Dr. Amanda Lanier

What is comprehensible input, really?

How important is CI for language acquisition and for language teachers?

• Comprehensible input is a theoretical construct in Second Language Acquisition.
• Comprehensible input is a core tenet of an approach that has expanded from TPRS to “comprehension-based language teaching.”
• Comprehensible input is the buzzword that binds a widespread movement to transform contemporary language teaching.

It’s all of the above. It’s widely used, deeply influential, hotly debated, frequently misunderstood, and not as far from the rest of what scholars and educators have been recommending to language teachers for the last forty or fifty years as it might seem.

Starting in about 2015, I have had a long series of graduate students in my courses who came to the MAFLT Program expecting to learn about comprehensible input, by which they meant a set of approaches to language teaching that they were certain would outshine any other method available. The devotion to comprehension-based approaches has calmed as these techniques and values have become more mainstream and more integrated with general recommendations for promoting proficiency. Along the way, though, I had to revise the content of my own courses and re-design assignments in light of what my students were asking and expecting, and I have also carried out multiple research projects that relate to the impact of comprehension-based approaches on individual teachers and language programs.

Resources

On Comprehensible Input, TPRS, and Acquisition – Past and Present

Terms and Concepts

TPRS – TPR Storytelling evolved into “Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling”

CI – Comprehensible Input – usually used by teachers to refer to a whole set of approaches, not the SLA concept

Comprehension-Based Methods is the term used for approaches and the name of the ACTFL Special Interest Group, but now many practitioners are using a different term…

Acquisition-Driven Instruction is gaining traction in the field now – the term relates to Krashen’s Monitor Model and the view that explicit instruction on linguistic forms can only lead to learning, not to acquisition, and acquisition is necessary for fluent communication

Approaches in the TCI Toolkit

Here are a few of the most widely-recognized techniques:

Super 7 Verbs or Sweet 16 Verbs

Possession is particularly complicated, with varying word order and sometimes additional grammatical features such as declension (sentence case) involved. Many languages express “There is” or “There are” in ways that English speakers find baffling. Languages as disparate as Russian and Arabic have no form of “is” in the present tense (forgive the over-simplification of copula verb omission).

The important point here is that when you identify and use – and reuse and reuse – the super 7 verbs (or the equivalent in your target language), you are providing learners with powerful building blocks for communication that they will use in almost every encounter with the language, and you are emphasizing what they are DOING with the language rather than talking ABOUT the language and linguistic forms. This concept is largely attributable to Mike Peto and Terry Waltz.