Last time, I indicated that Bill VanPatten seems to be advocating Activities (class procedures that are partially communicative and have the purpose of teaching language) in his referential structured input activities that form part of Structured Input.
Referential structured input activities are not the only form of Structured Input that VanPatten presents. He also describes affective structured input activities. These activities occur during affective activities, that is activities in which the communicative purpose is to elicit information about students or to elicit their opinions, beliefs and attitudes. (2017, p. 106) [Is anyone else bothered by the number of times that the word “activities” occurs in this explanation? We have “activities” within “activities”.] The distinction between this and simple communication lies in the fact that the teacher “uses the form in focus in a structured way to elicit information …” (2017, p. 106)
Once again, an example probably clarifies the practice better than a description. An affective structured input activity proceeds as follows.
The teacher reads a series of activities in the past tense that he may or may not have done the previous evening. Students also have the statements in written form. Following the reading, which is also a review of the verb forms previously encountered in referential structured input activities, students discuss with a partner which activities they believe the teacher actually did. After students discuss the activities and indicate their choices, they discuss with the entire class. There are no right or wrong answers because the question is “What do students think?” Following the discussion, students put the activities in the order in which they think the teacher did them. This activity becomes a “test” of how well students know their teacher.
Once all of this has been done, the teacher will reveal “the truth” about the activities.
Once again, this looks very much like an Activity (upper case) because its purpose is to teach language, albeit while taking into consideration a “processing problem” that learners have. This, according to VanPatten distinguishes Structured Input from other techniques “used to foster the development of formal properties of language.
Somehow, I can’t help but think that Stephen Krashen would advocate providing learners with more comprehensible input rather than doing all of the preparation necessary for Structured Input.
In addition, I can certainly create communicative contexts that prompt past-tense forms without the use of artificial and only partially communicative Activities. For example, the affective structured input activity described in the chapter could be an activity that the teacher uses to become better acquainted with students, giving it both a cognitive-informational and a psychosocial (as well as entertainment) purpose within the context of the classroom. The fact that the class is discussing actions in the past provides a communicative context for using the past tense and is much more natural.
Before leaving the discussion, VanPatten provides another example of a processing problem that language learners encounter. It is the First-noun Principle. “Learners tend to tag the first noun or pronoun they encounter in the sentence as the subject or agent of the sentence.” (2017, p. 108) This is true for speakers whose first language is of the SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) variety; there are other kinds of languages. The result is that learners encounter problems with the passive. English speakers have problems processing German sentences when the first element of the sentence is not the subject. Let’s illustrate.
English relies heavily on word order for meaning because we do not use inflected forms (except pronouns). “The dog chased the cat” means something different from “The cat chased the dog.” However, in German “Die Katze jagte den Hund” and “Den Hund jagte die Katze” both translate as “The cat chased the dog.” How can this be? German uses case to indicate function in the sentence. “Den” indicates that “Hund” cannot be the subject or agent of the sentence; “Hund” must be the entity being chased, no matter whether it comes first or last in this sentence. However, students who rely on the First-noun Principle to process meaning will misidentify which animal is chasing the other when “Hund” comes first.
How do we help students overcome this processing error? VanPatten suggests creating structured input activities to “foster the development of formal properties of language.” (2017, p. 107) He notes, however, that Structured Input is “cumbersome and requires substantial background knowledge for teachers. And it takes time to create activities.” (2017, p. 109) Then, he notes that
Nothing replaces input and the processing of input.
Krashen would say, “Give them more comprehensible input in which the problematic construction occurs.”
I prefer Krashen’s solution.
Next time we’ll finish our look at this chapter.