second language acquisition
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WCh6FurtherExplainationsPPT.pptxStructured Input Activities
Wong Chapter 6
Key Concepts To Keep In Mind
Structured Input: Information that has been structured to achieve a specific goal.
Structured Input Activities: Activities that uses structured input.
Structured Input Activities can only be made once the teacher understands what strategy the learners are using to process that form. Then we can structure the input so the learner will use the more optimal strategy.
It All Begins with a Student Observation:
* It was noticed that students are having a difficult time processing and understanding simple past tense.
VanPatten’s Model of Input Processing First Principle: The Primacy of Meaning Principle
P1a. The Primacy of Content Words Principle. Learners process content words in the input before anything else.
P1b. The Lexical Preference Principle. Learners will tend to rely on lexical items as opposed to grammatical form to get meaning when both encode the same semantic information.
P1c. The Preference for Nonredundancy Principle. Learners are more likely to process nonredundant meaningful grammatical forms before they process redundant meaningful forms.
P1d. The Meaning-Before-Nonmeaning Principle. Learners are more likely to process meaningful grammatical forms before nonmeaningful forms.
P1e. The Availability of Resources Principle. For learners to process either redundant meaningful grammatical forms or nonmeaningful forms, the processing or overall sentential meaning must not drain available processing resources.
P1f. The Sentence Location Principle. Learners tend to process items in sentence initial position before those in final position and those in medial position.
Looking at VanPatten’s Model of Input Processing Principle 2: The First Noun Principle
P2a. The Lexical Semantics Principle. Learners may rely on lexical semantics, where possible, instead of word order to interpret sentences.
P2b. The Event Probabilities Principle. Learners may rely on event probabilities, where possible, instead of word order to interpret sentences.
P2c. The Contextual Constraint Principle. Learners may rely less on the First Noun Principle of preceding context constrains the possible interpretation of a clause or sentence.
Learners tend to process the first noun or pronoun they encounter in a sentence as the subject or agent.
How the Structured Input Activity was put together:
1. Present one thing at a time. Keep in mind that you want your learner to only process the key concept you are teaching.
2. Keep meaning in focus. Learners must pay attention to meaning and form. If meaning is lost, then the activity is not a structured activity.
3. Move from sentences to structured discourse. Use short sentences rather than sentences with connected discourse. When comprehension is easier for the learner, then they can pay attention to relevant grammatical information.
4. Use both oral and written input. Learners need to have both modalities. Visual learners benefit from “seeing” the information as well as hearing it. If you do not offer both, you could be putting the learner at a disadvantage in future learning activities.
5. Have learners do something with the input. The activity should be meaningful and purposeful. Learners must have a reason to attend to the information or it will not benefit them. Activities should in some way ensure that they are processing the information.
6. Keep the learner’s processing strategies in mind. The goal of these activities are to help the learners move away from learning methods that do not work and to use the more optimal strategies.
Types of Structured Input Activities
Referential activities: which require learners to pay attention to the form in a sentence in order to make meaning and elect the right answer
Better for a meaningful assessment of knowledge or to check for understanding.
Affective activities: do not have a definite right or wrong answer, but allow for learners to practice language through and expression of opinion
Allows for more authentic conversations to take place and for learners to respond in a meaningful way.
Types of Structured Input Activities
In addition to activities being meaningful, Lee & VanPatten also stress the importance of exercises being truly communicative
Supplying Information
Surveys
Matching
Binary Options (True/False, Logical/Illogical, Normal/Strange, etc.)
Ordering/Ranking
Selecting Alternatives
Do Structured Activities Work? VanPatten and Cadierno (1993) Conducted a Study
Processing Instruction: Structured input activities
* Designed to push learners to use better processing strategies to process input.
Target forms were Spanish object pronouns and word order
Subjects were given explicit information on how the target forms work, the misconceptions of them, and were told what was effective about them
Subjects were given a series of structured input activities that pushed them to interpret the target forms
Subjects were never required to produce the target forms- only analyze
Traditional Instruction: Mechanical drills
* Drills were given rather than a design of instruction centered around a specific concept
Subjects received an explanation of object pronouns
Subjects did not receive info about effective/ noneffective strategies
Subjects were given mechanical (learners do not need to pay attention to form to complete this drill), then meaningful (requires some attention to meaning but there is only one correct response and is often obvious), then communicative output drills
Control Group
* No instruction or drills were given
The Outcome
* On the interpretation test (required subjects to select pictures that best correspond to what they heard): The Processing Instruction group made improvements while the Traditional Instructional group did not.
* On the production test (required subjects to complete sentences based on pictures that they saw): Both Processing and Instructional groups made the same amount of progress. The control group made no improvements.
* The subjects were tested again one month later and the results were the same.
The Conclusion
The Processing Instruction group was more beneficial than the Traditional Instruction group because not only did the Processing Instruction group make improvements, but they were also able to interpret the information and use it successfully to produce a positive change in their learning. It’s important to realize that this particular group never practiced the target forms, they only interpreted them. However, when asked to perform, they were able to utilize the strategies and produce improvements.
Although the Traditional Instruction group was able to make improvements on forms of object pronouns, they could not interpret them. Their performance on the interpretation task wasn’t any better than the control group which received no instruction at all.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Structured Input Activities
Advantages * Directly target the learner’s processing strategies so they can make the correct form-meaning connections * Directly attempts to alter learner’s processing strategies * An immediate check can be done to see if learners are making the correct form-meaning connections with structures input activities * Ideal for communicative language teaching because activities encourage meaningful exchanges of information while paying attention to form
Disadvantages * Activities require a lot of planning and thought. If the appropriate activity is not carried out, the learner will not be able to manipulate the input so the learners will be forced to use more optimal strategies.
Final Thoughts
* Structured Input Activities alters how learners process input so they can make better form-making connections
*Structured Input Activities are directly based on strategies that learners use to process input
* The more we know about what learners do with their input, the better we will become as teachers to help our learners process the input.
Any Questions?
