The Input Hypothesis in the Classroom

Teaching Receptive Skills in the Foreign Language Classroom

There are two reasons for including training in the receptive skills in the foreign language class.
One is specific: to enable the student to understand oral and written texts in the target language.
These texts may be speech directed to the student, a target language film, or the reading of news
stories from a target language newspaper. The second reason for the inclusión of receptive skills is
general. We assume that input which is comprehended by the student is theprimary source of the
acquisition of the lexicon and grammar of the target language. In this case a central goal of
instruction, especially in initial stages, must be to provide the correct kind and amount of input.
Thus there are two different (but mutually supportive) purposes in the teaching of listening and
reading comprehension.The distinguishing characteristic of the two purposes of activities oriented
toward the teaching of the receptive skills is the different levels of comprehension. Input may be
understood by students in different ways and in different amounts. For example, a very low level
student may understand the topic of conversation but be unable to pick out more than very few of
the detailsof the information exchanged. On the other hand, advanced students understand not
only the main ideas but also supporting details, and some students are able to recognize and
process practically every word (although, of course, even native speakers normally do not attend
toevery word in the input). The necessary degree of comprehension, and therefore
"attention"paid to the text, is usually determined by the context of the text and the desires,
needs, and abilities of the students attending to it.The characteristics of input, which is to serve as
a basis for language acquisition, are more closely defined. Comprehensible Input for acquisition is
input at the

"i + 1"

level. That is, input to stimulate acquisition must by definition contain some structures and
vocabulary that are onlys lightly beyond the students level. As we noted, students are capable of
far greater comprehension than simply

i+1

, especially if the contextual cues are increased and if they concentrate on global comprehension
of main ideas with little or no supporting detail. The teaching of receptive comprehension
strategies in which students learn to comprehend main ideas from "advanced" or "authentic" oral
and written texts is important, since it allows them to interact with native speakers in situations
far beyond their present acquired competence. In addition there is a certain amount of
satisfaction in the use of authentic texts.However, theory predicts that this sort of interaction with
texts, at perhaps an

i + 20

level, is not greatly helpful for acquisition.The use of authentic texts in the foreign language
classroom is not new. Authentic written textshave been used (and abused) from the beginning of
foreign language instruction in the United States. Indeed, for many foreign language instructors,
only the use of authentic texts isacceptable. Authentic oral texts have not been as popular,
perhaps because of the relative difficulty in obtaining them as well as technical problems using
them in the classroom. Authentic oral texts can be brought to the class via audiotape recordings or
videotape or recordings. (Livebroadcasts, while appropriate in some circumstances, are difficult to
work with in terms of planning and follow-up.) Written authentic texts can be in the form of
pictures of signs and other written materials, newspapers, magazines, books, realia such as
money, tickets, advertisements, and so forth.Our conclusion is that we must provide for both sorts
of activities with receptive texts, i.e. text sat

i+1

primarily for acquisition purposes and texts at higher levels (authentic texts) for the development
of "coping" skills. In the following sections specific suggestions are made for appropriate activities
for the development of these skills.

To illustrate the sorts of classroom activities proposed, we will describe activities for input for
acquisition and the use of authentic texts at three levels: beginning, intermediate, and advanced.

Beginning Level

A.

Comprehensible Input for Acquisition

In the foreign language classroom there are six possible sources of comprehensible input for
acquisition: teacher-talk, student-talk (interlanguage input), audiotape recordings/radio and
videotape recordings/television, and textbook materials (texts and readers). By far the most
important source of comprehensible input for acquisition is aural "teacher-talk." Written
inputplays a secondary but important role for beginners and will be discussed briefly at the end of
this section.Teacher-talk is one of a group of "simple codes" which includes "caretaker speech"
and "foreigner talk." Each of these codes has been studied by researchers, and the characteristics
of each are fairly well known. They include, for example, a slower rate of speech, more careful
articulation, use of more frequent lexical items, attempts to insure comprehension, and so
forth.There are three possible problems with the use of instructor-generated input in the foreign
language classroom:

1)

the instructor is not proficient enough in the foreign language to produce good comprehensible
input at

i+1

,2)so much time is spent on learning activities (grammar explanation, drills, and exercises),that the
quantity of comprehensible input is extremely low, and 3)the instructor does not know how to
produce comprehensible input for low-level students. We are concerned here with problems 2)
and 3). The solution to the second problem is to achieve a better balance of acquisition and
learning skills in the classroom. The reliance on learning activities is in many cases related to the
belief that learning "becomes" acquisition, or at least plays a major role in acquisition. Whether
true or not, the overwhelming reliance on learning activities in foreign classrooms results in low
listening comprehension levels; for whether learning aids speaking skills or not, it certainly plays a
minor role in the development of listening comprehension skills.Many of the techniques described
in the following sections are found in Terrell (33, 34) and Krashen and Terrell (18).

Teacher-Talk in Stage I: Comprehension

The most important strategy for a beginner who wants or needs to understand messages in the
target language is to concentrate on global meaning, i.e. getting the main idea. Indeed one of the
goals of listening comprehension training for beginners must be to develop a tolerance for hearing
words and utterances in the target language which are not understood. They need tolerance to
focus on key words in the input and by using these key vocabulary items (nouns, verbs, adjectives,
and sometimes adverbs) along with contextual cues, understand messages. (This is true of course
whether the input is at

i+1

for acquisition or at any other

, say

.)Methodologies in which students focus first on the production of a limited number of structures
and vocabulary items, often encourage "bad" listening habits, since the students only hear what
they can produce and only hear words they know. In effect they "understand" utterances because
they "understand" all of the components of the utterance, i.e. they hear only

.In several recent approaches and methodologies (such as Natural Approach, and TotalPhysical
Response [TPR]) students are explicitly given a "prespeech" period in which they concentrate on
developing listening strategies. During this "Comprehension" period (Stage I), which may last
from one to twenty hours (depending on target language and background of the students), the
input contains enough lexical items in context to demonstrate to the students that they will be
successful with language acquisition. Indeed students should not be encouraged to
attempt more than minimum levels of speech until they are relatively comfortable incomprehendi
ng the instructors speech in the target language.The techniques for providing input at

i+1

during Stage I include:1)Total Physical Response activities,2)descriptions of students and

classroom objects, and3)descriptions of pictures (cut from ordinary magazines).Also important is a
teacher-talk mode in which narrative is interspersed with questions. The most obvious basis for
content is the students themselves. In order to avoid requiring speech production during initial
input of new vocabulary items, questions may be phrased so that only the name of the student or
a simple yes/no is required in the answer. The following is an example of teacher-talk input (at
i+1

) during the first hour of class.

What is your name? (Lisa.) Look at Lisa, class. Lisa has blond hair. (Point or touchhair.) Hair, blond
hair. Look at my hair. Is my hair blond? (No.) No, my hair is brown.Look at my eyes. (Touch eyes.)
Are my eyes brown? (No.) Are they blue? (Yes.) Yes, I have blue eyes. Does Lisa have blue eyes?
Look at Lisa's eyes. Are they blue? (No.) Arethey brown? (Yes.) OK, what is the name then of the
student in this class who has blondhair and brown eyes? (Lisa.)

Such a sequence, although not really "natural" in the sense that it does not correspond to a real
conversation between native speakers, can "seem" like natural conversation to the students who
are beginning the acquisition of listening comprehension skills. However, even oral input which is
based on the students and classroom objects is limited. Listening comprehension for beginners is
heavily dependent on context, and in order to expand possible messages in the input we are
forced to use visuals. Our suggestion is to use pictures cut from magazines, since they are readily
accessible and inexpensive. The following is an example of comprehensible input based on a
picture.

Look at this picture, class. Is there a man in this picture? (Yes.) Does the man have brown hair?
(No.) Does he have black hair? (Yes.) Is there a woman in this picture?(Yes.) So, there is a man and
a woman in the picture. What is the man doing? Is herunning? (No.) Is he walking? (No.) Is
he skiing? (Yes.) Is the woman skiing too? (Yes.)So, there is a man and a woman, and they are both
skiing. Is it cold? (Yes.) What is thiscalled in English? (Pointing to the snow....) Snow. This is snow.
We ski on the snow.

Using these input techniques, it is relatively simple for the students to develop basic
listeningcomprehension skills, especially if little or no speech is required. Indeed, one
can recognize the meaning of many more words in context, if speech is not required. In addition
the variety of syntax and morphology can be much greater since neither syntax nor morphology
is much used by beginners to comprehend but both are required for speech.

Teacher-Talk in Stage Two: Early Speech

Speech begins to emerge as acquisition takes place through comprehensible input at

i+1

.This happens most naturally in the form of a single word or short phrases as responses
tocomments or questions. The words the students produce are of course those they have
heardoften enough in the input to acquire. During the initial period of speech production, the
instructor continues to concentrate on listening comprehension skills by focusing on the
acquisition of more and more key lexical items. The input must produce a sort of spiralling effect in
which some of the lexical items introduced today in the input are those we expect the students
tobegin using several days from now, while those they actually produce today are those they
havealready heard in past input. This implies a rejection of cognitive techniques in which the
students are given a new form, i.e. explanation, required to practice that form, i.e. drill, and then
asked to use the form immediately in communication. The following is an example of teacher-talk
after about 5 hours of instruction. The example is based on a picture.
What do you see in this picture, class? (woman) Yes, there's a woman. Can you describe her?
(dress) Yes, she's wearing a dress. What colour is the dress? (blue) That's right, itsblue. Is there
anyone else in the picture? (man) Yes, there's also a man. What is hewearing? (suit) Yes, he's
wearing a suit. Is it a blue suit or a grey suit? (grey) Yes, it’s agrey suit. What are they doing? (walk)
Yes, they're walking. Where are they walking? (?)On the beach. This is a beach. Do you know what
a beach is? (Point to sand and water.) A beach has sand and water. What is the name of a beach
you know?

The new words in this sequence are beach, Sand , and water . They will be available
for production in some later class period. Many sorts of activities lend themselves for teacher-
generated input during the early speechstage. They include questions about charts, maps, and
tables, especially tables of personal information about the students themselves, for example, a
chart of the classes the students are taking in addition to the language class, or a list of the jobs of
the students in the class (Krashenand Terrell, 18).

Teacher-Talk in Stage Three: Speech Emerges

As the

i+1

increases in the input, so does the ability of beginning students to put wordstogether coherently
and generate sentences and even discourse. Most instructors have littletrouble giving

i+1

input to students who are advanced beginners or intermediates, and mostrecent textbooks do a
relatively good job suggesting acquisition/communication activities for students who can produce
complete sentences. There are essentially four types of activities for this stage which will result in
good

i+1

level input:1)games,2)content activities (culture, geography, history, music, art, etc.),3)problem-

solving activities (i.e. maps, graphs, timetables, situations), and 4) affective-humanistic activities
(opinions, discussions, panels, oral presentations, skits, etc.).B.

Authentic Texts for Beginners

Beginners cannot, of course, understand much of recorded conversations between

nativespeakers, but they can deal in limited ways with broadcast media, i.e. radio and television.
For example, one can record short segments of different types of radio broadcasts, such as
news,commercials, announcements, introductions of pop songs, call-ins, or contests. During the
play-back in class students may be asked to identify only the type of broadcast, i.e. this is a
newsbroadcast. Other requests can include telling anything at all they understand including
isolatedwords. Videotape recordings of foreign language television program segments offer thead
vantage of strong visual cues. Beginning level students can be asked to talk about what they see
and comment on anything they understood in the target language. Beginners can work
quite extensively with authentic written texts. Especially useful are scanning activities in which the
students look for specific information in such items as a TV log, a menu, a page from a telephone
book, advertisements, train and airline timetables, and so forth. The central goal of these activities
is that the students learn not to be overwhelmed by the amount of target language they do not
understand, but rather to work with what they canunderstand using contextual cues and the
knowledge they do have of the target language.

It should be noted that while acquisition is not a primary part of the authentic text as input,
theteacher-talk preparation and follow-up should indeed be at the i + 1 level and should serve
for acquisition purposes. In addition, exposure to authentic texts may lay the ground for future
acquisition of such parameters as intonation, rhythm, and phonology in general. In the following
example, students are looking at an advertisement for various movies. Although unable to readthe
entire text, as the following interaction shows, they can utilize the text searching out
therequested information.

Suppose we want to see a movie. What time does the earliest movie start? (3:30 p.m.) Dowe want
to go that early? (No.) So lets choose another one. Is there a film which starts atabout 7:30? (Yes.)
Which one? (Students try to pronounce name.) Yes, Breaking Away. Whatis the latest hour we can
see Breaking Away? etc.

Intermediate

The "intermediate" student can profitably take subject matter classes in the target
language.Classroom activities for intermediates should, to a large extent, be "content" activities in
whichthe students are focused on learning new content through the medium of the target
language.Traditionally this content has been the literature, history, culture, art, and music of the
targetlanguage, but grammar, phonetics, and other areas of linguistics are also legitimate areas
of study. In addition one could take courses in other content areas such as psychology,
sociology,anthropology, mathematics, and so forth, as a way of increasing proficiency in the target
language.Receptive skills at the intermediate level, while usually good, are far from native
levels.Students normally understand the instructor and other students during the oral activities
in classand also can
at least "cope with" conversations with native speakers. The input from theinstructor is usually at

i+1

and serves to further acquisition, while the input from a

nativespeaker may still be at a much higher level where the student is forced to use globalcompre
hension strategies that entail missing much of the detail. Thus the classroom
continuesto be a good source for acquisitional input, but interactions with native speakers play an
increasingly important role whenever they are available.Extra sources of oral input can be made
available to the students via audio and videorecordings of authentic texts from native radio and
television broadcasts. Even at this level, authentic audio and video texts are still somewhat above
the students

i+1

, and therefore thetask must still focus on global understanding with perhaps some accompanying
detail. Thesesorts of activities constitute "pleasure listening," i.e. trying to understand as much as
possiblewithout becoming frustrated at what is not comprehended.Written input at this level
should consist of all levels of difficulty from the students current i(i.e. reading in which almost
every word is recognized) to authentic texts which are read for global comprehension with little
supporting detail. Easy readings at the students current i levelare also useful to improve reading
techniques, i.e. improved speed, reading in larger chunks, focus on content. Most of the reading
will be done at

i+1

since this fosters acquisition. Readingactivities at i +

also provide opportunities for using context to induce the meaning of newwords, a key skill to be
developed at this level. Finally, authentic texts which support the contentareas, for example,
literature and history, can be read by the student provided the instructor does not demand
attention to detail.

Advanced

Advanced students are comfortable interacting in the target language but have not yetreached
native speaker levels of proficiency. Normally language training for advanced
studentsfalls under certain specializations depending on what the student will do with the targetla
nguage. Students who will work for the U.S. Government monitoring radio broadcasts inRussian,
for example, have different training needs than a general foreign language major whowill teach
first- and second-year language at the secondary level or the same major who plansto do doctoral
level research in the literature of the target language. In any case, advanced
training in the receptive skills, both listening and reading by the definition given here of "advanced
level," must make almost exclusive use of authentic
texts.Thus the materials for advanced students are approximately the same as those for intermedi
ates, but both the proportion of authentic texts and the expected level of comprehension are
higher. Video recordings of television broadcasts (news programs, comedyand variety shows,
movies) are especially helpful in broadening the students receptive skills
toareas not normally encountered in the classroom. In addition, one of the most difficultcomprehe
nsion tasks even for advanced students is comprehension of native speakers whenthey converse
with each other. The students ability to comprehend in such situations is greatlyimproved through
experiences watching television dramas, soap operas, situation comedies,and films. The advantage
of videotaped materials is that visual and contextual cues are presentto support
comprehension.Reading at the advanced stages should be used as an important source of
comprehensibleinput for acquisition. Much has been written about the different kinds of reading
skills necessaryfor advanced students in a literate society. What is important to keep in mind is
that even at anadvanced level we read different sorts of materials for different purposes and
therefore
usesomewhat different reading strategies. One should at least distinguish: extensive reading,
intensive reading, scanning, and skimming skills.

Conclusions
 There is indeed a great deal we can do to improve the teaching of receptive skills in theforeign
language classroom. The important point is that the teaching of the receptive skills is motivated in
two ways:1) students must be given the means to work with oral and written authentic texts that
are beyond their current level of competence, and 2) the receptive skills are the basis for the
acquisition process itself.

My comments on Teacher Talk:

What is important is to realize that everything a teacher does and says in the classroom is done
with a purpose in mind, that is why it has to be planned in advance. Teachers speak to be
understood. Teachers have a special way of speaking. Some of the strategies used in regular
teacher talk are exaggeration of pronunciation and facial expression, decreasing speech rate
and increasing volume, frequent use of pause, gestures, graphicillustrations, questions, and
dramatization, sentence expansion and rephrasing. As opposed to direct correction, the teacher in
interaction uses modelling or indirect correction in the form of restatements.
Here are ten special strategies (sometimes called “problem-reducing strategies”) that teachers
adopt when speaking to their classes:

1.Make regular checks

Watch the students carefully to check that they understand. Check by looking at thestudents'
faces. You can see whether they follow your meaning or not. (Do not keep asking'Do you
understandingmore and consequently makes them feel insecure.) Remember students also adopts
trategies. They may say 'yes' when they don't understand anything!

2. Use familiar words

Use mainly words which the students already know, or cognates - words which have asimilar
sound and meaning in their mother tongue.

3. Use familiar topics

Refer to topics which are familiar to the students from their everyday lives, from earlier lessons, or
from lessons in other subjects.

4. Lower the cognition level

Avoid topics or concepts which students would find difficult to understand even in their mother
tongue!

5. Recycle information

Repeat yourself using the same words as before, or paraphrase, to give the students asecond
chance to understand.

6. Alter your style of speech

Speak slightly slower pace than normal (as if you were speaking to a very large group of people)
and exaggerate your intonation and stress on important words. Pause frequently
toallow 'slow listeners' to catch up. (Regular pauses after sentence groups are moreimportant
than slow speech!)
7. Simplify the language structure

Slightly simplify your range of structures when speaking and make sure you repeat thestructures
you use.

8. Use a range of sensory focus

Support what you say with pictures, words or phrases on the blackboard, gestures, actions
and facial expressions. Make sure that the students can see your face and mouthwhenever you
speak! (Don't speak to the board!)

9. Use clear discourse markers

Use regular signalling language to show what you are doing: 'Now', 'First of all', 'Good', 'Wehave
done…' and 'Now we are going to do…'. Indicate clearly what the students should do:'Now, listen
carefully', 'Now, watch carefully' and so on.

10. Follow a routine

Follow regular routines and patterns in your lessons so that students know what ishappening and
what is going to happen. These regular patterns help comprehension andprovide security.

Characterization of Teacher Talk

Typical uses or Context of Teacher Talk

-1.Explaining lexis or structure 2. Correcting 3. Eliciting response 4. Modelling (giving verbal

models for Ss to use in their own communication) 5.Explaining or clarifying tasks 6. Summarising 7.
Repairing break-downs in communication 8. Story-telling and oral presentation of written material
9. Questioning

Verbal characteristics of Teacher Talk -

1. Fully grammatical 2. Preserves "natural" stress & intonation 3. Broken into sense groups 4.
Simplified but not unnatural. 5. At least 80 % comprehensible (ideally, it is between 95% and
85% comprehensible) 6. Broken into short paragraph segments to encourage or invite Ss to
interrupt, commentand ask questions. 7. When new vocabulary is taught, typical examples of
use and usage are given whenever possible. 8. Teacher gets regular feedback through Qs,
especially 'open questions' or 'two-step questions' (closed question + follow-up as below:

T: Do you like English food? S: No. T: Oh? Why? T: Do you ever get angry? S: Yes. T: When was the
last time you got angry? And why did you get angry? and other devices, such as physical response
(“Touch your left ear”) and using parallels to get examples from the class (“I don't like overcooked
vegetables. And I never eat rare meat. Tell the person next to you about a kind of food you don't
like ornever eat.”)

9.Teacher gives Ss chances to interact with each other as well as with teacher. 10. Teacher gives
models for Ss to use with each other in pair or group work. 11. Variety of elicitation & explanation
techniques including: use of context, enactment (i.e.acting out, miming), and illustration. 12.
Covert/overt correction techniques.

Non- or Para-Verbal characteristics of Teacher Talk -

 1.Teacher maintains eye-contact when talking with as many students as possible.2.Uses eye
contact & body movement to give emphasis/invite participation (prolongedgaze to invite
comment & gestures to help explain language.3.When a student speaks the teacher looks at the
speaker but also around class to judgereactions and to see if other students are indicating that
they want to speak.4.Walking away from the student speaking to make the student speak more
loudly &engage in eye-contact with the
class.5.The Teacher uses facial expression to indicate interest, doubt, approval and occasionally
disapproval.

Quedaría así:
Empieza Belen diapositiva 1- 4, Noelia 5-8,
Flavia 9-11, Jime 12-14 y Maricel 15-18.