Speaker:RodEllisTitle:TeachingasInputDate:13June2015Loca@on:CAESInterna@onalConferenceFacesofEnglish:Theory,Prac5ceandPedagogy,11-13June2015,TheUniversityofHongKong

Teaching as Input

Rod Ellis University of Auckland and Shanghai International Studies University

My thesis Teachers and teacher educators, understandably, are more concerned with teaching rather than learning. If this is so then teachers may need some input from SLA researchers to help them 'theorize' their problems in relation to learners and learning.

Two views of teaching The external view This treats language teaching in terms of methods, syllabus-design, instructional materials, classroom activities (e.g. 'exercises' and ‘tasks') and methodological techniques and procedures.

The internal view This sees teaching as a series of interactional events that provide learners with input and opportunities for output. It encapsulates what Douglas Barnes (1976) called the 'hidden curriculum'.

Key question

How can teaching ensure that learners are exposed to the kinds of input that are known to promote learning?

Back to front approach

The External View – Teacher Guides and Teacher Educators

Teacher Guides

Popular methodological handbooks (e.g. Ur, 1996; Harmer, 2003; Scrivener, 2005) in general adopt the external view of teaching. They aim to equip teachers with the technical knowledge needed to be a good teacher.

Jim Scrivener (2014)

“What I usually see are the tasks, the activities. What I mainly worry about is how those tasks and activities will work, how I can run them, how I can give good and clear instructions, whether they ‘work’, whether students are having fun, whether I am boring my students” (p. 47).

Some doubts

Scrivener (2014) noted that hundreds of lesson observations had led him to conclude that although teachers were teaching technically sound lessons they ‘were not pushing students, not challenging them to tangibly improve, nor even expecting that they might be able to achieve more’ (p. 51). He proposed that teachers need to ‘demand-high’ - ‘the raw idea that we can ask more of our students, that we can challenge them and base our teaching around going where the learning is’.

Teaching as input in teacher guides and teacher education

The neglect of ‘input’

Popular methodological handbooks for language teachers (e.g., Hedge, 2000; Nunan, 1991 Ur, 1996) do not include ‘input’ as an entry in the indexes. Somewhat surprisingly the same is the case in books about language teaching materials (Tomlinson, 2011; Harwood, 2010).

Two aspects of input

1.  Authentic texts 2.  Teacher talk

Authentic texts

Definition of ‘authentic text’

Morrow (1977): a stretch of real language produced by a real

speaker or writer for a real audience and designed to convey a real message of some sort’ (p. 13).

Authentic materials contrast with ‘contrived materials’ (i.e. materials consisting of input that has been specially designed to teach L2 learners).

Some claims about authentic texts

1.  Unless learners are exposed to authentic texts they will not be able to handle ‘real’ texts’.

2.  They come with a ‘communicative context’. 3.  More interesting and motivating than contrived

materials.

Deconstructing ‘authentic’

What does Morrow mean by ‘real speaker’ and ‘real audience’? The common interpretation is that he is referring to the language produced by native speakers for native speakers. But the ownership of a language does not rest entirely with native speakers. Communication between non-native speakers can also be ‘authentic’.

Authentication

Widdowson (1978) argued that it is the process of authentication that is important not whether the input itself is ‘authentic’. “People make a text real by realizing it as discourse … this reality does not travel with texts”. (p. 98).

Corpus-based analyses of NS texts

“With a more accurate picture of natural discourse, we are in a better position to evaluate the description upon which we base our teaching and teaching materials, what goes on in the classroom, and the end products of our teaching, whether in the form of spoken or written output”. (McCarthy, 1991; 12)

Teacher Talk

Dual function

1.  As a tool for carrying out pedagogic activities 2.  As a source of input for acquisition. However, an inspection of popular teacher guides indicates that there is scant mention of how teacher talk might facilitate acquisition.

Minimize teacher talk time (TTT)

A CELTA training video - teachers should avoid ‘commentating’ (i.e. narrating what they are doing as they do it) – i.e. NOT like this:

“Now, I’ll just rub this off the board and then we’ll get on with the next exercise – Oh, where’s the board rubber? Here? Oh yes. Great! Right I’ll just give out these sheets. I wanted to put them on different coloured paper but there wasn’t any in the cupboard, unfortunately. Still, it’s not very important. So have a look at these”.

An alternative view (O’Neill 1994)

“I, personally, have grown more and more suspicious of the assumption that teacher-talk is automatically bad. I accept that some, perhaps many teachers talk too much, but I also believe that many teachers do not talk enough. I believe it is wrong to judge or assess teacher-talk only by reference to its quantity.”

Two types of teacher talk

1.  TT that manifests the same characteristics as

communicative behaviour outside the classroom (e.g. referential questions, the use of content feedback, simplified input, and negotiation of meaning)

2.  Non-communicative teacher talk (e.g. display questions, form-focussed feedback, echoing students’ responses and initiative-response-feedback chains)

Getting the balance right

Cullen (1998): -  teachers need to achieve ‘a communicative

balance of behaviours for different teaching and learning purposes’ (p. 185)

-  the classroom constitutes its own ‘communicative’ context

Diverging opinions

‘Teaching as input’ neglected in teacher guides. 1.  Received view is that ‘authentic texts’ are

essential for communicative language teaching – but ‘authentication’ of text is more important.

2.  Teachers should minimize amount of teacher talk – but quality and appropriateness of TT is more important.

An Internal View - Input in SLA

Two types of learning

1.  Intentional acquisition occurs when learners make deliberate efforts to learn a specific feature - teacher guides.

2.  Incidental acquisition occurs when learners ‘pick up’ linguistic features from input they are exposed to - SLA.

Two key questions

1.  What is the nature of the input that L2 learners

are exposed to in classrooms? 2.  How do learners learn incidentally through

exposure to input?

Non-interactive and interactive input

Non-interactive input Interactive input

oral or written samples of the target language that do not require any verbal response from the learner (e.g. when listening or reading).

Input derived from the social interactions that learners participate in with other people – in the classroom context, with the teacher or other learners.

Both types of input afford opportunities for incidental learning but SLA researchers argue that input obtained through interaction is especially beneficial.

Non-interactive input

1.  Unmodified input 2.  Simplified input 3.  Elaborated input

Catfish have gills for use under water and lungs for use on land, where they can breathe for twelve hours or more. Catfish have both gills and lungs. The gills are used for breathing under water. The lungs are for use on land. The fish can breathe on land for twelve hours or more.   Catfish have two systems for breathing: gills, like other fish, for use under water, and lungs, like people, for use on land, where they can breathe for twelve hours or more.

Interactive input

1.  Negotiation of meaning 2.  Negotiation of form

Negotiation – meaning or form?

NNS: there is three buildings, right?

NS: Pardon? NNS: there is three … there are three

NS: Right right I’ve described one so far

Input is dynamically adjusted

Neither non-interactive nor interactive input constitute ‘registers’ (i.e. a fixed set of features). •  They involve a continuum of adjustments. •  Teachers are able to vary their input

modifications depending on students’ proficiency of affording them increasingly richer input as their proficiency develops.

Learning through input

Incidental learning takes place when learners establish a link between a specific linguistic form and the meaning that it conveys (e.g. the ‘s’ on ‘boys’ signals the meaning ‘more than one’). But there are differing views about how form-function mapping takes place when learners are exposed to input.

Three views

1.  Incidental acquisition takes place subconsciously (Krashen)

2.  Incidental acquisition involves consciousness at the level of ‘noticing’ (Schmidt)

3.  Incidental acquisition involves both implicit and conscious processes (N. Ellis)

These theoretical accounts of incidental acquisition differ in how they view the role of ‘consciousness’.

Making input work for learning

1.  Through explicit instruction and intentional language learning (e.g. Processing Instruction)

2.  Through non-interactive and interactive input that caters to incidental acquisition

Non-interactive input and incidental acquisition 1.  Frequency 2.  Text enhancement -  ‘flooding’ -  paraphrasing -  highlighting

Lee & Huang’s (2008) meta-analysis - text enhancement does facilitate both noticing and acquisition but only to a limited extent.

Interactive input and incidental acquisition (Long 1996) “negotiation of meaning, and especially negotiation work that triggers interactional adjustments by the native speaker or more competent interlocutor, facilitates acquisition because it connects input, internal learner capacities, particularly selective attention, and output in productive ways” (p. 451-52.)

Negotiation of form

However, negotiation need not depend on a breakdown in meaning; it can also focus on problems that arise with learners’ use of linguistic forms. Negotiation of form is in fact quite common even in communicative language lessons.

Focus on form

Long (1991): “ Focus on form overtly draws students’ attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overriding focus is on meaning” (p. 45-46). •  Reactive focus on form •  Proactive focus on form

Summing up

Effective teaching needs to find ways of making input available to learners in ways that will facilitate incidental acquisition: •  Making in the input comprehensible •  Attracting learners’ conscious attention to

linguistic forms in the input . SLA researchers have investigated how this can be done in both non-interactive and interactive input and has identified various strategies for achieving a ‘focus on form’.

Back to language pedagogy

Authentic materials and intentional learning Authentic texts, then, have a clear role to play in teaching directed at intentional language learning: 1.  For identifying what properties of language to

teach. 2.  As a resource that can be manipulated

pedagogically to teach specific linguistic features of an authentic text.

Authentic texts and incidental acquisition Non-interactive input works for incidental acquisition by making texts comprehensible and be facilitating noticing in these ways: •  Text elaboration. •  Text enhancement. • Allowing time on task.

This requires ‘contrived’ rather than ‘authentic texts

Quantity of teacher talk

Teacher-talk can facilitate the kind of input processing that SLA research has shown to be important for incidental acquisition. For this reason, perhaps, the fact that teachers tend to dominate talk-time in a classroom is less of a problem than some educators have claimed. Beginner learners benefit from teacher-talk as this serves as the main source of input for incidental acquisition.

Quality of teacher talk

Good teacher talk: 1.  Is Interactive 2.  Is automatically and dynamically adjusted (e.g.

in terms of speed, choice of linguistic forms, discourse adjustments)

3.  Makes use of context 4.  It is ‘comprehensible’ and also facilitates

attention to form.

Is this really so bad?

“Now, I’ll just rub this off the board and then we’ll get on with the next exercise – Oh, where’s the board rubber? Here? Oh yes. Great! Right I’ll just give out these sheets. I wanted to put them on different coloured paper but there wasn’t any in the cupboard, unfortunately. Still, it’s not very important. So have a look at these”.

Interactive teacher talk

Teacher-talk works best when it is fully interactive - that is when students are willing and have an opportunity to respond to what the teacher says. Teachers need to know how to encourage students to indicate they have a comprehension or linguistic problem and they need appropriate strategies for accomplishing the negotiation or meaning and form successfully

Effective teaching

•  Provides plenty of input (non-interactive and interactive) •  Ensures that the input is comprehensible and

‘compelling’ •  Encourages learners to indicate when input is

not comprehensible. •  Is adjusted to the level of the learner. •  Utilizes focus-on-form strategies to direct

learners’ conscious attention to linguistic forms.

Conclusion

Once we acknowledge teaching as input we are really forced to take an internal view of teaching and consider how the non-interactive and interactive input that figures in teaching shapes opportunities for incidental learning. We need to acknowledge that incidental learning is as important as intentional learning – if not more so.

‘Demand high’

Scrivener urged teachers to ‘go where the learning is’. If teachers are to ‘demand high’ they need to recognize that to cater for incidental learning it is necessary to take an internal perspective on teaching shifting their focus from what to teach to asking how they can make input work for learning.