Diane Grieman sent this over from that recent L.A. TPRS meeting, as a follow up to the recent blog here on transparency:
PRESENTED BY STEPHEN D. KRASHEN
to a small group of language teachers
in San Diego, California, on November 19, 2009
Some definitions:
TRANSPARENT INPUT: the acquirer understands EVERY WORD. There is no “noise” at all in the input. Typically achieved through translation.
Advantages: totally comprehensible, lowers anxiety for beginners
Disadvantages: limits of translation, encourages focus on form, provides incomplete meaning
COMPELLING INPUT: input that is so interesting that the acquirer at least temporarily “forgets” that it is in another language.
ACQUIRED LANGUAGE: Something (vocabulary or a grammar rule) is acquired when
(1) it is easy to access/retrieve and produce
(2) you have full (but subconscious) knowledge of its use and meaning
Some hypotheses:
1. The cause of anxiety in language acquisition is incorrect pedagogy, which results in false personal theories of language acquisition and inaccurate expectations.
2. Interesting input lowers the affective filter. Compelling input destroys the affective filter.
3. Interesting input decreases the urge to focus on form. Compelling input destroys it.
4. The personalization hypothesis: Personalization increases interest.
Anxiety and the beginner: Beginners as battered language students, low tolerance for noise.
Application:
BEG stage: transparent personalized input
Translation: sure method of achieving transparency. (also: pop-up grammar, some use of pictures, movements)
Preserve the essence of classic TPRS:
Language Experience!! Student creates script in Ll. (Use of voicethread, S. Y. Lee (Sy-Ying Lee)
INTERMEDIATE: the illusion of full comprehensibility, input may contain some noise — will be 98 percent comprehensible. If input is comprehensible and compelling, students will not demand 100% transparency.
Other means of making input comprehensible used more, translation somewhat less, but never forbidden.
– LOW intermediate: graded readers, narrow listening
– HIGHER intermediate: easy, authentic reading, sheltered content
Note that narrow = personalized