Long’s Interaction hypothesis. According to Long (1983), input comes to the individual from a variety of sources, including others. Individuals make their input “comprehensible” in three ways: ● by simplifying the input, that is, using familiar structures and vocabulary; ●by using linguistic and extralinguistic features, that is, familiar structures, back- ground knowledge, gestures; and● by modifying the interactional structure of the conversation.
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This third element is the basis of Long’s (1981) Interaction Hypothesis, which accounts for ways in which input is modified and contributes to comprehension and acquisition. Long (1983, 1996) maintains that speakers make changes in their language as they interact or “negotiate meaning” with each other. Negotiation of meaning has been characterized as “exchanges between learners and their interlocutors as they attempt to resolve communi- cation breakdown and to work toward mutual comprehension” (Pica, Holliday, Lewis, & Morgenthaler, 1989, p. 65). Speakers negotiate meaning to avoid conversational trouble or to revise language when trouble occurs. Through negotiation of meaning, interactions (that is, between native and non-native speakers or between non-native speakers) are changed and redirected, leading to greater comprehensibility. Further, these negotiations can lead to language development by the learner (Long, 1996). That is, by working toward comprehension, language input is made available for intake, cognitive inspection, and thus acquisition. The following exchange illustrates how a non-native speaker recognizes a new lexical item as a result of negotiating the meaning of the phrase reading glasses:
NS: There’s a pair of reading glasses above the plant.
NNS: A what?
NS: Glasses—reading glasses to see the newspaper?
NNS: Glassi?
NS: You wear them to see with, if you can’t see. Reading glasses.
NNS: Ahh ahh, glasses to read—you say, reading glasses,
NS: Yeah. (Mackey, 1999; as cited in Gass, 2013, p. 337)
What exactly does it mean to negotiate meaning?5 Just as in a business negotiation, two parties must participate by challenging, asking questions, and changing their positions. Merely conceding is not full negotiation. In the classroom, this means that both parties in a teacher-student and student-student interaction must seek clarification, check com- prehension, and request confirmation that they have understood or are being understood by the other. This process is often difficult to achieve in the classroom, given the tradi- tional roles between teachers and students. Since students are often hesitant to question or counter-question the teacher, negotiation of meaning may not occur often. Although teachers often work to provide comprehensible input through a variety of techniques (visuals, simplified input, mime, etc.), this process does not necessarily inspire or lead to the negotiation of meaning. For this type of interaction to occur, both interlocutors must have equal rights in asking for clarification and adjusting what they say.6 Thus Long’s theory implies that learners cannot simply listen to input, but that they must be active conversational participants who interact and negotiate the type of input they receive in order to acquire language.
As you have now seen, interaction also plays a role as the cognitive processes of learners interact with the input to which they pay attention. Input can become implicit, or automatic language, when learners notice specific features of it, compare these fea- tures to those of their own output, and integrate the features by restructuring their own developing language system (Gass, 2013; Gass & Selinker, 1994; White, 1987).
Swain’s Output hypothesis. Krashen (1982) maintains that input is both a necessary and sufficient condition for language acquisition; that is, nothing else is needed for acqui- sition to occur. Swain (1985, 1995) maintains that input is a necessary but insufficient condition for language development. She argues that learners also need opportunities to produce output. Simply stated, learners need to speak the language to achieve higher lev- els of language competence. Swain’s ideas are derived largely from observing immersion ……
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