ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Peter Viney

Chuck Sandy

Panelists: Marc | Peter | Chuck
Date: December 2001

Topic: "What are some ways to increase language input inside and outside the classroom?"

(The flip side to this article, where our authors and teachers discuss output, is January's article. -ed.)

Chuck Sandy

Around the time Mr. Krashen was expounding his ideas about comprehensible input, I was riding the trains in Tokyo, trying to make sense of the incomprehensible announcements -- which of course made no sense at all to me until, well, until one day they did. Krashen wrote of how caretakers, parents, and good teachers can help learners better acquire language by casting a 'net' of comprehensible input around them, just slightly above their current abilities. While I don't doubt this, I do doubt that the announcement-makers on Japan Railways cared anything about me or my comprehension, yet one day there I was, suddenly understanding that I was being told not to leave my umbrella behind. How did that happen? It happened due to repeated exposure, an understandable context, and a fear of missing my next stop. Even the most incomprehensible input can become comprehensible given enough exposure and the need or desire to know what it's all about.

There's nothing mysterious about input, but there is something challenging in providing enough for students when one or two ninety-minute classes per week are all the English they're likely to get and all the train announcements and everything else outside of class are in their native language. What we need to do in this instance is to first maximize input in the classroom and then to make sure our students have enough resources at their disposal to get at the English language input they want or need.

In class, we maximize input by first realizing that every time we do something in class in English - from giving instructions to bantering with students after class - we're providing input. Once we realize this, then we can capitalize on it. Giving instructions for how to do a task in English provides both the input and the immediate comprehension check. Yet, not every form of classroom input needs to have a comprehension check attached to it. A while back I decided to fool my students into thinking that class really started after the three to five minute story I'd tell as people we're still drifting in. Some days the story would be one I'd stolen from my friend Curtis Kelly. Other days it would be one I'd read somewhere. Most days it would simply be a little anecdote about something that had happened to me, like how I had left my umbrella on the train or won sixteen goldfish at the school festival. These stories, either somehow funny or touching, I tell for the sake of telling them. The students listen, laugh, sometimes ask questions, and then, they think, when the story's over class begins. Wrong. That story-telling time at the beginning is class, and it's input. So is the 'downtime' between tasks when some students are still not finished and I'm 'chatting' with the ones that are. So is the banter with students at the end of class. So is everything else that takes place in English in class. It's all input and it's all good.

Perhaps input of this type would be what Mr. Krashen would call comprehensible input. Outside of class, that's the place where input, which might initially be incomprehensible, has a role to play. While our students don't ride trains on which they have to make sense of announcements, the majority do have at least some access to the Internet and each and every one of them is interested in something. I've come to see that by simply discovering what it is that really interests each student I can then become an input provider with a minimum of effort. It takes under a minute to do a www.google.com search to find likely sources of information, and just a few minutes more to locate an appropriate source for a particular student. A few additional moments guiding students through the steps necessary to get at and make use of the material is then all it takes. This past semester I had two students listening to news clips at www.cnn.com every day. I had another following the sumo results in English. A couple of students simply enjoyed the listening and the weekly slang at www.ebaby.com. Another browsed all the information he could find on 'monster trucks' while yet another read about, listened to, and chatted with other fans of The Backstreet Boys. Few of these things interest me very much, and in fact, I have to admit that I find the Backstreet Boys incomprehensible, yet for my students, working with these materials on topics of interest to them turned essentially incomprehensible input way beyond their level into input they could in time, after repeated exposure, not only make sense of but also enjoy. They had the desire to know what it's all about, and that's what it's all about.

It doesn't have to be the Internet, but I do think out-of-class input needs to be personalized to particular interests of particular students. Leading students to magazines, newspapers, books, TV shows, and movies works just as well. Whatever it is, once the students have the source of input at their disposal all the teacher needs to do is offer advice and ask the right questions to monitor progress. The right advice might be to record the sound track of Ally McBeal (or whatever) onto a cassette tape and then listen to it again and again while riding the train. It might be to listen to the same type of news story on the same sort of topic over a period of time in order to become familiar with structure and reoccurring vocabulary. It might be to keep a vocabulary notebook or journal while reading more about monster-trucks or The Backstreet Boys. It might be simply a word of encouragement: don't stop, just keep going.

The right questions include "so, what's the latest news on The Backstreet Boy's tour?" or "What did you listen to on CNN?" or "Do you like that book about sumo?" If you must devise a monitoring system to keep track of who's doing what, there's no real harm done, but I find that merely keeping up with students' interests and talking with them about what they're doing is enough. If a student's interest begins to lag, find something else for them to do. That makes it sound simple, which it certainly isn't, but by taking the time to lead students to the sources of input which are right for them we take a big step in the direction of making the incomprehensible comprehensible.

Panelists: Marc | Peter | Chuck

Chuck Sandy, Chubu University

Co-author of two series from CUP, Passages and Connect

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