Applying krashens input hypothesis into teaching listening and speaking for freshmen english majors a case study at the department of english linguistics and literature, university of social sciences

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE NGUYỄN DIÊN CHÂU GIANG APPLYING KRASHEN’S IN

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE

NGUYỄN DIÊN CHÂU GIANG

APPLYING KRASHEN’S INPUT HYPOTHESIS INTO TEACHING LISTENING AND SPEAKING

FOR FRESHMEN ENGLISH MAJORS:

A CASE STUDY AT THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE, UNIVERISITY OF SOCIAL

SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF TESOL

SUPERVISOR: NGUYỄN THỊ KIỀU THU, PhD

HO CHI MINH CITY 2010

TABLE OF CONTENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS i

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY iv

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi

ABSTRACT vii

LISTS OF CHARTS AND TABLES viii

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the study 1

1.2 Rationale of the study 4

1.3 Problem statement 4

1.4 Objectives and assumptions 6

1.5 Scope 7

1.6 Limitations 8

1.7 The organization of the study 9

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 10

2.1 Input Hypothesis 10

2.1.1 The Input Hypothesis 10

2.1.2 Stage i+1 12

2.2.3 Interactions and Input 16

2.2 An overview of listening and speaking skills 21

2.2.1 Listening skill overview 21

2.2.2 Speaking skill overview 23

2.3 Material design 25

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 29

3.1 Research question 29

3.2 Research design 29

3.2.1 The subject 29

3.2.1.1 Sampling 29

3.2.1.2 A tentative analysis of subjects 31

3.2.2 The instruments 34

3.2.2.1 Text-book review 34

3.2.2.1.1 A description of the text-book 35

3.2.2.1.2 A tentative analysis of text-book 39

3.2.2.1.2.1 The methodology of the text-book 39

3.2.2.1.2.2 Design and organization 40

3.2.2.1.2.3 Topic 41

3.2.2.1.2.4 Language Content 43

3.2.2.1.2.5 Skills 45

3.2.2.2 Experimental teaching 47

3.2.2.2.1 Syllabus design 47

3.2.2.2.2 Implementation of experiment 50

3.2.2.2.3 Syllabus for 09H – control group 51

3.2.2.2.4 Syllabus for 09D – experimental group 54

3.2.2.3 Pre-test and post-test 57

3.2.2.3.1 The listening tests 57

3.2.2.3.2 The speaking tests 60

3.2.2.3.2.1 Test items and test format 60

3.2.2.3.2.2 Scoring of tests 62

3.2.3 Data processing 65

3.2.4 Summary 66

CHAPTER 4 DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS 68

4.1 Discussion of listening test results 68

4.2 Discussion of speaking test results 78

4.3 Summary 81

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION 83

5.1 Conclusion 83

5.2 Recommendations 87

APPENDICES Appendix 1: Performance analysis of 09H-control group 89

Appendix 2: Performance analysis of 09D-experimental group 104

Appendix 3: Test results - 09H-control group 118

Appendix 4: Test results 09D-experimental group 119

Appendix 5: Assignments used in input-enhanced syllabus 120

Appendix 6: Speaking pre-test 125

Appendix 7: Speaking post-test 127

Appendix 8: Listening pre-test 130

Appendix 9: Listening post-test 133

Appendix 10: Speaking games used 136

Crossed-line 136

Told you so 139

Sound advice 142

Tower block 144

Terribly sorry 153

Would you mind if….? 156

Family budget 158

It wasn’t me, Officer! 164

Christmas swapping 167

BIBLIOGRAPHY 171

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled

APPLYING KRASHEN INPUT HYPOTHESIS INTO TEACHING LISTENING AND SPEAKING FOR FRESHMEN ENGLISH MAJORS: A CASE STUDY AT THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS AND

LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND

HUMANITIES

in terms of the Statement of Requirements for Theses in Master’s Programs

issued by the Higher Degree Committee

Ho Chi Minh City, May 22nd 2010

Nguyen Dien Chau Giang

RETENTION AND USE OF THESIS

I hereby state that I, Nguyen Dien Chau Giang, being the candidate for the degree

of Master of Tesol, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the library for the care, loan or reproduction of theses

Ho Chi Minh City, May 22nd 2010

Nguyen Dien Chau Giang

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to send my special thanks to Dr, Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu for her guidance and consultancy during the time the thesis was being written I am deeply grateful for her devotion and enthusiasm in guiding me through every difficulty I encountered And I really cannot thank her enough for all that she did to help me complete this thesis successfully

I also would like to thank my close friend, Mr Pham Tran The Vinh and my colleagues, Ms Pham Ngoc Kim Tuyen and Ms Bui Huynh Thuy Thuong for their valuable and insightful comments during the time the thesis was hatched And I would like to especially thank my special friend, Mr Le Dinh Tien for his great help, support and encouragement, without which I could not have finished the thesis successfully

Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to my family, especially my mother, whose constant support and encouragement helped me through all the obstacles I had during my process of studying, as well as writing of the thesis

ABSTRACT

While many researches have been done to explore the influence of input in the acquisition of a specific grammatical item, few have been done to observe the general development of language skills, specifically listening and speaking skills, through exposure to comprehensible input And this study aims to re-investigate Krashen’s input hypothesis to find out the extent to which input contributes to the development of listening and speaking skills of EFL learners of intermediate level

or above

To conduct this study, two groups of students were chosen, one of which received more input than the other A careful investigation of the text-book and the subjects was done to justify the design of the syllabus for each group After that, a pre-test and post-test in listening and speaking were administered in both groups The listening test used was the standardized PET which fits the level and the objectives of the course The speaking tests were designed basing on 3 main communicative goals categorized in 3 stages by Krashen To ensure the validity and consistency of the scoring of speaking test, students’ performances were recorded and marked twice: 1) holistic live marking and 2) marking of recorded performances basing on analysis of performances

The result shows that Krashen’s input hypothesis works, proven by the fact that much more students in the experimental group improved at the end of the course Even though the improvement was mostly from a low score range to a middle score range, the fact that there was such improvement in only 8 weeks could

be considered sufficient to confirm the hypothesis However, the same thing did not happen with students of a higher score range In fact, they either did worse or the same in the post-tests Besides there are more students in the control group got to the highest score range The main reason for this deviation from the normal statistical behavior might be the not-large-enough “net of input” to cover stage i+1 for students of higher level in the class

LISTS OF CHARTS AND TABLES

CHARTS

Chart 4.1 Pre-test results (listening) 68 Chart 4.2 Post-test results (listening) 68 Chart 4.3 Percentage of those who scored better/worse/the same in the post-test 71 Chart 4.4 Score range among those who scored better in the post-test (listening) 71 Chart 4.5 Score range of those who scored below 5 in the pre-test (listening) 74 Chart 4.6 Score range of those who scored below 5 in the post-test (listening) 75 Chart 4.7 Score range of those who scored 5 and above in the pre-test (listening) 76 Chart 4.8 Score range of those who scored 5 and above in the post-test(listening) 76 Chart 4.9 Pre-test results (speaking) 79 Chart 4.10 Post-test results (speaking) 79

TABLES

Table 4.1 70 Table 4.2 73 Table 4.3 77

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the study

For years, at the Department of English Linguistics and Literature (DELL) of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH), the program designed for the listening and speaking classes focused more on learning the language rather than acquiring it Students in a speaking class were taught “formulaic” expressions

to perform certain communicative functions and then they were given situations to practice those expressions (like a kind of drilling) In listening classes, students had been doing listening exercises of all kinds, such as blank filling, true/false, multiple choices, matching, and etc…, for the sake of doing exercises alone The result was that after 2 years of skill training, most of them still spoke a kind of rigid, broken, and formulaic English; and they still had great difficulties in real-life listening and,

of course, had problems with listening to lectures in English in the last 2 years at school

Then came an important system reform which changed the existing system into the credit system and required a reform of curriculum design as well as teaching methodology Listening and speaking skills are now taught integratedly, posing the question of appropriate teaching methodology and syllabus design to make the integrated listening and speaking course most beneficial to the students

The most commonly applied approach is the communicative approach, which helps

to improve the quality of the listening and speaking courses Students benefit a great deal from this positive change; however, there are still some problems with this approach when applied to teaching listening and speaking integratedly to freshmen at DELL

First, communicative approach is doubtfully effective in DELL’s crowded classrooms where interactions are mainly among students only and interlanguage talk acts as the main source of input In fact, student-to-student interaction in

classroom is beneficial in the way that it provides “many more occasions where learners took the initiative to speak spontaneously”1 And “though learners cannot always provide each other with accurate grammatical input, learners can offer each other genuine communicative practice which includes negotiation of meaning”2, which, according to Lightbrown, M and Spada, N (1999), is an important factor in communication However, Krashen S and Terrell, T posed the

question of “whether the possible advantages of interlanguage talk balance the obvious problems: the ungrammaticality of much of the input, and the possibility that the input might be too simple and not be progressive enough for intermediate and advanced learners.” 3So, ideally, in a communicative classroom, students should have an equal chance to interact with their teachers to learn new items and improve the quality of their speech, as well as with their peers to familiarize themselves with and internalize what they have learnt However, in this circumstance when all the students get is their friends’ interlanguage input, the feasibility of the communicative approach in an integrated skill classroom is

questionable

Secondly, communicative approach is undoubtedly beneficial in a speaking class but questionably as much beneficial in an integrated-skill class That is because if a large amount of time is dedicated to communicative task, the students’ listening skill will not improve, to say nothing of the fact that their speaking skill does not improve much just by speaking a lot (they may become less shy and speak more but it doesn’t mean they will speak better, as stated above) And that is not to

mention another fact that communicative approach is such an elusive concept that many teachers have just a vague idea about what actually happens in a communicative classroom

So, basically, because this is an integrated classroom, the possibly best method is to use listening activities as input to help students improve not only their listening skill but their speaking skill as well This is where Krashen’s input theory comes into play Students will listen not for the sake of listening alone, but for acquiring language items that helps to improve their speaking skills To achieve in this goal, listening activities should not be limited to doing exercises only and the sources for listening material should be more varied Of course, students will not just listen because this is a listening-speaking class However, this method will make sure that students are provided with a variety of input which is basically “richer” than their friends’ interlanguage and thus more beneficial to them So it is apparent that an integrated-skill classroom is an ideal environment to test Krashen’s input hypothesis

The study will be implemented in two out of eight classes in the first semester in the Language Study 1B-Listening and Speaking course at the Department of English Linguistics and Literature, University of Social Sciences and Humanities

In the year 2009, students are grouped based on their scores in the entrance exam, therefore, the classes are supposed to be more homogeneous in terms of skill level Two classes of middle-range score, which are believed to reflect the average level

of the freshmen in the 2009 academic year, will be chosen to be the experimental group and the control group

1.2 Rationale of the study

This research is important because, if conducted successfully, it will help improve the quality of skill training for students in their first 2 years The implications drawn from this research will benefit teachers teaching listening and speaking at DELL and possibly those teaching the integrated grammar, reading, and writing courses as well The advantage of an input-orientation syllabus/program is that teachers will not be bound by the textbooks but will be given the major role in choosing the appropriate input source for the appropriate class Most of all, this study, if proved to be effective, will bring the greatest advantage to the students It

is believed that this exposure will help them “natural-ize” their language usage in their first two years at DELL and, therefore, will help them improve their performance in their last two years with higher-level courses

Cadierno 1993, VanPatten and Sanz 1995), to name a few, as reviewed by Lightbrown, M and Spada, N (1999); or more recently studies discussed in the

magazine “Studies in Second Language Acquisition”, Vol.31, published on March

2009 by CUP However, there are few documented researches that observe overall language skill development through the exposure to comprehensible input, except the Comprehension-based ESL program in Canada, reviewed, also, by Lightbrown and Spada (1999)

In this program, grade 3 learners spent 30 minutes a day in the classroom, which was designed like language lab, reading and listening to the materials they chose

for themselves They never spoke or interacted with their friends during this

program and the teacher was there just to make sure the equipment work The

evaluation of learners’ skills, two years later, showed that they “learned English as well as (and in some cases better than) learners in the regular program This was true not only for their comprehension skills but also for their speaking skills.” 4

This program proved that Krashen’s theory worked, in a long-term program However, the thing to note is this study observed the language skill development of young learners of low linguistic level, whose ability to acquire second language, especially in terms of production skills, is enormous, as supported by many Second Language Acquisition theories So, the success of the program was not brought about by the application of the theory itself but also by the internal factors inherent

in the choice of the subjects as well Moreover, because these learners was learning English as a second language, the daily 30 minutes reading and listening in the classroom was not the only source of input they got; they got a really rich and varied input from their daily lives, which served as the major source of input Therefore, it can be argued that the testing of Krashen’s input hypothesis in this program, though provided desired result, failed to testify the theory itself

In fact, the extent to which comprehensible input helps to improve language skills

of EFL adult learners of intermediate level or above is not yet known when language input in the classroom is the major source of input This thesis aims to test Krashen’s input hypothesis in the context in which (1) English is a foreign language and classroom input is therefore the major source of input, and (2) student’s linguistic knowledge are quite fully-developed To achieve this goal, a

4

Lightbown, M & Spada, N., 1999, How Languages Are Learnt, p.128, OUP

case study of first-year English majors at DELL is constructed, with the aim to

answer the question “To what extent does comprehensible input foster listening and speaking skills of EFL learners of intermediate level or above?”

1.4 Objectives and assumptions

The objectives of this study are to investigate how much the input hypothesis is beneficial to EFL learners and thereby to reach for a better way to teach integrated listening and speaking courses

To conduct this study, two groups of first year English majors of similar level will

be needed and two syllabuses for two groups (experimental group and control group) will be designed so as to make sure the two syllabi will cover the same amount of material in the text-book At the same time, the one used for the experimental group will be designed so as to enhance the input The syllabus for the experimental group will be input-enhanced During the process of experiment, there is a need to make sure that the requirements of the course (the number of chapters to cover and the objectives to fulfill) was met in both groups, the only difference will be the amount of input provided to deal with those requirements

Then a pre-test and post-test will be administered at the beginning and at the end of the course to measure the progress the students in the two groups made The listening test chosen should be a standardized test for intermediate level students to obtain objective results The speaking test should also be designed basing on a framework The students’ performances on speaking will be recorded and then analyzed before graded to ensure the objectivity of the grading process In the final stage, the results of the pre-tests and post-tests of both groups are compared and analyzed to answer the research question mentioned above

For the result of this study to be more convincing, it is assumed that the language level of those who passed the entrance exam to DELL were of intermediate level or above It is also assumed that, the students did the pre-test and post-test honestly and that the students of the experimental group adhered to the class requirements

1.5 Scope

This study is limited to DELL freshmen only These students, though were provided with a comprehensive linguistic knowledge in high school, were not provided with enough authentic input This makes them different from sophomore and junior students who have been provided with quite an amount of authentic input in their college courses If sophomore and junior students were chosen as studied subjects, it could not be tested whether the improvement, if there possibly would be any, is fostered by the input in the course itself or by the combination of input gathered throughout their study at college

Furthermore, the first year at college is the transitional year marking the move from the limited input provided in high school to the richer input provided at college Therefore, the influence of input provision is expected to manifest more clearly in this stage, shown by the results of the pre-tests, which demonstrate the influence of low input provision in high school, and those of the post-tests, which show the influence of higher input provision

Also, this study will only observe the students’ general improvement in terms of meeting the objectives of the Language Study 1B – Listening/Speaking course, i.e., the ability to listen for main ideas and specific details, and the ability to perform three main communicative goals (personal identification, experiences, and

opinions, as stated by Krashen S and Terrell, T.5) In terms of listening skills, the issue of whether their skill is good enough to make them feel comfortable in real-life listening will not be discussed And in terms of speaking skill, the matter of improved accent and intonation will not receive great consideration, in comparison with the overall improvement of fluency and language use to meet the three stated goals

Second, it is hard to make sure these two groups are in the same condition of experiment One group takes this course in the morning and the other one takes this course in the afternoon after 5 periods of integrated grammar, reading, and writing

in the morning The performance of the students in the afternoon class will be influenced by this condition Because the physical conditions are not exactly the same, expected results might not be reached This external factor cannot be controlled because teachers pick their slots and then the classes are filled in by the administrative staff

5

Krashen, S & Terrell, T., The Natural Approach, p.73, Alemany Press

1.7 The organization of the study

This study is presented in 5 chapters Chapter 1 introduces the context of the problem, the significance of the problem, the knowledge gap that leads to the problem statement, the steps to take to deal with this problem, as well as the scope and limitation of the study Chapter 2 deals with the review of related literature, including Krashen’s input hypothesis and related theories of second language acquisition, the teaching of listening and speaking skill, and material designs Chapter 3 investigates the methodology used in this studies Chapter 4 discusses the findings through data analysis And chapter 5 presents the implications of the study

as well as the suggestions and recommendations for further research

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

To construct a theoretical background for the study, this chapter is going to review literature related to three areas: 1) input hypothesis, 2) the nature of listening and speaking skills, and 3) material design and evaluation In the first section, the Input Hypothesis will be discussed to clarify a few elusive issues in the hypothesis itself and later to justify the syllabus designed for input-enhanced classroom In the next sections, theoretical background on the nature of listening and speaking skill will

be briefed and theories on material design and evaluation will be discussed, in order to validate the activities chosen from the textbook as well as the supplementary activities used in the classrooms

2.1 Input Hypothesis

2.1.1 The Input Hypothesis

Before stating the hypothesis, a brief definition of input and acquisition will be

provided According to Ellis, R “input is used to refer to the language that is addressed to the L2 learner either by a native speaker or by another L2 learner” 6

And for Krashen, acquisition happens when “we are not generally aware of the rules of languages we have acquired Instead, we have a “feel” for correctness […] While learning is conscious, acquisition if subconscious” 7

This hypothesis states that “we acquired (not learn) language by understanding input that is a little beyond our current level of (acquired) competence” 8 Or, as

Ellis, R put it, “Second language acquisition (SLA) takes place when a learner

understands input that contains grammatical forms that are at ‘i+1’ (i.e are a

little more advanced than the current state of the learner’s interlanguage)”9

Also, this hypothesis claims that “listening comprehension and reading are of primary importance in the language program, and that the ability to speak (or write) fluently in a second language will come on its own with time Speaking fluency is thus not “taught” directly; rather speaking ability “emerges” after the acquirer has built of competence through comprehending input.” And “an acquirer can ‘move’ from a stage i (where i is the acquirer’s level of competence) to a stage i+1 (where i+1 is the stage immediately following i along some natural order) by understanding language containing i+1.” 10

There are several difficulties that need to be sorted out when it comes to this hypothesis First, the question of how long it is supposed to take for the speaking ability to “emerge” is not discussed Basically, this hypothesis asks teachers to be patient and wait until their students are “ready” to speak but there should be an estimation of how long the waiting should last before the teachers impose measures

to make the students speak out Also, it is not sufficiently proven that the students don’t speak yet because they’re not ready or because they may be too shy to say though they are linguistically ready Moreover, this “patience” suggested by the hypothesis is not very practical because a speaking/communicative class cannot be taught by making students listen and read without any interactions, especially when the thriving communicative approach urges students to speak at the very first phase

of their linguistic development

Second, it is hard to define the so-called grammatical form of “stage i” and “stage i+1” proposed by Krashen Although this problem might be resolved by the Natural

Order Hypothesis (which states that “grammatical structures are acquired (not necessarily learned”) in a predictable order” 11), there are still many uncertainties

in deciding exactly stage i and i+1 This is because (1) not all acquirers have the same order of acquisition and (2) structures can be acquired in groups rather than separately, as proposed by Krashen himself Moreover, in terms of speaking skill, good grammar alone cannot account for good speaking skill, thus there seems to be

no developmental stages at all when it comes to skills

The first problem has to do with learners’ internal mechanisms and characteristics that foster or hinder acquisition rate It has to do with learners’ learning strategies

as well Explaining this and deciding on the amount of “waiting time” is too complicated to fall in the scope of this study Moreover, as this study tends to object the idea of waiting for speaking ability to “emerge”, it will only focus on the latter problem will be dealt with

2.1.2 Stage i+1

To account for the last problem mentioned above, Krashen posed a corollary of the

Input Hypothesis, stating that “Input does not have to aim only at i+1, the next step along the natural order.” 12 He said that if the students understand (“where

‘understand’ means that the acquirer is focused on the meaning and not the form of the message.”13) what is spoken to them, i+1 will be covered automatically as there will be plenty of exposure, if the input is enough, to the i+1 structures as well as other structures of the lower stage for revision Krashen explained this cover stage

i+1 in terms of “casting a net”, in which the focus is on meaning and not form, to make sure the “before-and-after” stage would be catered for

And for this, as quoted from Ellis, R “Krashen emphasizes that input does not need

to be ‘finely tuned’ in the sense that it is linguistically adjusted to contain ‘i+1’ It requires only rough tuning, which is automatic if the focus is on successful communication.”14 This success, according to Ellis, R., “is achieved by using the situational context to make messages clear” Or, as Ellis, R put it, “the right level of input is attained automatically when interlocutors succeed in making themselves understood in communication.”15 So it was the comprehensibility that would guarantee stage i+1 would be covered And the question now is how to make sure comprehensibility is achieved

To answer this question, Krashen fell on to teacher talk He said that “there is good evidence that teacher talk is also roughly tuned to level of the acquirer.[…] When

we ‘just talk’ to our students, if they understand, we are not only giving a language lesson, we may be giving the best possible language lesson since we will be supplying input for acquisition.” The advantages of roughly tuned input are: “1) we’re always assured that i+1 will be covered, 2) we’re assured of constant recycling and review, 3) roughly tuned input is good for more than one acquirer at

a time, even when they are at slightly different levels.” 16

He also suggested another form of simple input available to the SLA acquirers, which is the speech of other second language acquirers (interlanguage talk) He argued that this kind of input might contain enough input at an acquirer’s i+1 level

but the drawback was the inherent ungrammaticality and simplicity of the input which might not be progressive enough for higher-level learner

In addition, Ellis proposed Michael Long’s ideas (1983) about how to make input comprehensible According to Long, there were 3 ways to do this: 1) use vocabulary and structures that are familiar to learner (although he acknowledged that if all vocabulary and structures are familiar to learner, stage i+1 will hardly be covered and thus learners’ development cannot be fostered, 2) use “here-and-now” orientation to enable learners to activate their general knowledge and help them get the most out of contexts, and 3) through modification of the interactional structure

in both teacher talk and interlanguage talk, he tended to emphasize the importance

of input via interactions, i.e the interlanguage talk, especially through the

negotiation of meaning; that is, “when learners have the chance to clarify something that has been said they are giving themselves more time to process the input, which may help them not just to comprehend but also to acquire new L2 forms.”18 On the contrary, Krashen favored input as teacher talk for the reasons stated above

However, D’Anglejan (1978) pointed out that input in the classroom context was of

a reduced variety as a result of limited opportunities for the negotiation of meaning

She explained that “the teacher is deprived of the feedback necessary to make appropriate adjustments to his speech, and the learner has forced on him discourse roles which limit the types of speech act he is able to perform”19 McNamara (1973) explained this in terms of “motivational orientation” when he pointed out

that in classroom settings, “it is rare that […] either the teacher or the pupils has anything to say to each other that they are willing to improvise and guess at each other’s meanings” 20, which resulted in less negotiation of meaning

From the discussion above, it can be concluded that teachers can “cast a net” of comprehensible input to cover learners’ stage i and i+1 To make the input comprehensible, instructors need to consider the role of the two major sources of input in classroom setting: teacher talk and interlanguage talk At the same time, they need to pay attention to the fact that these two kinds of input have their limitations too, which is due to the lack of motivation and negotiation of meaning Therefore, these kinds of input will be unvaried and might not cast a large enough net of comprehensible input in the classroom

It is worth to note that in a context where listening and speaking are taught integratedly (the context of this study), there should be proportional emphasis on the amount of time spent on speaking and listening activities There should be a combination of teacher talk and interlanguage talk And if this is the case, then waiting for learners’ speaking ability to “emerge” is not advisable Instead, activities fostering students’ motivations to speak and to interact should be

employed to serve learners with more comprehensible input This kind of

“interactions as input” is discussed the following section

2.1.3 Interactions and Input

According to Ellis, R “input is used to refer to the language that is addressed to the L2 learner either by a native speaker or by another L2 learner Interaction consists of the discourse jointly constructed by the learner and his interlocutors; input therefore, is the result of interaction.” Ellis said that “in order for acquisition

to take place, there must be 1) some data made available to the learner as input and 2) a set of internal learner mechanisms to account for how the L2 data are processed.”21 There are there major views regarding the relative significance between these two factors

First, behaviorism puts more weight on the role of the linguistic environment, i.e.,

input, which is made available to learners in the form of stimuli and feedback Like

Krashen, behaviorists consider the suitable stimuli as the determining factor in

acquisition and like Krashen, behaviorists “emphasize the need to regulate the stimuli by grading input into a series of steps, so that each step constitute the right level of difficulty for the level that the learner has reached.” 22 This corresponds to Krashen’s concept of stage i and stages i+1 Moreover, it can be said that Krashen’s favor of teacher talk in helping learners’ acquisition resembles behaviorism’s

concept of feedback Behaviorists believe that feedback can act as a reinforcement

of correct structures and as a correction of ill-formed structures

Second, as opposed to behaviorism which views language acquisition as a result of external linguistic environment, nativism regards learner’s internal mechanism as

more important Nativists say that “exposure to language cannot account satisfactorily for acquisition Input is seen merely as a trigger which activates the internal mechanisms”23

The third view, interactionism tends to combine the two views above and view language acquisition as a combination of the external input and learners’ internal

mechanism “The learners’ processing mechanisms both determine and are determined by the nature of input Similarly, the quality of the input affects and is affected by the nature of the internal mechanisms It follows from this interactionist view of language acquisition that the important data are not just the utterances produced by the learner, but the discourse which learner and caretaker jointly construct.” 24

It can be seen that interactionism works best among the three To further support this, it is necessary to quote Michael Long’s three steps showing the effects of input and interaction on acquisition: 1) Show that (A) linguistics/conversational adjustments promote (B) comprehension, 2) Show that (B) comprehensible input promotes (C) acquisition, and 3) Deduce that (A) linguistics/conversational adjustments promote (C) acquisition25 So far, step 1 has been proven with the concept of negotiation of meaning, which fosters comprehension Step 2 is basically Krashen’s hypothesis, which holds some values because many authors have been agreeing so far on the fact that comprehensible input plays a major role

in acquisition Therefore the conclusion posed in step 3 can be said to be rational

Of course, there were a number of counter-arguments for interactionism too One

of them was proposed by Larsen-Freeman (1983) He said that “SLA can take place

without two-way communication and hence without interactional modifications” 26 However, Ellis said that it was not yet clear to what extent the learning that takes place from such input results in knowledge that is available for use in spontaneous communication

Another objection to interactionsism was that “interactional adjustments do not always result in comprehensible input” Ellis quoted Chaudron (1983) saying that

“the kinds of input modifications which take place in teacher talk can lead to

‘ambiguous over-simplification’ and ‘confusingly redundant over-elaboration’” 27 This resembles, to some extent, to the idea of D’Anglejan mentioned above These two authors seem to focus on the influence of learners’ level and characteristic on the linguistic variety of teacher talk, which in return, will influence learners’ acquisition While it is true that teacher talk can be over-simplified or over-elaborated, it is worth to note that these “over-” only happen when the learners’ level is low and thus so-called over-simplification and elaboration are but to render input comprehensible So, Chaudron’s idea that interactional adjustments do not always result in comprehensible input is questionable Adjustments happen only when there is a need to fix a communication breakdown and to foster comprehension And when input is comprehensible, it can be concluded, to a large extent, that stage i and i+1 will be covered and acquisition still happens

The last objection to Long and Krashen’s position was put forward by Swain who

argued that “input hypothesis fails to recognize the importance of comprehensible output.” Swain suggested that output was important because “1) the learner maybe

‘pushed’ to use alternative means where there is communication breakdown, in order to express a message precisely, coherently, and appropriately, 2) using (as

oppose to simply comprehending) the language may force the learner to move from semantic processing which is characteristic of the early stages of SLA to syntactic processing (i.e whereas comprehension can take place by simply attending to the meaning of content words, production may trigger the focus on formal features); and 3) the learner has a chance to test out hypotheses about the L2” 28

Swain’s position is disputable For her first argument, it can be counter-argued that

“alternative means” is mostly an adjustment of input, either by simplification or elaboration and the use of extra-linguistic clues or even improvisation to help getting the ideas across This can only be achieved in interaction where negotiation

of meaning happens And where interactions and negotiation of meaning happen, learners do have opportunities to test their hypotheses about the L2 For her second argument, it is true that production can trigger focus on formal features like register, style, and formality; however, without input setting examples for these features and without the teacher’s explanation on these features of input, manifestation of these features in learners’ output cannot be achieved And it is important to note that comprehensible output is what happens in interlanguage talk, which is a comprehensible input

It can be concluded here that Krashen’s input hypothesis works best in combination with interactionism This approach is relevant to a classroom setting in which listening and speaking are taught integratedly Students in this classroom will have

a wider source of comprehensible input (teacher talk and more authentic sources used for listening activities) which may foster their performance on L2 speaking Moreover, in-class speaking activities offer situations where interactions and negotiations of meaning take place And while speaking, students may also benefit from each other’s output, i.e benefit from interlanguage talk

28

Ellis, R., 1992, Understanding Second Language Acquisition, p.158, OUP

This section will end with Ellis’s suggestions on features that help to facilitate the rate of acquisition, based on Krashen’s input hypothesis and interactionism:

1 A high quantity of input directed at the learner (Krashen’s idea of “casting

the net” of input to cover both stage i and i+1)

2 The learners’ perceived need to communicate in the L2 (motivations)

3 Independent control of the propositional content by the learner (e.g control over topic choice) (creating interest thus motivations)

4 Adherence to the “here-and-now” principle, at least initially (Michael

Long’s concept of “here-and-now” orientation to foster comprehension)

5 The performance of range of speech acts by both native speaker/teacher and the learner (i.e., the learner needs the opportunity to listen to and produce language different functions)

6 Exposure to a high quantity of directives (this seems to be not very

relevant and convincing, according to the writer of this study’s opinion)

7 Exposure to a high quantity of “extending” utterances (requests for clarification and confirmation, paraphrases and expansions) (also, to fix the

problem of over-simplification)

8 Opportunities for uninhibited “practice” (which may provide opportunities to experiment using “new” forms) (Swain’s suggestion on learners

testing of L2’ hypotheses through production)

These features can act as a guideline for syllabus design which will be discussed later

2.2 An overview of listening and speaking skills

So far, a discussion of the Input Hypothesis and the importance of interaction have been provided, with a guideline for acquisition as a conclusion This part is going

to deal with a brief overview of listening and speaking skill so as to set a framework for what to be expected in a listening and speaking class which employs the enhancement of input through listening and interactions in speaking What is going to be discussed will be a theoretical background for the syllabus design and the choice of activities in the course book as well as the evaluation of the course book

2.2.1 Speaking skill overview

Speaking skill is one of the most concerned skills in learning a language Most of the time, this is the skill that is hard to be taught and most of the time, this is among the most desired yet least achieved skill So, designing a syllabus to enhance speaking skill is a difficult task because speaking skill is something really

intangible and elusive In his book, How to Teach Speaking, Scott Thorn Burry

sketches an overall characteristic of natural speech Hopefully his sketches will provide a useful guideline for a good course on speaking skill

First of all, Scott has it that natural speech is spontaneous, by which he means the planning time is severely limited and that one way the speakers compensate for that limited planning time is to use “add-on strategies” – chaining together short phrases and clause-like chunks to form an extended turn Secondly, he says that natural speech very often includes “self-monitoring”, a kind of re-thinking resulting in the abandonment of the message all together and the putting ideas together again Thirdly and most importantly, he mentions factors that contribute to the so-called

“fluency” – the goal and desire of any language learner

Fluency, according to Scott, consists of speed, pausing, length of run, and the conditions in which speaking occurs Speed is not the sole factor that defines fluency and pausing is an equally important factor Though frequent pausing is indicative of a struggling speaker, appropriate placement of pauses is inherent in a

fluent speaker “Natural sounding pauses are those that occur at the intersection of clauses or after groups of words that form a meaningful unit” Moreover, another

factor that determines fluency is the “length of run” – the number of syllables between pauses The longer the runs, the more fluent the speaker sounds Last but not least, the conditions in which speaking occurs play a crucial role in determining the degree of the speaker’s fluency Scott divides the conditions into three categories: cognitive factors (familiarity with the topic, the genre, the interlocutors, and the level of demands), affective factors (feelings towards the topic and/or the participants and self-consciousness), and performance factors (mode, degree of collaboration, discourse control, planning/rehearsing time, and environmental conditions)

Personally, the author of this study thinks a good course on speaking skill needs to draw students’ attentions to those particular characteristics of natural speech so that they could have a clear orientation of how to train their speaking skill and the teacher too could take advantage of the course to show students how to improve More than that, the course should take into considerations the conditions mentioned

to boost students’ motivations in learning to speak in another language

In terms of communicative tasks, Fraida Dubin and Elite Olshtain point out that in learning to communicate in another language, it is not only structures, situations, the, themes, and topics but also concepts (notions) and functions that matter They mention two kinds of meanings in an utterance: (1) the propositional or conceptual

meaning of an utterance, which expresses our perception of events, entities, states, causes, and instruments, and (2) its illocutionary force, which is the functional meaning in a certain context as a request, an apology, an invitation, etc From this, they raise three questions concerning the kind of input students need to be provided with: (a) what kind of semantico-grammatical knowledge a learner need to have in order to communicate effectively, (b) what kind of skills are needed for communication, and (c) what types of learning/ teaching activities will contribute

to the acquisition of the communicative skills These questions draw attentions to what Allan Cunningsworth calls “language content”, by which he means the vocabulary, grammar, phonology, style, appropriateness, and discourse Moreover, the socio-cultural appropriateness is also considered by Dubin F and Olshtain E as

an indispensable factor that contributes to learners’ proficiency of a language They make clear the common problem of “he’s-a-person-who-speaks-English-every-well-whose-grammar-is-really-good-but-sometimes-he-says-things-in-a-funny-way” and emphasize the need to acquire the knowledge of not only linguistic form but socio-cultural appropriateness as well And it is rational that a course in English speaking skill needs to take into consideration these issues so as to help students develop a kind of “well-rounded” communicative skill

2.2.2 Listening skill overview

Just like natural speech is the goal of a speaking course, real-life listening is the aim of every listening class While natural speech is rarely employed in the classroom context as the means but rather as the goal, real-life listening is, often enough, employed both as the means and the goal to familiarize students with the kind of listening they are supposed to deal with Of course the level of authenticity

is a matter of great concern but it is generally advisable that the listening recording

is as authentic as possible within students’ reach and that the listening activities somehow resembles what students are going to deal with in daily-life contexts

In his book, Teaching Listening Comprehension, Penny Ur lists out many features

of real-life listening But here only the most important features are reviewed - those that helps to have a better look of listening activities going to be used First of all, real-life listening cannot be without a purpose and expectation Penny says that it is the expectations and purpose of listening that leads to the “listening out” for certain

key phrases or words Therefore “heard discourse which corresponds closely to what the listener expects and needs is far more likely to be accurately perceived and understood than that which is unexpected or unhelpful” Secondly, in real-life

listening, some kind of respond is expected, be it verbal or non-verbal Therefore making students listen to a long speech without response is rather stressful It would be more advisable for listening tasks to be based on short, active responses occurring between parts of the listening passage rather than at the end Thirdly, real-life listening is rich in environmental clues, for example, the information about the situation, speakers, and general atmosphere Personally, the writer of this study should think, in the class-room context, this could be compensated for if a context

is provided before the listening activity Fourthly, in normal speech, as mentioned above, heard discourse are spontaneous so students would encounter repetitions, false starts, re-phrasing, self-correction, elaborations, and also meaningless addition like pause fillers, all of which students need to be able to filter out

Moreover, Penny Ur also mentions the things students need to train to be able to master listening skill Among them are sound-recognition, understanding intonation and stress, coping with redundancy (and thus focusing on the main points only), predicting, understand colloquial vocabulary, and understanding different accents

To these points, Penny Ur suggests that successful listening course book should draw teacher’s attention to the sounds the students perceive, train students to skip unimportant items and make do with only the part that is heard and understood,

enhance the ability to predict and guess meanings from contexts Most importantly, a good listening course should avoid causing fatigues to students with long recordings Penny Ur’s generalization could be a useful guideline for choosing and adapting listening activities from the course book used in this study

so as not to cause fatigue for the students However, to be able to systematically design and evaluate a syllabus or a course, other criteria should be considered and a framework should be provided

One of the framework mentioned by Tomlinson B in his book Material Development in Language Teaching is based on three questions (1) what aspects of

materials developers should examine, (2) how they can examine materials, and (3) how they relate the findings to the teaching context In these three questions, the last one suggests the examination of the suitability of the material to the real situation and the first two, though he says is separate, produce resemble or overlapping answers

For example, it is mentioned in his book that the aspects to be considered are the publication as well as the design of the material/book Here, the publication refers

to the tangible or physical aspect of the material and how they appear as a complete set/book The design relates to the thinking underlining the materials To be

specific, in terms of publication, he raises the need to examine (1) the place of the

materials in any wider set of materials, (2) the published form of the materials, (3) the division of the material into sections, (4) the subdivision of sections into sub-

sections, (5) continuity, (6) route, and (7) accessibility In terms of design, the

points need considering are: (1) the aim, (2) the principles of selection, (3) the principles of sequencing, (4) the subject matter and focus of subject matter, (5) types of learning/ teaching activities (what they require the learner to do and manner in which they draw on the learner’s process competence (knowledge, affects, abilities, skills), (6) participation: who does what with whom, (7) learner roles, (8) teacher roles, (9) role of material as a whole Yet to answer question on how to examine the materials, he mentions 3 levels of analysis which, in the researcher’s opinion, is another way of grouping of the points mentioned Level 1

of analysis is about “what is there”, that is the physical aspects of the materials and the main steps in instructional sections (refer to the physical aspects mentioned) Level 2 is about “what is required of users”, that is the subdivision into constituent tasks and an analysis of tasks - what is the learner expected to do? With whom? With what content? Who determines these things? (refer to the design mentioned) Level 3 is about “what is implied” (deducing aims, principles of selection and sequence, deducing teacher and learner roles, deducing demands on learner’s process competence) This final level is said to draw on findings at level 1 and 2 to come to some general conclusions about the underlying principles of the materials The researcher of this study considers this level to be somewhat vague, vague in terms of how it can be achieved and in terms of the justification or the specific benefits it brings about

To provide another framework, Brown, J.D mentions the suggestions of Stevick (1971) that materials should be evaluated in terms of qualities, dimensions, and components as follows:

- Three qualities: strength, lightness, and transparency (as opposed to

weakness, heaviness, and opacity)

- Three dimensions: linguistic, social, and topical

- Four components: occasions for use, sample of language use, lexical

explorations, and exploration of structural relationships

Brown himself suggests a five-perspective framework, the advantage of which is that it is more detailed than that of Stevick: (1) material background (author’s credentials and publisher’s reputation), (2) fit to curriculum (approach, syllabus, needs including general language needs and situation needs, goals, objectives, and contents), (3) physical characteristics, (4) logistical characteristics (like price and auxiliary parts such as audio-visual aids, workbooks, etc), and (5) teachability

There are also many other sets of guidelines for designing, analyzing, and evaluating materials or course-books One set of guidelines is suggested by Allan

Cunningsworth in his book, Choosing Your Course Book He makes it clear that (1)

material/course books should correspond to learners’ need and match the objectives

of the language-learning program, (2) material/course books should reflect the uses which learners will make of the language, (3) material/course books should take into account students’ needs and should facilitate their learning processes, (4) material/course books should have a clear role as support for learning

Another set of guidelines was suggested by Brian Tomlinson’s guidelines:

- Materials should help learners to feel at ease

- Materials should help learners to develop confidence

- Materials taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and

useful

- Materials should require and facilitate learner self-investment

- Materials should expose learners to language in authentic use

- Materials should draw learners’ attention to linguistics features of the

input

- Materials should provide learners with opportunities to use the target

language to achieve communicative purpose Tomlinson does mention many other points concerning the fact that the materials should take into account various characteristics of learners like learning styles, affective attitudes, acquisition order of linguistics forms, etc., all of which this brief literature review cannot cover in detail

A closer look reveals that Tomlinson’s framework resembles somewhat to what Ellis, R suggested, which was mentioned in the previous section Tomlinson’s guidelines encapsulate many main points of the authors mentioned so it can be used

as a framework for material design for this study

So far, this chapter has introduced the guidelines provided by Ellis on input and acquisition, an idea of what a syllabus on listening and speaking skill should focus

on, a framework to design, analyze, and evaluate the materials and course book used The next chapter will realize these concepts into the first phase of this study: analysis of subjects and text-book

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research question

As stated in Chapter 1, this thesis aims to test Krashen’s input hypothesis in the context in which (1) English is a foreign language and classroom input is therefore the major source of input, and (2) students’ linguistic knowledge are quite fully-developed To achieve this aim, a case study of first-year English majors at DELL

were constructed to answer the question “To what extent does comprehensible input foster intergrated communication skills of EFL learners of intermediate level

or above?”

To answer this question, a tentative analysis of subjects and a rational way of sampling are discussed including the rationale for the method of sampling, the sample size, the problems envisioned and possible ways to deal with them Then, research instruments, including text-book analysis and the process of syllabus design and experimental teaching, are sketched to ensure the validity and reliability

of the process Lastly, data collection techniques (both pre-test and post-test) will

be discussed to justify the use of a specific test or a specific testing framework

choosing subjects that will “provide the best information to address the purpose of the research”29

The two samples selected were two freshmen classes of DELL-USSH In the year

2009, placement was made basing on the scores achieved in the entrance exam to make sure students in each class would make a homogenous group, i.e., the level difference would not be too much Therefore, having two classes of exactly the same level was a difficulty It was only feasible to pick two classes of nearly-the-same level Then, the decision to make was which classes to choose, it could be two from the high score group (8 or above), or two from the average score group (from 5 to 7), or two the low score group (below 5) Because the Language Study 1B – Listening & Speaking course is designed for intermediate level, it was sensible to choose the two classes from the average score group, resulting in 09D (score range from 5.5 to 6.5) and 09H (score range from 6.5 to 7.5) as samples It was believed that the two classes could be seen as representatives of intermediate level English majors, and therefore this choice would meet the purpose of the study

There were 30-33 students in each class, which met the requirement of a research comparing groups that would require at least 15 students in each group, according

to MacMillan, J and Schumacher, S., 2001 Of course, the choice of sample size will not depend on the type of research alone, but on other factors as well For example, if small differences are to be found, the sample should be as large as possible or if the size of the population increases, the percentage of subjects can be decreased30 In this case, it was obvious that a larger sample size was advisable because students were not expected to make great progress in 8 weeks of input-