I stumbled across this topic here: http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=95887#p95887 but thought it was worth creating a thread about because I haven't seen it really discussed before, so... in light of what I thought was a rather balanced consensus towards initial input focus but incorporation of output earlier than hardcore Krashenists would recommend, here's a post about it.

Here's the initial link that gave an overview of Krashen critiques: http://www.timothyjpmason.com/WebPages/ … #Boulouffe

Here are some of the overview points (bold emphasis theirs):

"... it is only through the student's production that we can check whether she has fully understood the input or not,  and that without this verification, there are a number of errors, particularly 'avoidance' errors, that are never cleared up. According to her, these errors are deep-rooted, and come about because language cannot be understood as simply a surface phenomenon...

... In particular, she points to the issue of modality, or the speaker's specifying her position vis-à-vis what is being said.

... But not only does production allow the teacher to check the learner's competence. Boulouffe suggests that personal production, which allows the student to reorganise his knowledge of the language in an authentic attempt to communicate, is essential. It is only when the learner speaks or writes that she is compelled to take modality into account.

Similarly, Swain argues that learners need the opportunity to use the L2 meaningfully, because when they are faced with communication failure, they are forced to make their output more precise, coherent and appropriate. She claims that when students focus on comprehension, most of the work is done at the semantic level - top-down processing - while when they focus on production, they must work at the syntactic level - bottom-up processing. ...

... These arguments suggest that, if comprehensible input is necessary, then so also is comprehensible output. The learner should be forced to produce comprehensible language, and this in turn forces her to focus upon form.

... Tanaka & Yamazaki discovered that opportunities to modify input interactionally not only increased comprehension, but also resulted in greater vocabulary acquisition. This kind of finding is backed up by the fact that active students usually acquire language faster than passive ones - although the reasons why this should be so are not altogether clear.

Lydia White is of the same opinion - she suggests that whereas learners do hear or read what can be done through processing input, they get negative evidence about what cannot be done - the learner cannot simply assume that if she doesn't hear some particular structure or usage, that it does not exist ; certain of their overgeneralizations, for example, will not be disconfirmed. It is only when they produce language, and are corrected by a teacher or a native speaker, that they will discover that they have made an incorrect inference."

Disclaimer: Keep in mind I don't agree with everything here, my own focus remains on applying these notions to self-study.



This 2009 paper clued me in to the below Google Books link: Languaging in grammar exercises by Japanese EFL learners of differing proficiency

Languaging, agency, and collaboration in advanced second language proficiency - by Merrill Swain, Google provides the article in full.

Swain is referenced in the first link as discussing bottom-up processing and comprehensible output--her more recent switching to the use of process-oriented 'languaging' rather than 'comprehensible output' is explained here: The Output Hypothesis: Its History and its Future



More, from the multimedia perspective (the cognitive multimedia learning research influenced by Mayer, whom I referenced in HBPK thread with regards to multisensory integration and B. Medina's 'Brain Rules' book)...

Multimedia learning in second language acquisition

Learning a Second Language with Multimedia Materials

"Output: Students need to be engaged in active learning

Plass and Jones (2005) define the third stage, comprehensible output, as “the need for use of language in meaningful contexts to develop the learners’ communicative competency” (p. 475). Effective means to support students during this stage include support for self-correction. For example, in a digital environment, text-to-speech programs enable the user to hear what he has written and check if a sentence makes sense. Researchers have also investigated the benefits of students actively using second language vocabulary versus passively receiving information. The students in the former group were more engaged in the learning process and retained more information (Nikolova, 2002)."

Last edited by nest0r (2010 March 09, 11:23 am)