1Week 10b. Input and interaction IICAS LX 400Second Language AcquisitionInput, intake, interaction• Last time:– Input vs. intake– Foreigner talk as improving comprehension– Krashen: Comprehension required for intake– Long: Interaction (negotiation for meaning)important for calling attention to gaps,achieving intake.Classroom applications?• What should we do in language classrooms inlight of this?• A goal of the language classroom shouldpresumably be to enhance the input, to make it aslikely as possible to be used as intake.• What makes the most effective enhancement?Surprising few clear results are out there.• Often differentiating between focus on form vs.focus on meaning approaches.Doughty (1991)• Investigating several issues at once:• Effectiveness of type of instruction– Meaning oriented– Rule oriented• Effectiveness of teaching “down themarkedness hierarchy” (teaching a markedstructure and allowing learner-internalgeneralization to an unmarked structure).Doughty (1991)• Subjects: 20 international students takingintensive ESL courses, without much priorknowledge of relative clauses. Averagelength of stay in the US was 3.7 months.• Tasks:– Grammaticality judgment– Sentence completionDoughty (1991)• Subjects were pretested, then over two weeks(10 weekdays) they came in to a computer lab totake a “language lesson”. Then, immediatelyafterwards, subjects were posttested.• In the language lessons, one of three possiblethings happened:– Subject got the “meaning oriented treatment”– Subject got the “rule oriented treatment”– Subject got the “control treatment”2Doughty (1991)• Daily lessons were a text of 5-6 sentences(of a two-week long “story”) containing anrelative clause formed on the object of apreposition.– This is the book that I was looking for.• Recall: Noun phrase accessibility hierarchy:SU > DO > IO> OP > GEN > OCOMPProcedure…• Three steps:– Skim– Reading for understanding (experimental section)– Scan• Skim: Subjects saw the text for 30 seconds,with title, first sentence and last sentencehighlighted—this is to “get the idea” of whatthe text is about.Procedure…• Reading for understanding: Each sentencedisplayed consecutively at the top of the screen.Three different possibilities:– MOG: Also saw dictionary help (2m) and semanticexplanations (referents, synonyms) (2m), includingrelationship between head noun and relative pronoun.– ROG: Saw a little animated presentation of deriving aOPREP sentence from two sentences (This is the book,I was looking for the book, This is the book which Iwas looking for)– COG: Saw each sentence, 2.5 minutes.Procedure…• Scan. Re-scan paragraph in order to be ableto answer two questions about it, then writeout a summary (NL).Pretest------1-----+4-----+6-----+2-----+7--+--+21--+--+5----++3OCGEOPIODOSUS------16------14------19-----+15-----+20-+--++17OCGEOPIODOSUS------11------12-----+13-----+10-++-++8-+++++9OCGEOPIODOSUSMOGROGCoGPosttest----++1-----+4--++++6--++++2++++++7++++++21++++++5++++++3OCGEOPIODOSUS-----+16-----+14--++++19----++15+++-++20++++++17OCGEOPIODOSUS------11-----+12-+---+13--+-++10++++++8++++++9OCGEOPIODOSUSMOGROGCoG3Group mean gain scores0510152025303540SU DO IO OP GEN OCMOGROGCoGResults• Both experimental groups showed strong positiveeffects (“Second Language Instruction Does Make aDifference”).• The control group did too (simply from exposure) butnot as dramatic.• Both types of instruction appear to be equally effectivewith respect to gain in relativization ability.• Comprehension-wise, MOG scored 70.01 vs. ROG’s43.68 and CoG’s 40.64. Significant.• Subjects improved basically following the NPAH bybeing taught just a marked position.Comments• Note that:– ROG subjects improved in their ability torelativize, yet didn’t do so well on thecomprehension tests—meaning isn’t utmost ingetting the structural rules.– MOG subjects got the structural properties eventhough not directly instructed in them (meaningdidn’t get in the way).Input, interaction… UG?• UG hasn’t played a very big role in thediscussion of the importance of interaction,converting input into intake, negotiating formeaning. How can we connect them?Parameters, triggers• Recall that one of the crucial features ofparameters is that (ideally) each parametersetting has a cluster of effects.– It’s not just that the verb appears before adverbs—itis that the verb moves into the tense position, whichmeans it appears before adverbs and before negation.Coming before adverbs and coming before negationare a cluster of properties tied to the single verb-raising parameter.Parameters, triggers• In order to set a parameter in the way whichmatches the setting reflected by the language inthe environment, the learner needs to look forconsequences of a particular setting.• Designated bits of data which can serve asunambiguous indicators of one parameter settingover another are sometimes called triggers.4Parameters, triggers• So, for example, the L1’er’s task is to examine theinput for instances of these triggers and use themto set the parameter to the correct value.• Some of the consequences of any given parametersetting might be fairly obscure, not likely to showup in frequent (or easily analyzed) ambient speechdata accessible to the kid. This might make it hardto set one’s parameters—but for the clusteringproperty.Parameters, triggers• Indications that the verb moves:– Seeing verbs before negation– Seeing verbs before adverbs• Indications that the verb doesn’t move:– Do-support (The verb does not usually move)• Indications that null subjects are allowed:– Null subjects are observed.– Postverbal subjects are allowed.• Indications that null subjects are not allowed:– Expletive subjects are observed (it’s raining).Parameters, triggers• If triggers are what setting parameters is all about,then the interaction stuff is probably about makingthe triggers more salient.• Unfortunately, it is difficult to interpret existing“input enhancement” type studies in these termsbecause they measured different things—we don’tknow what triggers were present, what effectmaking triggers (vs. non-triggers?) had.Parameters, triggers• If language acquisition (first or second)were just about finding triggers to set theparameters, why is it so hard then? Why isnegotiation, etc. important (to L2A anyway)?This suggests