#6 Espinosa: Form-Focused Instruction/ VanPatten

[Dee Broughton]

Beyond our discussions about the centrality of input and our suspicion of traditional grammar teaching, we must still decide, as teachers and designers, how we will treat form-based instruction. This topic is still hugely debated in the field of second language acquisition. It's such a big topic that we'll read an article, but also listen to a set of videos.

The article is a review article, "Form-Focused Instruction in Second Language Teaching and Learning: Theoretical Proposals and Research Findings, that will help you understand the overall discussion.

One of the most interesting voices in this discussion, in my opinion, is that of Bill VanPatten. His books are not easy to get, but there is a very nice series of videos of his on youtube. In this series, VanPatten maintains that we have 40 years of strong research on learning that is not reaching teachers. He says that what we know about second language acquisition is not "trickling down to people who teach language" and not "making their way to publishers." VanPatten is one of those teachers who shares the real information with the people he trains. Take a look. *



From VanPatten (2003), From Input to Output: A Teacher's Guide to Second Language Acquisition, here are some key points from VanPatten's work:

VanPatten maintains that learners must create an implicit linguistic system and that this process is complex and consists of different processes. He maintains that this creation is dynamic but slow, that most learners fall short of native-like competence, and that skill acquisition is different from the creation of the implicit system.

He maintains that input is language that has communicative intent, and that all theories in SLA agree that input is critical. Learners do not build up the linguistic system through practice. Rather, they build it through consistent and exposure to input, language that learners respond to for meaning.

VanPatten articulates several key principles that describe how learners process input:

P1. Learners process input for meaning before anything else.
P1a. Learners process content words before anything else.
P1b. Learners process content words before grammatical forms if they carry the same semantic information.

P2. For learners to process form of little or no meaning, they must be able to process the content or propositional message of an utterance with little or no cost to attentional resources.

P3. Learners tend to process the beginnings of sentences best, followed by the ends of sentences. The middle of a sentence is the most difficult place to process grammatical form.

P4. Learners tend to interpret the first noun or noun phrase in an utterance as the subject of the sentence. This is called the first-noun strategy.

VanPatten summarizes the idea that in order to create output, learners must do two things: access lexical items and grammatical forms and put them together using production strategies. When learners have access to some language, but have not learned the production strategies of the L2, they tend to use the strategies they know from L1 and when learners are pushed to speak too soon, this is the origin of errors that we see.

Research shows that learners must have some procedures in place before they can acquire others. Processability Theory says that this happens in a certain order. In other words, there is a hierarchy to how learners process language in order to produce output. The hierarchy is as follows:

Learners first need lemma access: retrieval of words.
Learners next develop category procedure: use of inflextions on lexical items.
Learners next develop phrasal procedure: use of inflections in a phrase.
Learners next develop simplified S-procedure (S meaning sentence): exchange of information from inside the sentence to the beginning or end of the sentence (such as with putting question words at the beginning of the sentence).
Learners next develop S-procedure: exchange of information between internal constituents.
Learners next develop subordinate clause procedure: exchange of information across clauses.

VanPatten, B. (2003). From input to output: A teacher's guide to second language acquisition. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Chicago.

*At the end of Part 2 and the beginning of Part 3, he tells people they are testing incorrectly if they think "practice makes perfect."

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We have read about input, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, the communicative approach, and, finally this week, we begin to talk about how learners begin to produce output. For example, Espinosa quotes VanPatten saying that we must find out whether "a learner can attend to form while attending to meaning when processing input, if so, what kind of form, and under what conditions this is and is not possible" because VanPatten maintains that learners will have to do both in order to acquire language well enough to generate original output.

In the reading and notes this week, look carefully at all the research that aims to shed light on how students begin to produce output.

For this week's response, choose one thing that is new to you and write about how you could incorporate that new data into your teaching.

Where in your teaching will the new data fit? How could it change your goals, focus, lesson planning, teaching, or feedback to your students? What observation that you may have made in your classroom might the new data explain?

Try to use some of the techniques we've been practicing in use of sources in your example.

[margarita]

In my society big attention is paid on forms when teaching a foreign language. No one would deny the usefulness of noticing how language functions form-wise, however, more efficient approach could be considered for better language production. Moreover, before deciding on principals of form-formed instructions for a particular society or an individual learner, several aspects must be taken into account. One of them is whether there is an exposure to a target language outside of the class; another one is the purpose of learning; third is age category. The biggest group of English learners in Uzbekistan is students above 14, with farther educational aims and limited exposure to the language outside of a class time. In this article review, I would like to discuss some theories and propose several approaches to enable learners to produce better outcome in forms.

The article on Form-Focused Instruction in Second Language Teaching and Learning: Theoretical Proposals and Research Findings presents a number of relevant and productive proposals, confirmed by research findings. Nevertheless, each of the proposal theories needs some addition for better service to Uzbek learners.

It is essential that the forms become salient for the learner’s processing mechanism as Sharwood Smith says, ”although learners may notice the signals, the input may nevertheless be non-salient to their learning mechanisms and hence have no effect on development ” in his theory of Input enhancement. In other words, just having awareness of a form theoretically does not guarantee its practical implementation. It is evident that accuracy in forms requires both noticing as well as conscious usage while articulating utterances.

As addition to Smith, the theory of “Noticing” tells what needs to be done to help learners’ processing mechanism. In his book A cognitive theory of consciousness (1988), Baars says, “more noticing is conductive to more learning.” That is, the more time teacher spends on notification and clarification of forms the more accurately learners will produce the language. Acknowledging Baars’s theory, I, however, believe that not only noticing forms but providing learners with more input, which includes similar forms, and constant opportunities to produce it will conduct to better output. In fact, some might need to notice a form only twice, whereas others, fifty times to be able to produce it correctly. So, the more access learners have to the same form over and over again, the better this form will be implemented by them.

Another theory, that partly supports my belief and completes other two theories, is a production-based theory offered by Swain (1985). I agree when he says that grammatical proficiency could be only achieved if the learner has the opportunity to use his/her linguistic repertoire in meaningful situations. On the other hand, I hardly agree with Swain when he assures that to achieve grammatical accuracy the learner needs to be pushed to use them in a class. Basing on the drawbacks of my personal experience, pushing learners to produce precise and appropriate utterances guarantees only immediate, short term results. However, it does not work for long term. This fact always made me miserable when after a long practice my students seemed to master a certain form but could not produce other times without being reminded. To improve the situation, we could create activities that encourage learners to use the form but at the same time give choice. Our responsibility as teachers is to increase awareness of particular linguistic forms through input but they must be initiated and carried out by learners themselves.


Now, knowing potential learners and considering the theories mentioned above, some strategies could be derived. Try this:

1) Provide learners with comprehensible input containing the same grammatical form as much as possible
2) Assist learners in noticing the form
3) Offer activities where learners put meaning into the form
4) The more time is devoted to the same form, the better because class time is the only opportunity for many learners to hear and practice a target language.
5) Don’t push learners to intake the form and have immediate output. Instead, create the situations where they would naturally use it after hearing and seeing it enough time
6) While consolidating the form through different activities, remember to focus on the meaning not on the form

I have been following them for some time and there is obvious improvement in my students’ language acquisition.

[Dee Broughton]

Aug 3, 2015 23:55:24 GMT 5 margarita said:

It is essential that the forms become salient for the learner’s processing mechanism as Sharwood Smith says, ”although learners may notice the signals, the input may nevertheless be non-salient to their learning mechanisms and hence have no effect on development ”

 In his book A cognitive theory of consciousness (1988), Baars says, “more noticing is conductive to more learning.” That is, the more time teacher spends on notification and clarification of forms the more accurately learners will produce the language.


Now, knowing potential learners and considering the theories mentioned above, some strategies could be derived. Try this:

1) Provide learners with comprehensible input containing the same grammatical form as much as possible
2) Assist learners in noticing the form
3) Offer activities where learners put meaning into the form
4) The more time is devoted to the same form, the better because class time is the only opportunity for many learners to hear and practice a target language.
5) Don’t push learners to intake the form and have immediate output. Instead, create the situations where they would naturally use it after hearing and seeing it enough time
6) While consolidating the form through different activities, remember to focus on the meaning not on the form

I have been following them for some time and there is obvious improvement in my students’ language acquisition.

Great strategies!

If we think about it, we will see that these two viewpoints are both saying that students need to notice form. The first is saying that they may notice it before they are ready to use it. Others would say that the students just aren't ready, but they will be as they reach that stage of development. The second seems to say that they will notice it more or faster if the teacher helps/pushes. I haven't seen much research evidence that pushing works, but people keep trying. Your strategies of manipulating or choosing appropriate input are on target with Van Patten's research, which is the best I've found as well.

[Feruza]

  Hi dears,
        After listening to VanPatten, I felt that I found the answers to my questions regarding the SLA. I think it is true that when we are learning the second language, we create a system, which is complex with the processes that he pointed out. First, we care more about the meaning than about the form and content words are processed earlier than the form. For example, we learn articles after we learn the content words. To say ‘a cat’ we pay attention first for the word ‘cat’ then, later we learn that ‘a cat’ means ‘one cat’ or ‘the cat’ means the cat that we have talked about. I also have noticed that I have hard time of processing the middle of the sentence. For instance, I know how to create a conditional sentence such as ‘If I had a million dollars, I would buy you a house,’ however, I had hard time of remembering the middle of the sentence in learning such constructions.

I always thought that my first language was to blame for my mistakes. Now, I can see that because of I didn’t create a system, which consists of complex processes, to speak correctly in English, my L1 is coming into use. In my teaching I would like to pay attention to the processes of language acquisition that VanPatten indicated and see if I can make more progress. I will try to pay attention both to the input and output and see how students are producing the language. It should help me and my students to perform better.

 
Bests, Feruza