translation
• An information gap communicative tasks, eg guess what I did yesterday
• Oral and written summary
• Adaptation (students describe their own day)

All of the above adapted to the level of the class, of course.

Underlying this approach is a realistic view of how languages are learned. Learners do not automatically absorb grammatical accuracy from exposure alone, especially in classroom settings with limited time. Nor do they necessarily benefit from jumping rapidly between topics in the name of variety or fluency. What they often need instead is depth rather than breadth: fewer items, studied more closely, and practised more intensively. “Less is more”, as they say.

At the conference I mentioned at the start I said that, at one level, language acquisition is really simple: you need comprehensible input, interaction, repetition and some focus on the form of the language (how the language works, if you like). On the other hand, as we know, it is also exceedingly complex in terms of how we make the learning happen - classroom pedagogy. Intensive input-output neatly summarises a very sensible approach in school settings.