Le Baron wrote:Cainntear wrote:Well, here the key point is "no-one seems to have a name for it". You may be right, because outside of Krashen's hypothesese it's not really enough of a tangible "thing" to have a noun phrase attached to it. You may be wrong, because I have repeatedly used phrase such as "at your level" or "at an appropriate level". But you may be right, because I don't "have a name for it" -- I discuss the concepts. I think one of the biggest issues in the modern world is that having a name for something about it means people don't actually talk about ideas -- they insist that each other are using the name wrong.
My argument isn't that the name is being used wrong, but that using any name at all appeals to ignorance.
Merely having names for things doesn't close down discussions about their content.
Not entirely, but it does close minds. For example, consider the phrase
“we’re a republic, not a democracy", which is a little too popular in the US at the moment.
These things are not opposites, but the abstract concepts have become taken as opposite by voters, because the nominalisation of "republican" and "democrat" has led to a shortcut in thinking, and many Republican voters are therefore viewing the concept of democracy as counter to their self identity. Which is pretty mental, but it's just how humans think.
Between 2022 and now I've read a fair number of books (about 8) from the Routledge professional applied linguistics series on SLA and ESL. All of them use and discuss the words 'comprehensible input' where they talk about it and discuss it fully, including surrounding issues of innate language acquisition and cognitive learning and a host of other ideas.
Well on one hand, the ESL industry has kind of extended Krashen's ideas because they justify a market dominated by native speakers who aren't actually thinking particularly deeply about their language.
I also don't think that you've really defined what it means, which is kind of my point. Using the term but not defining it doesn't help people who haven't read any definitions, because they end up being forced to assume a meaning. The problem with undefined technical terms is that they get dragged into the vagueness of colloquial terminology... and I'm not sure, but I reckon I could start a heated debate with you about what a "bun" is!
If we use a technical term with people who are not familiar with its defined meaning, we lead them to assume they know what it means, because ego defence means they have to assume that they know what it means... but they don't.
It doesn't matter what the name is so long as people share the same terminology and know what is being referred to - and that would be to either critique, reject, or accept and employ it.
There is plenty of evidence that they
don't, and that's my point -- we are not referring to the same thing as each other.
In fact without a name there is nothing to which anyone could refer in order to confirm or critique.
And yet this thread spends a lot of time with people disagreeing over what the term actually refers to. I ascertain that if we cease to use CI the way Krashen defined it, then we are opening the problem that we are not in fact sharing terminology because we aren't in fact referring to the same thing.
Every book or journal article I have read up to now accepts the name 'comprehensible input' and that it is meaningful as a concept and that it is important for SLA even if it can also be left to interpretation as to how to gauge and apply it. I don't find that at all unusual. I think even if Krashen's name were to be banished from all the literature and never mentioned again the name 'comprehensible input' as I outlined it's two main features above would remain as a correct description of the sort of input required for SLA.
If people were to start making correct descriptions instead of lazily using the term CI without saying what they're actually talking about, that would be a Very Good Thing, because then people would understand each other.
Le Baron wrote:Saim wrote:Regardless whether it's used in SLA research, on the internet the term CI has gotten so wrapped up in broscience and random unrelated methodologies that I've also moved away from using it. I prefer the terms "meaningful exposure", "extensive activities", "material you understand most of" and "implicit learning" (depending on what exactly you're referring to), because they're actually a lot clearer in practice.
Yes, I agree with this. It has become a layman's buzzword attached to whatever interpretation some internet guru gives to it. As such it spoils it. However it would probably be better to reclaim it than relinquish it. Like Cainntear remarked further up (or even another thread?) the words 'hypothesis' and 'theory' are very often treated in a cavalier way with little distinction.
That's aperfect example of the way technical terms can become corrupted by colloquial use. Even if CI has a meaningful definition, it's far too commo for it to be used in a fuzzy pseudo-technical way.
The problem with denoting ideas which require a good deal of further explanation is that none of the names ever really encapsulate their full or exact definitions. Implicit learning (or listening) which is a good enough name, would also need some explanation once it is addressed, as: 'not explicit or immediately discernible...' and 'not immediately conscious learning'. For all its misuse CI by using 'comprehensible' does indicate input material that is understood or able to be grasped, and any further clarification is in the detail.
Exactly the problem. People uncritically take a name as denoting a fairly concrete "thing", and it short-circuits critical thinking, because the existence of "thing" cannot be questioned.
I find "implicit learning" pretty dangerous because it is so far from being self-descriptive that people often misunderstand it. People talk about "explicit learning" as being synonymous with "active learning", which they uncritically follow by equating "implicit learning" with "passive learning"; the existence of the term "active learning" makes people presuppose that "passive learning" must also exist. But the core feature of "active learning theory" is that
all learning is active in that
your brain must be active to learn -- there is no passive absorption of knowledge.
Adjective+noun nominalisations are very popular because they're very quick to say and you don't really have to think. They aren't good because you don't have to think, so it's easy to use them wrong.