A Critical Review on the Equivocal Definition of Comprehensible Input and the Misleading Use of the Term "Acquisition"

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Kraut
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A Critical Review on the Equivocal Definition of Comprehensible Input and the Misleading Use of the Term "Acquisition"

Postby Kraut » Sat May 01, 2021 6:14 pm

Just google for it, it seems I can't post the link here.
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A Critical Review on the Equivocal Definition of Comprehensible Input and the Misleading Use of the Term "Acquisition"

Hilal Peker
Onur Ozkaynak

2020, Journal of Language Education and Research

Stephen Krashen has been one of the prominent figures in the field of second language acquisition. His Input Hypothesis and Monitor Model can be considered as his most noteworthy work. Specifically, his principal proposition that emphasizes the importance of comprehensible input for language acquisition sheds light on linguistic competence. Krashen claimed that languages could be easily acquired as long as the acquirer is provided with natural bits of language. Despite the high acclaim they have received, Krashen's ideas have also been harshly criticized by certain linguists as his claims failed to clarify certain issues related to the second language acquisition. In this respect, the authors of this paper critically review his Input Hypothesis and Monitor Model focusing on the insufficiency of the input for language acquisition, absence of an operational definition of comprehensible input, and misleading use of the term acquisition. In addition, the authors also adopt a satirical language to pinpoint the aforementioned insufficiencies and misleading components, while supporting their claims with recent empirical studies that were rarely conducted in the field. Keywords: second language acquisition, comprehensible input, language acquisition, language development, critical period.
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Querneus
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Re: A Critical Review on the Equivocal Definition of Comprehensible Input and the Misleading Use of the Term "Acquisitio

Postby Querneus » Sat May 01, 2021 6:32 pm

Kraut wrote:Just google for it, it seems I can't post the link here.

I figured it out. :)

https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/1070318
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Le Baron
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Re: A Critical Review on the Equivocal Definition of Comprehensible Input and the Misleading Use of the Term "Acquisitio

Postby Le Baron » Mon May 03, 2021 10:04 am

Okay. Academic papers are always a bit of a word salad (and someone ought to have proofread this one because it contains glaring basic style errors for a 'linguistics journal'). There's also a lot of word padding, so here are the unsurprising main points and conclusion:

In the middle of the article listing counter-studies highlighting the value of comprehensible output we see:

even though there was not a statistically significant difference between the experiment groups (i.e., input activity group and output activity group), the means for the output activity group were higher.

'Even though there was no statistical difference'. It tells us simply that actively using given input made students more cognisant of what they were doing.
although the input group performed better in terms of speech complexity, the output group outperformed them in grammatical accuracy.

What does this tell us? To my mind that input gives you the raw material and output focuses you on shaping it (see the discussion on the gap between what you want to say and what you can say making you aware).
The first experiment group was exposed to input focused activities after the teacher’s lecture to practice the L2 adverb, while the second experiment group was exposed to output focused activities after the teacher’s lecture

All groups got the lecture. Is the conclusion that striking? If we take two groups where an explanation of e.g. a conjuring trick was explained and demonstrated, we should expect the ones who then actively practised doing it would be better acquainted with performing the skill, right? This also goes for language as a skill.

I suppose the whole article is directed at a particular use of Krashen's theory/hypothesis by certain people promoting an input-only scenario. Or a scenario which is primarily input based as a sort of magic bullet 'natural' way of learning a language (the meaning contained in that use of 'acquisition). Something which probably does require some criticism since it proposes a quantity input methodology, with the assumption that order, structure and understanding somehow arises spontaneously from this. Most learners must know however that quite a lot of input is refined through active learning of some sort. Thus:

They [Gass & Mackey, 2015] address the comprehensibility of the input provided to language learners as level-adjusted input to make the meaning clear.

There is a video you've probably seen on You Tube where a Spanish language professor promotes majority-input 'acquisition' of himself learning Arabic and claims it is the method for all. Aside from all the obvious dubious aspects of this (he's already multilingual and a languages professor with a heightened awareness of structure and learning; has access to extensive resources and time) it's clear he is not just gaining input, because from day 1 he is outputting what he learns in an active environment with corrections from teachers. So the loop of input-output is clear.
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