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I am at the end of two weeks of conferences: iFLT (International Forum on Language Teaching) in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the TPRS Workshop in Agen, France.

Both workshops were excellent but very different.

At iFLT, I worked as a coach for participants who were in the Beginning TCI and the Advanced Beginning TCI track. It was a pleasure working with Teri Wiechart and Michelle Kindt as our leaders for the week. Coaching continues to develop as we try out new strategies and practices. One of the new experiments this year was including some group activities in the “coaching circle” prior to having anyone be the teacher. Participants said that this helped them become more at ease and feel like part of a group. We also had “cohorts” so that the same participants and coaches worked together all week. This helped develop a sense of community and make everyone feel comfortable taking risks. My partners in coaching for the two cohorts I assisted were Teri Wiechart and Dustin Williamson for each cohort respectively.

In Agen, I worked as an “embedded coach” in the language class / language lab led by Sabrina Sebban-Janczak and presented a couple of sessions. The coaching program was led by Laurie Clarcq, who is most well known for Embedded Reading and her website Hearts for Teaching. In addition to facilitating the coaching, Laurie held a daily session on Skill Building in Action. One of the ideas that came out of the week was having the embedded coaches encourage observers in the language classes to look for skills that Laurie was addressing in her sessions.

Throughout the Agen workshop, there was a tremendous sense of camaraderie and community. I got to see this especially in Sabrina’s French course. Everyone felt welcome and was included in some way. We celebrated a couple of birthdays during the week and created – as Glisan and Donato call it – a classroom discourse community. In other words, everyone bonded in the course, and all of the students had a lot of fun throughout the week. Observers also got caught up in the teaching, and those who weren’t already French speakers learned or improved their language skills as well as seeing a master teacher at work.

Other language lab teachers had similar experiences – I just didn’t see them at work. Daniel DuBois taught Breton, Tamara Galvan taught English I, Margarita Pérez García taught Spanish, Diane Neubauer taught Mandarin, Pablo Ramón taught Japanese, and Judith DuBois taught English II, plus Sabrina Sebban-Janczak’s French course.

This is a smaller conference in a delightful French town. Since it is a town rather than a big city, just walking around town gives participants not only the opportunity to enjoy the ambiance, but you see other participants also walking and can stop for a chat. Lunch is a bit longer than in most US conferences, both because that is part of the French culture and because going out to eat takes a while. It also gives participants an opportunity to get to know one another and discuss what they are learning over a shared meal.

I highly recommend experiencing the Agen workshop at least once. More than likely, you will keep coming back whenever you can.

And now we’ll move on to taking a look at some more of Bill Van Patten’s Book, While We’re On the Topic. We’re taking a look at CLT Principle 5: Tasks Should Form the Backbone of the Communicative Classroom.

After a self-evaluation section and an agenda, VanPatten turns yet again to his definition of communication:

Communication is the expression, interpretation, and sometimes negotiation of meaning in a given context. Communication is also purposeful.

Here, he reminds us of two things:
1. Communication must have a purpose other than “language practice”. These purposes are psychosocial, cognitive-informational, and entertainment.
2. Not everything that calls itself “communicative” is communicative.

To illustrate his point, VanPatten presents two examples from current college textbooks that claim “to have a communicative approach.” (2017, p. 77)

The first example is clearly not communicative at all. It is a drill or exercise in which the student is asked to change “Est-ce que …” questions into questions that use inversion. (It’s a French textbook.) No one is interested in the answers to those questions. In fact, meaning is not simply superfluous but may be considered a hindrance to the exercise. Any student could do this exercise without the slightest idea of the meaning of any of the questions. How the authors of a textbook that has “a communicative approach” could include this exercise and others like it remains a mystery to both BVP and me (and I hope to you).

The second example is at least partially communicative. It requires students to “Interview your partner and find out what he or she did last night”, so it looks like this could be communicative with either a cognitive-informational or psychosocial purpose (or a combination of the two). If, however, the context is for students to practice the past tense or get experience asking questions, then the real purpose is language practice, and communication is incidental rather than at the core. It is not truly communicative.

Note: I contrast this with what many high school teachers do on Monday in their classrooms. In my classes, every Monday (or Tuesday at the latest) I asked my students what they did over the weekend. My purpose was not to practice the past tense but to find out what they did over the weekend. I wanted to be able to let them “shine” for a moment (psychosocial) if they had done something noteworthy or simply inform us (cognitive-informational) of what they did. If they saw a movie, I would always follow up with finding out which movie and what they thought about it. Other students who were interested might have other questions. Sometimes students had something happen and simply wanted to tell us the story (entertainment).

I hope you see how the two situations are different.

In summarizing his point VanPatten notes that

Just because mouths are moving in a classroom doesn’t mean that students and teachers are engaged in any kind of communicative event.

Furthermore,

Pair work is not necessarily communicative.

This last statement is something about which language teachers may have to educate administrators, who are usually trained to look for students talking to students as a sign that instruction is “student-centered” rather than “teacher-centered”.

And with that comment, I bring this post to a close. Check back next time for more thoughts on tasks as “the Backbone of the Communicative Curriculum”. Thanks for reading.

This week we are continuing our look at CLT Principle 4: “Instructors and Materials Should Provide Appropriate Level Input (and Interaction)” from Bill VanPatten’s book While We’re on the Topic (ACTFL, 2017).

Last time we considered VanPatten’s definition of “input” in the field of second language acquisition:

“Input means one and only one thing in language acquisition: language embedded in a communicative event that the learner attends to for its meaning”

We also looked at various scenarios to determine whether or not input was being provided. Unfortunately, in far too many classrooms, the input is minimal – and thus delays acquisition.

Language teachers are, or at least ought to be, concerned with efficacy and efficiency of instruction. Is their instruction producing results? How effectively? Are the strategies, activities, procedures, etc. the best use of class time? Are teachers and students getting the “biggest bang for the buck”?

Once we accept VanPatten’s (and others’) basic premise that we learn language only through understanding messages in the target language, then we recognize that the only efficacious use of time in a language class is to provide students with comprehensible input.

The only efficacious use of time in a language class room is to provide students with comprehensible input

With this recognition, our attention shifts to considering the nature of the input and its delivery.

VanPatten addresses this concern in terms of quantity and quality.

The question of quantity is simple: Provide students with as much input as possible.

The question of quality is more complex. For the input to be efficacious, it must be understandable – and not just understandable but understood.

Currently, a discussion is going on about “comprehensible” vs “comprehended”. I believe these are simply two ways of looking at the same thing. From the teacher’s point of view, the concern is with providing comprehensible input. That is, lesson preparation is done with consideration of what student already know and how to make any new terms or structure clear.

From the student’s point of view, the concern is with understanding the language being used.

VanPatten describes these two aspects of the debate under the rubric of Quality of Input. He write, “By quality we mean two thing:
1. whether input is level appropriate;
2. whether learners are engaged with the input (interacting with it).
(P. 59)

By “level appropriate”, VanPatten simply means that the teacher chooses language that the learner can comprehend “without struggling too much”.

By “engaged with the input”, VanPatten means that students attend to what is being said (or read). He does not mean that students are learning formal rules of grammar because acquisition is an unconscious process. VanPatten warns: “Instructors can’t just ‘throw input’ at learners; they must structure activities and tasks such that learners constantly indicate comprehension and react to messages they hear.”

 Instructors can’t just “throw input” at learners

Here, I point out that indicating comprehension and reacting to messages do not necessarily involve language production, verbal expression, or even an oral response. Gestures, actions, and facial expressions can all indicate comprehension and be reactions to messages.

James Asher built a “method” around the concept that actions can indicate comprehension. We call it Total Physical Response.

Many teachers ask students to make certain gestures as indicators of comprehension. (This may be more or less valid, depending on the circumstances.)

I often tell jokes and make humorous comments in German while teaching. My students indicate comprehension by laughing or otherwise responding to what I just said. Sometimes I make ironic comments, and students indicate comprehension through their reactions to those comments. Students also indicate comprehension by performing acts that I ask them to do, like taking out pencil and paper, handing papers in, putting cell phones away, etc.

So, how is input level appropriate?

First, it must be comprehensible. This is almost a tautology but not quite. There is the rare case in which comprehensible language is too simple to be level appropriate. Fortunately, most of the time students will tell a teacher when the language is too simple for them. Unfortunately, they often don’t tell the teacher when the language is too difficult or otherwise not comprehensible.

How, then, do we make language comprehensible? VanPatten gives some  guidelines. Teachers make language comprehensible and level appropriate through

• short sentences – because long, complex, and compound sentences are often confusing to learners; as the language ability of the learners increases, the sentences become longer and more complex. However many teachers begin with sentences that are far too long and complex.
• repetition – because we know that the brain does not long retain most things that we hear or see only once (there are exceptions). How many repetitions do we need? It varies from person to person, word to word, and situation to situation. But in general, we need far more repetitions in the context of meaningful communication than most traditional classroom setting provide.
• rephrasing – because this is part of negotiating meaning. Providing synonyms, circumlocutions, a slightly different word order, etc. can be a powerful tool in helping students understand and acquire language.
• content that is clear – because ambiguity leads to misunderstanding and lack of clarity impedes understanding. To help make the content clear, teachers need to begin with the here and now; that is, new language (for the beginner) is grounded in the context of what students can see right before them.
• slow(er) rate– because learners need extra time to process all of the things they are hearing. Studies that I have read indicate that most adults speak too rapidly for children and young teens in their native language. Children in middle school can, on average, process speech in their native language at 135-140 words per minute, but adults speak at 160-180 words per minute. (Read an article about this here.) That means that older children miss a full fourth of what adults say to them simply because they can’t process their native language fast enough. The reply to many parents’ query, “Didn’t you hear what I said?” is honestly “no” for many children. The problem is compounded for a language learner. Teachers need to slow down.
• pausing at appropriate places – because this also provides learners with processing time
• learner engagement with the input – because we learn language only when it is used for genuine communication, and that means being engaged in the expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning.

The interesting thing is that, if teachers talk with their students and not at them, they will naturally adjust the level of the language until it is appropriate. We do this all the time in real life when we are conversing with people.

One other thing to remember in this discussion is that interest often has as much to do with how something is presented as what is presented. The US Department of State has some interesting comments on Relevance and academic rigor of content. According to the website, content becomes relevant when

• we have a prior intellectual or emotional connection to it
• it is connected to real life
• it is appropriately timed (i.e. when we are not hungry, exhausted or distracted by some other, more important need)
• it actively engages or involves us
• someone else has a contagious passion or enthusiasm
• it is novel

Much, much more could be said about strategies, activities, procedures, etc. that the teacher can use to make certain that language is comprehensible and level appropriate, but that will have to wait.

For now, I leave you with this quote from VanPatten (p. 62):

Students do not sit in class like little sponges. The teacher talks with students, not at them. Students are engaged from the beginning.

The effects of explicit teaching and practice with language are severely limited. Instruction should focus on things that foster acquisition.

We should work with the learner’s natural acquisition processes, not against them.

We must educate students, parents, colleagues, and administrators about the nature of acquisition (as well as the nature of language and communication).

Classroom and materials need to be spaces in which learners receive lots of input and have many chances to interact with it.

The above four statements are Bill VanPatten’s “Implications for Language Teaching”. (While We’re On the Topic, 2017, pp. 54)

At the end of each chapter, VanPatten provides what he believes are significant implications for language instruction from the discussion in the chapter.

The effects of explicit teaching and practice with language are severely limited. Instruction should focus on things that foster acquisition.

VanPatten considers this implication to be quite clear.

If we accept the following precepts as true, then this is the natural conclusion. Unfortunately, it is not widely practiced. What are the precepts?
1. Internal factors (general learning mechanisms and demonstrated psychological factors – often called Universal Grammar) limit the data with which the brain/mind can work to language for communication, as well as constraining and guiding the formation of the mental representation of the language.
2. External factors (input and interaction) constrain acquisition through quantity and quality.
3. Talking about the target language in the mother tongue, fascinating as it may be to some of us, does not contribute to acquisition because it does not provide the right kind of data (language that learners hear or see in a communicative context), i.e. the mind/brain cannot process it for acquisition.

Therefore, the teacher must focus on activities that present learners at all levels – even level one on day one – with the raw data the mind/brain can process. That is, teachers must provide learners with comprehensible input, understandable language that learners hear or see in a communicative context.

Excursus: It might be well to ask ourselves if acquisition is truly the goal of most language programs. Most people would reply, “Well of course it is. Isn’t that why students take the course?”

From many years of teaching in a public high school in the US, I can tell you that learning a language is often NOT the reason students take the course.

In California, we have a set of requirements that students must meet in order to be accepted into the UC (University of California) or CSU (California State University) system. These requirements include a certain number of years in Math, English, Social Science, Science, Art, Foreign Language, and Electives. The categories are labeled with the letters “a” through “g” and are called, ingeniously enough, “The A-G Requirements”.

Many students take a foreign language solely to fulfill college entry requirements. Others take a language because their friends are taking the course, and they want to be with their friends. Still others take a language because that’s what they are expected to do – by parents, by counselors, by peers. Some students even take a language class because they have a slot in their schedule that they must fill and don’t know what else to take or can’t fit something they would rather into their schedule.

So, not all students are in a class because they want to acquire a language.

“But what about the teacher (and administrator)?” you ask.

Good question. Once again, from years of working in a public high school, I have observed that the emphasis is often on preparation for a test rather than acquisition of language.

Schools and districts take pride in the number of students who take and pass the Advanced Placement© exam. Certain courses are designated as AP courses, and the purpose of the course is to prepare students to pass the exam. The College Board also places emphasis on “vertical teaming” and articulation. One regularly hears the maxim, “AP begins in level 1 on the very first day.” So, test preparation pervades the system.

While the College Board has improved the AP Exam in recent years, the underlying problem is that the entire process is geared to passing a specific test rather than acquiring a language with an emphasis that supports the interests of the student.

In the district in which I teach, any students who wish to take four years of Spanish must sign up for the AP Spanish Language and Culture course. There is no opportunity to take a Spanish 4 course, even though it is listed in the district’s course catalogue. Students who want to continue with Spanish in order to improve their communication skills and use the language in a career rather than college have to accommodate themselves to the expectations of the AP course or forego taking the language in school. (I disagree with this position for a number of reasons.)

As generous as I would like to be, the attitude expressed by administrators and teachers alike often reminds me of the following exchange from Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix:

“Now, it is the view of the Ministry that a theoretical knowledge will be more than sufficient to get you through your examination, which, after all, is what school is all about.”

…

“I repeat, as long as you have studied the theory hard enough –”

“And what good’s theory going to be in the real world?” said Harry loudly, his fist in the air again.

Professor Umbridge looked up.

“This is school, Mr Potter, not the real world,” she said softly.

“So we’re not supposed to be prepared for what’s waiting for us out there?”

“There is nothing waiting out there, Mr Potter.”

The example is admittedly exaggerated, but sometimes learning the theory, i.e. learning about the language, rather than acquisition, seems to be the purpose of the language course.

Naturally, if your purpose is not to facilitate acquisition, then the implication for language teaching may not apply. I would hope, though, that ultimately the goal of a language course (as opposed to a linguistics or language appreciation course) is for students to acquire the language.

However, if our purpose is for learners to acquire the language, then it behooves us to remember that “Language is too abstract and complex to be taught and learned explicitly”. (2017, p. 520

We should work with the learner’s natural acquisition processes, not against them.

This implication assumes the validity of VanPatten’s position about the nature of language, the nature of acquisition, and the nature of the constraints on acquisition. Of course, VanPatten assumes the validity of his position, and he has done a credible job of presenting it thus far in the book. At this point, we will not confuse matters by addressing those who have other views.

If language, acquisition, and the constraints on acquisition are as VanPatten has described, then teaching in a manner that works against the learner’s natural acquisition processes will be counterproductive.

One of the discussions that continues in foreign language teaching circles is about method or approach and strategies or practices. Some teachers adhere very strictly to a single method or approach. Others talk about using an “eclectic” approach, taking strategies and practices from a variety of sources. They talk about having a “toolbox”.

The problem that I have observed with the eclectic approach is that too many teachers adopt a strategy, activity, or practice because they have just been introduced to it or because they have used it and the students enjoyed it. There is little or no thought about how the strategy, activity, or practice fits into communicative language teaching, i.e. teaching language through the expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning and allowing the unconscious mind to develop a mental representation of the language by processing the raw data of the language itself.

Going back to the “toolbox” analogy, it seems that many eclectic teachers have tools for auto mechanics, computer repair, plumbing, first aid, and a host of other jobs in their toolbox. They then grab tools (strategies, activities, etc.) will-nilly irrespective of any guiding principle behind the selection. The toolbox analogy may be useful, but it’s important to have the correct toolbox.

Another problem with the use of compelling input in the classroom is viewing it as a strategy or approach. VanPatten addresses this in another of his writings. In the article “Creating Comprehensible Input and Output” (The Language Educator, Oct/Nov 2014, pp. 24-26), VanPatten writes:

After taking a look at language acquisition, defining some terms, and examining Internal Factors that constrain language acquisition, this week we’ll take a look at External Factors that constrain language acquisition and some implications for language instruction.

In his book While We’re on the Topic (2017), Bill VanPatten presents both internal and external factors that constrain (compel, limit) acquisition of languages, whether first, second, third, or subsequent. He calls the internal constraints on acquisition Universal Grammar (UG) but notes that this does not account for all acquisition that takes place; general learning mechanisms also play a role, but these, too, exercise internal constraints.

Today, we’re looking at

External Factors

VanPatten lists two primary External Factors that constrain language acquisition: input and interaction. (2017, p. 48, 50)

Input

The first task is to define the word input. VanPatten calls it “language that learners hear or see in a communicative context” or “language that learners are exposed to that they process for meaning”.

It is important to note that language not used for communication is not input according to VanPatten. Only language used in communication qualifies as input. In fact, input is not about the language per se but about meaning embedded in communicative events.

VanPatten puts it this way: As long as the purpose of the first or second language learner is to understand a message, then the language the learner is exposed to qualifies as input.

Two important principles follow from this:

Language acquisition is a byproduct of understanding messages;

Comprehension of language is a requirement for acquisition but does not guarantee it.

There are factors and conditions that can interfere with acquisition, so simply understanding messages does not guarantee acquisition. However, acquisition cannot happen without understanding. Dr Stephen Krashen distilled the principle thus:

Acquisition happens only through understanding messages

Why is this so?

Because the general learning mechanisms (and Universal Grammar) can operate only on data contained in input. Thus, study plus practice (or, from the teacher’s perspective, Present, Practice, Perform) does not lead to acquisition.

VanPatten likens the situation to scanners at the supermarket. The device is designed to read only a certain set of data, the barcode. Nothing else is readable or usable. Internal factors (general learning mechanisms and UG) constrain what external factor (input) leads to acquisition.

However, this external factor constrains acquisition through two aspects: quantity and quality.

If quantity of input is important, how much should there be? The variables (quality of input, quality of reception, difficulty of the embedded language, comprehension, etc.) are so great, that it is impossible to say. However, the consensus is: a lot – far more than happens in most foreign language classrooms.

There are a couple of misunderstandings not presented in VanPatten’s work that often creep into people’s ideas of quantity. These two misunderstandings are encapsulated in two common quotes: “A flood of output must precede a trickle of input” and “It takes 170 repetitions for a word to be acquired”.

The first quote is often attributed to Wynne Wong, Professor of French and SLA at Ohio State University. I have made this attribution. However, when I could not find any written piece that cited a work or presentation by Wong for this quote, I contacted her by e-mail to ask for myself. She was very gracious in her reply but firm in her denial of every having said this. As she explained it in her e-mail to me, “I like that it’s catchy but I did not say this and as much as I like the image, I cannot say it accurately summarizes my views about input and output. For me, input must precede output, but output does not necessarily have to be a trickle after input. Exactly how much and what the ratio of input to output should be is not clear because there are so many factors at play. …  I would not attempt to quantify the amount.”

Thus, we have the principle that students need a lot of input, perhaps a veritable flood (not to be confused with “input flooding”), or as Hart Crane put it:

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.

Output will follow, whether as a trickle or a flood of its own, when the learner is ready and should not be forced.

The second quote comes from Susan Gross, one of the early adopters of TPRS and an influential trainer and presenter. At a presentation I attended, Gross explained that she had made up the number at random. The idea was not that there is some “magic number” of repetitions that must take place for acquisition, but that teachers have traditionally given students far too little exposure to the language for acquisition.

Remember that one of the aspects of input is quantity.

In many classrooms, the teacher has traditionally presented a vocabulary list, read through it a couple of times, and had students repeat the words. Then the teacher assumed that the words had been “learned” and demanded that students use them in exercises and activities. The quote was a bit of hyperbole to draw attention to this bit of misfeasance of teaching and counteract it. It was never intended to be taken literally, although many people have done so.

(As a further Off-Topic aside, the words of Jesus in Matthew 18:22 are not intended literally. In context, Jesus is teaching his disciples about forgiveness. Peter then asks if forgiving someone seven times is enough. Jesus replies, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” Since Christians aren’t supposed to be keeping score in the first place, seventy times seven represents a number so large as to be meaningless. In other words, forgive and keep forgiving sincere repentance. But far too many people get caught up in the letter rather than the spirit of these sayings – just like how many words are needed for acquisition. There are far more important things than counting either the number of times someone asks for forgiveness or how many times the teacher uses a particular word.)

Returning to the topic of input, the first important aspect of this external constraint on acquisition is to provide lots of it, far more than the teacher thinks necessary or “reasonable”.

The second aspect of input is quality.

To be effective, the input needs to be comprehensible; otherwise it is not truly input (or, from the learner’s point of view, uptake). In addition, input must be engaging and important, thus giving the learner a reason to pay attention to the message. As VanPatten puts it:

If learners aren’t paying attention to the message, even if the input is comprehensible, acquisition ain’t gonna happen.

Interaction

Simply put, since language exists to communicate – express, interpret, and negotiate meaning – at least two people must be involved. Furthermore,

input is better when someone is talking with a learner, not at a learner.

This is not, however, adherence to a psychosocial theory of language acquisition. It is more in line with Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis. In other words, the quality of the interaction is one of the external factors that influences – constrains – student receptivity to the input.

Furthermore, “Learner engagement with another person causes the input to be adjusted and negotiated so more comprehension occurs.”

This is not the “Noticing Hypothesis” (Richard Schmidt) but the natural and intuitive adjustments that speakers make when there is lack of understanding. It’s part of communication, the negotiation of meaning.

Interaction also does not mean that the learner is talking. Learners can use gestures, hand and body movements, facial expression, and a host of other techniques to provide nonverbal and non-language interaction.

What are the Implications for Language Teaching?

I will simply give the summaries that VanPatten provides. Elaboration will have to wait for a later post.

The effects of explicit teaching and practice with language are severely limited. Instruction should focus on things that foster acquisition.

We should work with the learner’s natural acquisition processes, not against them.

We must educate students, parents, colleagues, and administrators about the nature of acquisition (as well as the nature of language and communication).

Classroom and materials need to be spaces in which learners receive lots of input and have many chances to interact with it.

Today we’re continuing our look at Bill VanPatten’s third Principle of Contemporary/Communicative Language Teaching in the book While We’re on the Topic (ACTFL, 2017).

Before we continue, let’s review what we saw last time.

VanPatten states that language acquisition has the following characteristics because of internal and external factors:
– It is slow
– It is piecemeal (i.e. occurs in bits and pieces)
– It is stage-like (i.e. is ordered and sequenced independently of instruction and other factors)
– Instruction does not significantly affect the first three characteristics, although the right kind of instruction might accelerate the speed of acquisition but not the order
– We create mental representation that we couldn’t learn from the environment
– Some kind of non-nativeness seems to be the norm

In other words, “learners do not willy-nilly create linguistic systems in their heads in unique individual ways” (i.e. learners evidence repeated patterns of development and universal tendencies in a linguistic system’s growth) and “instruction doesn’t override or circumvent these tendencies and developmental trajectories” (i.e. acquisition seems to be impervious to direct attempts to make it happen differently). (VanPatten 2017, p. 43)

Internal Factors

From the above two observations, VanPatten concludes that “… something is compelling [constraining] acquisition toward a particular course of action.” (2017, 43)

What is this “something” that constrains acquisition even to the point of developing knowledge of ungrammaticality and impossibility even in the absence of explicit knowledge about such things?

This “something” is not motivation, individual differences in learning rates, or aptitude – or even a combination of the three.

VanPatten believes the “something” is Universal Grammar (UG), a concept made popular by Noam Chomsky. Briefly, the theory of UG (and modularity) states
– Language is unique to human beings and the result of genetic disposition
– Language has universal properties that all human languages must obey
– Languages are limited to those properties provided by UG
– There is a language “module” [also called “Language Acquisition Device”] in the human mind, i.e. the properties of languages are unique to language and the system that processes language, which is different from all other cognitive systems.

To be sure, the idea of UG is controversial, and many researchers and theorists argue that it does not actually exist. However, no matter what we call it, people recognize that psychological factors constrain acquisition of language.

VanPatten acknowledges that not all aspects of language acquisition can be explained by UG. Some aspects of language are acquired through general learning mechanisms. (Others would claim that all acquisition is explained by general learning mechanisms.) Thus, he has what might be called a “weak position” on UG.

One of the general learning mechanisms that contribute to language acquisition is what VanPatten calls the “frequency tabulator”. In other words, the more often we encounter a language feature (word, phrase, form, etc.) the more robustly it will be represented in our mind/brain. This helps explain why certain verb forms are acquired before others, as one example.

One take-away from this is the importance of repetition in instruction. The debate comes in the best way to achieve meaningful repetition, but that is an entirely different conversation.

Before proceeding to a discussion of External Factors that constrain language acquisition, VanPatten includes an excursus on the First Language.

He notes that many people are concerned about interference from the first language on acquisition of subsequent languages. VanPatten’s conclusion? There isn’t much we can do about it; it simply is what it is. Some students will have greater difficulty than others because of this interference, but the interference itself in no way changes the internal constraints on acquisition.

In addition, there is a great deal of misunderstanding about what is called the critical period. According to some, once we have reached a certain age (ill defined as it may be), the mechanisms we used to acquire our first language are no longer available to us, and so we must use a different set of mechanisms to learn subsequent languages. [Note: This is often used as a justification for following a grammar syllabus.]

To this assertion, I can only say: Poppycock!

VanPatten is less blunt in his refutation of the idea that our mechanism of acquisition changes, but he still maintains that we acquire second and subsequent languages the same way we acquired our first language. As VanPatten notes, the idea of the critical period “has lost much support over the years” – and for good reason. “In fact, the evidence is overwhelming that second language learners’ mental representation is guided and constrained as in first language acquisition, and by the same mechanisms.” (2017, p. 48)

For anyone wishing to look further into the role of the “mother tongue” in language instruction, I suggest reading Wolfgang Butzkamm’s “We only learn language once“.

To conclude today’s post, I quote VanPatten’s statement about the power of Internal Factors on language acquisition. (Come back next week for External Factors.)

In sum, internal to the learner and not under the control of external forces are language-related and learning-related factors the guide and constrain the progress of development. The learner’s language looks the way it does at particular times during acquisition for a reason. It’s not because learners are lazy, haven’t memorized something, or haven’t had enough “practice.” It’s because powerful internal forces are at work to process, organize and store the “data” that learners are exposed to.