Hi Whizzes!

Welcome to the FINAL PART of our six part series on the Six Principles of Language Acquisition! Wehee!!! Here we go! 

PRINCIPLE 6 

Any Focus On Form Should Be Input Oriented and Meaning Based

Much of this is taken from While We're On The Topic, BVP on Language, Acquisition, and Classroom Practice. Highly Recommend!!!

This entire principle is based on the sad fact that humans can't seem to let go of grammar.

And, again, if you are in a linguistics course (on either side of the desk), good for you, but otherwise...it's a royal waste of time, and due to the fact that language acquisition is based on exposure to comprehensible input over TIME, and TIME is exactly what nobody has, spending class time or any time on something that is proven to not build a mental representation is...wrong. Wasting people's time, money and brain power. 

The problem with the revolution is that not only teachers are on the wrong track, students often are too because of everything they've been exposed to before. If they are lucky enough to go from a non-research-based program to a research-based one sometimes you see things like this on course evaluations:

"We didn't learn anything new. In high school, we learned new tenses all the time." 

Basically.

Everyone plays a part in this disaster, especially when certain kinds of tests from yardsticks for assessment and evaluation.

But the research continues to be as clear as it ever was:

 Language is too abstract and complex to learn and teach explicitly.

 Acquisition is slow and piecemeal.

 ACQUISITION IS STAGE-LIKE AND ORDERED.

This last one might be new for y'all, as I haven't emphasized it. The research shows there are stages all learners go through, and there is no evidence that stages can be skipped or orders altered (for example, in English, the verbal inflections are acquired in this order: -ing, past tense, third-person s).  

So, scholars began to ask whether instruction could influence acquisition. This is what the research then led to:

 Instruction does not affect the stage-like or ordered nature of acquistion. 

There are (severe) internal constraints on acquisition—something inside learner's brain processes and organizes language in ways that outside forces such as instruction and practice cannot manipulate. 

 Input provides the data for acquisition. Language that learners hear and see in communicative contexts forms the data on which the internal mechanisms operate. Nothing can substitute for it. 

So, the questions then become:

 What aspects of language do learners seem to have trouble with, and which ones are "easy"

 If we can't alter natural processes, can we speed them up in some way? 

Now...we don't mean difficult as in the NON-Research-Based grammar and memorization tests, we mean difficult as based on acquisition data. 

In Spanish, there is the TO BE OR NOT TO BE...OR...TO BE AND TO BE conundrum. We've got two TO BE verbs folks, Ser and Estar. The CIRCUS ACTS that teachers who teach explicitly do (I've been there) to teach these things—it's hilarious...and sad. It takes longer to acquire the appropriate use of estar with adjectives that typically depict conditions and states with beginning or end points, as in Estoy contento (I'm happy) and Está muerto (he's dead).  Learners may struggle for years. 

We can't override the stages, but can we speed SHTUFF up? 

Enter Input Enhancement and Focus on Form

Input Enhancement

Attempts by instructors to draw learner attention to more difficult aspects of language by manipulating input. It's goal is make certain features of language more salient, NOT to explain them. How?

 Adding emphasis on a word while speaking. 

 Bolding, color coding or otherwise highlighting particular things written in text. 

The jury is out on the relative benefits of input enhancement, but the key part is that the instructor leaves it to the learner's internal mechanisms to make note (or not) of bolded items, because instructor knows that acquisition can't be forced. It's not harmful, that's for sure. 

From my own experience, I can tell you that anything that an instructor puts salience on DOES make a difference, both in the oral (what learners hear) and written realm (what learners read). Instructors should pay mega-attention to every word they say (choose wisely and from a narrow pool), how they say it...learners love to cut letters off of the end, YES it DOES matter whether you say A ella le gusta el chocolate vs A ella le gustan los chocolates. They are two completely different sentences, and saying A ella le gusta los chocolates....is gibberish, so as an instructor I place mega-emphasis and also don't let my students get away with expressing it non-natively. 

Focus on Form

It arises incidentally during a communicative interaction. The most typical focus on form is RECAST--a natural repetition of what learners say that doesn't interfere with communication, for example, during my Weekend Talk task, learners (with the help of a projected template) talk about their weekends on Monday (talk about past weekend activities) and Friday (talk about future weekend activities). On Monday, when I communicate with a learner about their weekend and the rest of the class gets to ask them questions, this might be one of their utterances (DESPITE THE TEMPLATE):

Learner: I go to tennis match on Saturday

Instructor: Oh, so you went to a tennis match on Saturday. Class, what questions do you have for Suzy? She went to a tennis match on Saturday! How cool! 

So, any attempt to negotiate meaning could be a focus on form, which fits exactly with Principle 1 and the definition of communication. 

And yet, it's not clear to what extent these speed up acquisition. Ultimately, they don't hurt and are in-line with the research, so try them! Nothing like building your instructor chops...it takes...trying a lot of stuff. As long as what you try fits with the 6 Principles...why not! 

Oh, and then there's STRUCTURED INPUT, but...that'll be for a future blog post. 
Constanza Ontaneda

your own personal Language Acquisition Witch

My question today is:

What, to date, has been the WORST grammar teaching-learning experience of your life? Why?