Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc.

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A Commentary on Krashen's Input Hypothesis Author(s): Christian Faltis Source: TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Jun., 1984), pp. 352-357 Published by: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3586705 Accessed: 13/12/2010 04:47
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REFERENCES Krashen, Stephen.1981.Letterto the Editor.LanguageLearning31:217-221. Krashen, Stephen. 1982.Principlesand practicein second languageacquisition. New York:Pergamon. Long, Michael. 1983.Input and second language acquisitiontheory. Paper presented at the 10th University of Michigan Conference on Applied Linguistics,Ann Arbor,Michigan,October 28-30, 1983. Reynolds, Paul Davidson. 1971.A primer in theory construction.Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.

A Commentary on Krasben's Input Hypotbesis

CHRISTIAN FALTIS Universityof Alabama

I have been studying and teaching Krashen's Monitor Model with its accompanying hypotheses for several years now. Krashen attaches a great deal of importance to the distinction between acquisition and learning and argues that the sole function of conscious language learning is to monitor output which has been acquired via meaningful interaction in the second language. For him, acquisition is what allows language students to initiate utterances and gain fluency in the second language. Of equal importance to Krashen is how adults acquire a second language. He attempts to explain this process through his input hypothesis, which states that second language acquisition is most likely to occur when the acquirer understands the language input. In order for this input to be meaningful, Krashen believes that it must contain structure "a little" beyond the acquirer's current level of competence in the second language (1981a, 1982). According to the hypothesis, progressive speaking ability is not taught directly; rather, it emerges as acquirers build up their competence through meaningful input. Krashen's conception of the second language acquisition process in adults is very similar to the way he views first language acquisition in children: Children progress by understandinglanguage that is a little beyond them. That is, if a child is at a stage i, that child can progressto state i plus 1 along the "natural sequence" (where i plus 1 may be a block of structures;more correctly the child who has just acquired the members of i can then acquire a member of i plus 1) by understandinglanguage containingi plus 1. The child understandslanguagecontainingstructure that is a bit beyond him or her with the aid of context (1981b:126).
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The idea that both adults and children acquire language in this manner comes primarily from a small number of studies on first language acquisition in children which report on a phenomenon known as "caregiverspeech" (Krashen1978:15-18; 1981b:128-135). is also to in as "caretaker referred the literature Caregiver speech and Krashen "motherese" speech" prefers "care(Newport 1975). it that and as "the modification defines giver speech" parents and othersmake when talkingto young children"(Krashen 1982:22).The the five which he for last has characterized caregiver years as being the model for his input hypothesis interactswith young children in the following ways: 1. does not deliberately attemptto teach language(citingNewport, andGleitman Gleitman, 1977) 2. modifieshisorherspeechinorder to aidcomprehension Clark (citing andClark1977) 3. usesshort,simplesentences thatbecomemorecomplexas the child older gets 1973) (citingPhillips 4. repeatshim- or herselffrequently to assurecomprehension (citing Cross1977) 5. correctslanguageonly to clarifymeaning(citingClarkand Clark 1977). I have no problem accepting the resultsof these particularstudies nor do I object to the way that Krashenuses them to support the input hypothesis. My real concern is that he has painted a picture of second language acquisitionin adultsbased primarilyon accountsof caregiver-child interaction without providing his readership with the culturalcontext for any of the research.Who are these caregivers to whom Krashenso often refers? Do caregivers across languages and cultures interact with young children in this manner?I believe that it is important to consider that 1) the caregivers in the studies Krashenuses to support his ideas concerning how acquisitiontakes place come from mainstream middle-class homes, and 2) the general pattern of caregiver-child interaction portrayed in these studies is neither characteristic of all societies nor of all groups. In the remainderof this commentary,I would like to considerthe caregiver speech phenomenon in first language acquisition from a cross-cultural perspective by highlighting a number of studies communities. dealing with languagesocializationin non-mainstream The purpose of presentingthese non-mainstream studies is to show that there is more than one pattern of caregiver-childinteraction. This commentary ends with a statement concerning the need for cross-cultural evidence to supportKrashen's input hypothesis. Heath (1982a, 1982b, 1983) has written extensively on language
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socialization among Black residents of the Southeastern workingclass community referred to as Trackton. In Trackton, young children are never viewed as conversational partners by adult caregivers. For a caregiver to choose a young child over another adult as a conversation partner would be considered strange and inappropriate. Children are not excluded from adult activities or from listening to conversations on any topic; they simply are not brought into the discussion. Trackton caregivers make no attempts to reduce the competence gap between them and their children by simplifying their speech. From the day Trackton children are born, parents and older siblings make statements about them to other family members and friends but do not attempt to engage them as talking partners until they become realistic sources of informational conversation. Children in Trackton become information givers by taking in and imitating sounds they constantly hear around them. Ward (1971) provides a similar, though less complete, description of language acquisition patterns among the caregivers and children living in the Black community of Rosepoint in rural Louisiana. In Rosepoint, although talk is all around, there is no such thing as talk for the sake of talk between caregivers and young children because children who are learning to talk are not considered to be appropriate conversational partners. When caregivers do find it necessary to address young children, they do not attempt to imitate or expand the speech of the children. Child language socialization research conducted outside the United States points to a pattern of caregiver-child interaction that also differs markedly from the mainstream studies. Schieffelin (1979) provides an account of language learning among the rain forest Kaluli people of the Southern Highlands in Papua New Guinea. Kaluli caregivers direct very little speech to pre-verbal children. Since babies are described by adults as "having no understanding," it does not make any sense to treat them as conversational partners. Kaluli mothers will, however, speak "for" the baby under the right conditions. For example, when older children greet and address the baby, the mother will respond in a marked voice for the baby. In speaking for the baby, however, the mother makes no attempt whatsoever to simplify her speech to imitate the baby. Her language is well formed and appropriate for older children. Ochs (1982) discusses the organization and development of communication between caregivers and young children living in a traditional, highly stratified village on the island of Upolu in Western Samoa. For the first six to eight months after birth,
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household members and others, in the presence of the infant, do a great deal of talkingabout the infant to caregivers.Muchof this talk concernsthe infant'sbodily statesand needs. Whenactualcaregiverinfant communication does take place, it tends to be articulated throughthe medium of songs or rhythmic forms. At this early stage of language development, caregiversdo not treat infants as conversational partners;infants are talked about and at, but never with. Once young childrenbegin to produce intelligiblespeech, caregivers interact in ways that encourage the use of certain speech acts that childrenwill be expected to produce as low-rankingmembersin the household. The speech used by caregivers in these instancesis not modified to accommodate the young child. The final example of caregiver-childinteractionin a non-mainstream setting comes from a brief report of a study by Harkness (1971) on language socializationin a ruralGuatemalancommunity. Generallyspeaking, adult caregiversin this communityrarelyinteract with young children. Language development is not thought to bear any relationshipto how often or even how caregiversinteract with these children. When mothers do need to address their young children,they tend to use a monotonicstyle of speakingthatis somewhat faster than their normal pace. If a child fails to understand speech addressed specifically to him or her, mothers will often respond by repeating the utterance, without changing it, as many times as needed. It should be readily apparent from the studies presented above that none of the patterns of interaction between caregivers and young childrenin these non-mainstream settingsresemblesKrashen's representation of caregiver speech. According to him, caregivers "talk 'simpler' in an effort to make themselves understood by the child" (Krashen 1982:22). The caregivers in the non-mainstream communities, however, did not simplify their speech to address young children. Simplificationwas viewed as inappropriatespeech behavior. In fact, in one case, mothers tended to speak faster when talkingto young children! It troubles me that Krashen has not once made reference to any of the non-mainstream studies of caregiver-child interaction in his discussionsof the input hypothesis,especially since this hypothesisis an attemptto answer"howwe acquirelanguage"(Krashen 1981a:100; 1982:20). In its present form, the way "we" acquire language is apparently very similar to the way young children in mainstream middle-class homes acquire language simply because Krashensays so. I am going to stick my neck out here and suggest that this is a subtle form of ethnocentrism,the view that one's own group is the best model for whatever it is that we want to establish. It seems to
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me that a theory of adult second language acquisition which relies on child language acquisition phenomena should at least consider those phenomena from a cross-cultural perspective. Such a perspective provides a robustness more fitting of higher level generalizations. There are still many questions to be addressed before we can begin to accept hypotheses as theory. We need to know more about the role of peer input in the acquisition process. We also need to know whether culturalgroups who do not appear to simplify input, simplify the interactionprocess (see Long 1981). We can no longer rely only on mainstream middle-class research to characterize and/or hypothesize about the language acquisitionprocess in general.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thankShirleyHeath and Mindy Sperlingfor their commentson an earlierdraft of this commentary. REFERENCES Clark, Herbert, and Eve Clark. 1977. Psychology and language. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich. Cross, Toni G. 1977. Mothers' speech adjustments: the contributions of selected child listener variables. In Talking to children: language input and acquisition, Catherine Snow and Charles Ferguson (Eds.), 151-188. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Harkness, Sara. 1971. Cultural variation in mother's language. Word 27:495-498. Heath, Shirley Brice. 1982a. Questioning at home and at school: a comparative study. In Doing the ethnography of schooling, George Spindler (Ed.), 103-131. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Heath, Shirley Brice. 1982b. What no bedtime story means: narrative skills at home and school. Language in Society 11(1):49-76. Heath, Shirley Brice. 1983. Ways with words: language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Krashen, Stephen. 1978. The monitor model for second-language acquisition. In Second language acquisition and foreign language teaching, Rosario C. Gingras (Ed.), 1-26. Arlington, Virginia: Center for Applied Linguistics.

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Krashen, Stephen. 1981a. Effective second language acquisition: insights

Krashen, Stephen.1981b.Second languageacquisitionand second language Krashen, Stephen. 1982. Principles and practices in second language
acquisition. New York: Pergamon Press. Long, Michael. 1981. Input, interaction, and second language acquisition. learning. New York: Pergamon Press.

1980's, James E. Alatis, Howard B. Altman, and Penelope M. Alatis (Eds.), 97-109. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

from research. In The second language classroom: directions for the

Newport, Elissa. 1975. Motherese: the speech of mothers to young children. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Newport, Elissa, Henry Gleitman, and Lila R. Gleitman. 1977. Mother I'd rather do it myself: some effects and non-effects of maternal speech Snow and Charles Ferguson (Eds.), 109-149. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Ochs, Elinor. 1982. Talking to children in Western Samoa. Language in Society 11(1):77-104. Phillips, Juliet. 1973. Syntax and vocabulary of mothers' speech to young children: age and sex comparisons. Child Development 44(1):182-185. Schieffelin, Bambi. 1979. How Kaluli children learn what to say, what to do, and how to feel: an ethnographic study of the development of communicative competence. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University. York: Irvington Publishers.

Annalsof the New YorkAcademy of Science 385:259-278.

style. In Talkingto children:language input and acquisition,Catherine

Ward, MarthaC. 1971.Them children:a study of languagelearning.New

Krasben Responds to Fatis. ...

Faltis correctly suggests that the input hypothesis should be reconsidered in the light of cross-cultural evidence. In my view, the cross-cultural data do not supply counter-evidence to the hypothesis. They are, in fact, valuable in that they focus attention on what is essential for language acquisition: not simplified input but comprehensible input containing i + 1, structures "slightly beyond" the acquirer's current state of competence. The input hypothesis does not claim that all acquirers will receive simplified input, expansions, or middle-class caretaker speech. It does claim that all acquirers will obtain comprehensible input, and there is good reason to posit that such input is available to acquirers in each of the situations described by Faltis. First, in each case there is a large amount of exposure to language; language is used around the child a great deal. Heath (1982) notes that the Black working-class children she studied "are in the midst of
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