Psychology of Language

Learning

Interactionist models

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Aims of session(s)
 Introduce and discuss concepts of input and intake,
attention, noticing, interaction, and output and how
these relate to SLA
 Input processing view (Van Patten)
 Interaction Hypothesis (Long)
 Data analysis relating to the Interaction Hypothesis
 Introduce and discuss the Input – Interaction –
Output model (Gass 1988)

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Discussion Questions
 What do the terms input, interaction and
output mean to you in relation to language
learning?
 What is the role of conversation in the

language classroom?
 Are there ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ways in which

learners can interact in the classroom?

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 Different views of Input:

 Krashen’s view:
◦ comprehensible input drives acquisition
◦ the Affective filter accounts for variation in
acquisition.

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 Different views of Input:

 Van Patten (1996) input processing account

of SLA
◦ Unavailability of all input data to L2 learners
◦ Input processing constraints converts only some
input to intake
◦ Restructuring of intake moves this into the
developing system
 What is the difference between input and
intake?

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Input processing account

L2 data / Intake Developing L2

input system

Processing Restructuring
constraints of intake

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Input Processing principle 1
 When subjects are told to repeat sentences they hear, they
choose content words. Only advanced students are able to
pick out grammatical items.
 Morphological changes where there is less redundancy in
meaning:
◦ Where is she going?
◦ What are you doing?
◦ He come to see me yesterday.
◦ Last week I visit my aunt in London.
◦ He love me.

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Input Processing principle 1
 Lexical items before grammatical items
◦ Two beer

 P1: _______________

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Input Processing principle 1
 Lexical items before grammatical items
◦ Two beer

 P1: Meaning before form

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Input Processing principle 2
Journal Entry Week 21: …
 I’m suddenly hearing things I never heard before, including

things mentioned in class. Way back in the beginning, when

we learned question words, we were told that there are
alternate short and long forms like o que and o que é que,
quem or quem é que. I have never heard the long forms,
ever, and concluded that they were just another classroom
fiction. But today, just before we left Cabo Frio, M said
something to me that I didn’t catch right away. It sounded
like French que’est-ce que c’est [sic], only much abbreviated,
approximately [kekse], which must be (o) que (é) que (vo)cé.
…

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Input Processing principle 2
 Journal Entry Week 22: I just said to N o que é que você quer
but quickly: [kekseker]. Previously, I would have said just o
que. N didn’t blink, so I guess I got it right….
(Schmidt and Frota 1986)

 What do you think happened in Schmidt’s learning?

 P2: _____________________

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Input Processing principle 2
 Journal Entry Week 22: I just said to N o que é que você quer
but quickly: [kekseker]. Previously, I would have said just o
que. N didn’t blink, so I guess I got it right….
(Schmidt and Frota 1986)

 What do you think happened in Schmidt’s learning?

 P2: Attention is needed

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Noticing in SLA
 Schmidt 1990 ‘The role of consciousness in second
language learning’
 Noticing = registering occurrence of a feature in
input (may not be explicit) / selective attention.

 Schmidt 1994: ‘noticing is the necessary and

sufficient condition for the conversion of input to
intake for learning’
 Schmidt 1994: ‘more noticing leads to more
learning’.

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Noticing in SLA
 Immersion studies indicate that despite
comprehensible input, motivation and skills
L2 learners still produce grammatical errors

 Swain et al in Canadian context

 (Swain and Lapkin 1986; Harley and Swain

1984)

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Noticing in SLA
Schmidt (2001):
 Learning occurs when the features and

demands of interactional tasks help to focus

learners’ attention on relevant features of
input and output.

 Attention is selective

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Input processing principle 3
 Which requires more grammatical knowledge
to decode?
◦ The lion killed the hunter
◦ The lion was killed by the hunter
 Which is the most likely?
◦ The parent corrected the child for his behaviour.
◦ The child corrected the parent for his behaviour.

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Input processing principle 3
 First noun acts as agent /subject
 This strategy can be overridden by lexical
semantics and event probabilities
 Learners adopt other processing strategies for
grammatical roles only after their developing
system has incorporated other cues (e.g. case
marking, stress).
 Preference for analysing beginnings and ends of
sentences, glossing over middles.
 P3: _______________________________

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Input processing principle 3
 First noun acts as agent /subject
 This strategy can be overridden by lexical
semantics and event probabilities
 Learners adopt other processing strategies for
grammatical roles only after their developing
system has incorporated other cues (e.g. case
marking, stress).
 Preference for analysing beginnings and ends of
sentences, glossing over middles.
 P3: First noun strategy

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Long’s Interaction Hypothesis (1996)
 What are your experiences of early real,
meaningful interaction with fluent speakers
of L2?
 What happened? Did your interlocutor correct

you? Did you focus on content or form?

 Was interaction useful to you in learning new

aspects of the L2?

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Long’s Interaction Hypothesis (1996)

Ellis (1984: 95)

 ‘Interaction contributes to development because it

is the means by which the learner is able to crack

the code. This takes place when the learner can
infer what is said even though the message
contains linguistic items that are not yet part of his
competence and when the learner can use the
discourse to help him/her to modify or supplement
the linguistic knowledge already used in
production'.

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Long’s Interaction Hypothesis (1996)
Long (1996: 418) :
 Negotiation as ‘ the process in which, in an effort
to communicate, learners and competent speakers
provide and interpret signals of their own and their
interlocutor’s perceived comprehension, thus
provoking adjustments to linguistic form,
conversational structure, message content, or all
three until an acceptable level of understanding is
achieved'.

How does this differ from Krashen’s Comprehensible Input

Hypothesis?

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Example of Negotiation for Meaning:

NS: there’s a pair of reading glasses above the plant

NNS: A what?
NS: glasses reading glasses to see the newspaper?
NNS: glassi?
NS: You wear them to see with, if you can’t see reading glasses
NNS: ahh ahh glasses glasses to read you say reading glasses
NS: yeah

(from Mackey 1999: 559)

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Conversational modifications
 Repetitions
 Confirmation checks
 Comprehension checks
 Clarification requests

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Conversational modifications

NNS 1. And your family have some Comprehension check

ingress.
NNS 2: yes, ah. OK, OK.
NNS 1: More or less OK?
NNS1: …. Research Clarification request
NNS2: Research – I don’t know the
meaning.
NNS1: When can you go to visit Confirmation check
me?
NNS2: Visit?

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Negative feedback
‘It is proposed that environmental contributions to acquisition
are mediated by selective attention and the learner’s
developing L2 processing capacity, and that these resources
are brought together most usefully, and not exclusively,
during negotiation for meaning. Negative feedback obtained
during negotiation work or elsewhere may be facilitative of L2
development, at least for vocabulary, morphology and
language-specific syntax, and essential for learning certain
specific L1-L2 contrasts. ''

(Long 1996: 414)

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What is happening?
NS: Where do you put the saucepan?
NNS: Saucepan? (pause) Um under the, the
first to cook…the food.
NS: Under the cooker?
NNS: Yep
NS: on the floor?
NNS: No, in the cooker. On the cooker.

(Oliver 1995 in Gass, SM 1997: 111)

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What is happening?
H: a man is drinking –coffee or tea uh with the
saucer of the uh coffee set is uh in his uh knee
Iz ： in him knee
H: uh on his knee
Iz: yeah
H: on his knee
Iz: oh so sorry. On his knee

(Gass and Varonis 1989: 79, 81)

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Interaction for learning
 Learning takes place through
incomprehensible input? (White 1987).
 Lack of comprehension by others provides

opportunity to learners to change their

interlanguage.

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Discussion:
 What kind of teaching will promote
negotiation for meaning in the classroom?

 What type of task will provide learners with

better opportunities for interaction leading to
learning?

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Negotiation / modified output
 (1a) (from Mackey and Philp 1998: 339)
 1 NNS: Here and then the left.
 2 NS: Sorry? Clarification request
 3 NNS: Ah here and one ah where one ah one

of them on the left. Modified output

 4 NS: Yeah one’s behind the table and then

the other’s on the left of the table.

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Recast /modified output
 (1b) (from Mackey et al. 2003: 37)
 1 NNS: And in the er kitchen er cupboard no

on shef.
 2 NS: On the shelf. I have it on the shelf.

Recast
 3 NNS: In the shelf, yes OK. Modified output

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Reading for next week:
 Mackey, A. (1999). Input, interaction and second language
development: An empirical study of question formation in ESL.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , 21, 557-587.

 Mackey (1999) asked herself:

  
 Will pre-modified input
 or
 Will interactionally modified input lead to   more acquisition
 or
 Will watching interactionally modified input
  
  

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Reading for next week:
 Read the paper along side the notes from
Ortega on Blackboard site.
 In particular, pay attention to notions of

pushed output and noticing the gap

 Before, while and after reading tasks.  

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Mackey 1999 paper
Scripted/pre-modified:
 More proficient speaker:
 Do you have a gun in your picture? A gun is like a

weapon. A gun shoots bullets.

 
Interactionally negotiated:
 Learner: And one more weep weep this picture.
 More proficient speaker: Huh?
 Learner: Another one like gun to shoot them weep

weepon.
 More proficient speaker: Oh ok yeah I don’t have a

second weapon though so that’s another difference.

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Mackey 1999
Pushed Output (Swain 1985)
 Comprehension is not sufficient to drive

language development
 Lexical processing/ gist understanding
 Need to produce to focus on form needed
 ‘producing the target language may be the

trigger that forces the learner to pay attention

to the means of expression needed to
successfully convey his or her meaning’
(Swain 1985: 249).

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Mackey 1999
Noticing the Gap
 Noticing (paying attention to the form)

(Schmidt)
 Noticing the gap (difference between NS /

interlocutor and own IL)

 Noticing the hole (not able to produce from

current IL).

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Negotiation of Form
Linguistic rather than communicative problem

S1: He leaped. He freezed.

S2: Freezed? Frozen?
S1: freeze, froze, frozen. Froze
S2: He froze?
S1: F-R-O-Z-E- froze
S2: froze OK

(Williams 1999: 601 in Ortega 2009:69)

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Negative feedback
 Explicit correction
 Recasts
 Elicitations
 Clarification requests etc

 Different levels of explicitness in these

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Output – functions
 Trigger for noticing (the hole)
 Moving learners from lexical to syntactic

processing
 Hypothesis testing and feedback on

hypotheses
 Metalinguistic function (reflection on own

language use) (LREs)

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Output – functions
 ‘Negotiations serve to focus learners’
attention on potentially troublesome parts of
their discourse, providing them with
information which can open the door to IL
modification... It is the realisation of
divergence between L2 forms and target
language forms that becomes the catalyst for
learning.’
 (Gass, Mackey and Pica 1998)

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Negotiation of form
Example of possible (modelled) reconstruction dialogue:
 R: OK, alors la première phrase commence avec ‘Les rues

étroites’
 (OK so the first sentence begins with ‘the narrow streets’)

 
 T: Oui, ‘les rues étroites’- N’oublie pas le ‘s’ sur ‘rue’

parce que c’est pluriel.

 (Yes, ‘the narrow streets’ Don’t forget the ‘s’ on ‘street’

because it’s plural.)

 
 R: Oh, c’est vrai, alors, il doit avoir un ‘s’ sur ‘étroite’ aussi.
 (Oh that’s right, so there must be an ‘s’ on ‘narrow’ too.)

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Dictogloss
Grammar dictation/ dictogloss (Swain 1998;
Wajnryb 1990 in Doughty and Williams (eds.)
1998)
 Brief review of rules prior to dictogloss to

heighten awareness of useful language aspects

 Read passage twice (second time learners take

notes)
 Learners work for 25 minutes to reconstruct

passage exactly.
 Comparison of one reconstructed passage to

original dictogloss in plenary.

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The Input- Interaction- Output Model

Apperceived input

Input

(Hypothesis testing)

Intake

Comprehended input

Integration

Output

(Negotiation)

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The Input- Interaction- Output Model

Apperceived input
Input
(Hypothesis testing)
Intake
Comprehended input
Integration
Output
(Negotiation)

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Achievements of Input-Interaction
 NS and NNS interlocutors work to achieve mutual
understanding through interactional negotiations
 Modifications to language offer opportunities to
notice TL forms – positive and negative evidence
 Negotiations for meaning by NNS can lead to
attention to, take up and use of forms from NS
language
 Explicit instruction and/or negative feedback is
advantageous to learners (when later tested)

(Mitchell and Myles 1998: 142)

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Limitations of Interactionist research
 Research in Western/anglophone educational
setting- wider studies needed
 Still a long way to go in understanding which
tasks are most productive
 More work needed on particular structures (like
Mackey 1999)
 Learner readiness as a factor needs to be
accounted for (but Mackey 1999 suggest learners
may store understandings until ready?)

(Mitchell and Myles 1998: 142)

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Limitations of Interactionist research
‘No magic bullet’
 Interaction in tasks may be influenced by something other than

negotiating for meaning (rapport; encourage more)

 Students may not really engage in negotiation

 Politeness and face-saving may be more important

 ‘what matters in the linguistic environment is not simply ‘what is

out there’ physically or even socially surrounding learners, but
rather what learners make of it, how they process (or not) the
linguistic data, and how they live and experience that environment’

(Ortega 2009:77,8/80)

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Cautious note:
 Interaction connects ‘input, internal learner
capacities, particularly selective attention,
and output in productive ways’ (Long 1996:
452).

 BUT ....

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Cautious note:
 ‘It is still advisable to be cautious about the nature of
claims for the role of the environment in SLA. Although
interaction may provide a structure that allows input to
become salient and hence noticed, interaction should not
be seen as the cause of acquisition; it can only set the
scene for potential learning. As Long (1996) has pointed
out, there are many factors involved in L2 learning: the
role of interaction is claimed only to be facilitative. The
sources of learning are complex and can be seen as
stemming from the learner-internal factors…’ (my
italics).

 Gass, Mackey and Pica (1998: 305)

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Reading for next week:
After reading:  
 Now that you’ve read about what potential benefits

negotiation of meaning during interactions may bring,

write a personal reflection as a reaction to the following
quote from Mackey (1999):
  
 When input is premodified in the context of interaction,

learners seldom have occasions to misunderstand,

negotiate for meaning, and produce errors; and
therefore opportunities for language learning as a
result of their mistakes are limited . (p. 560)
  

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Another useful paper

 Mackey A 2006 ‘Feedback, noticing and

second language learning’
 Applied Linguistics 27 (3): 405-430.

 What were Mackey’s findings? What evidence

does she use?
 What does this paper add to understandings

of the role of noticing and interaction in

language learning?

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