Applied Linguistics

Final Essay
Esteban Rodríguez
217205973
Group 01
04/12/2018
758 words

The relation of diverse theories of language learning and English Language Teaching.

Many people say that teaching is easy, but they might not know what lies behind this

profession, all the linguistic theories that must be learned, the creativity that a teacher must

have to create helpful visual aids, and sometimes, the good attitude toward the many

individual differences and conditions that students might have. That is why here, I will try to

explain how these four hypotheses: Input Hypothesis, Noticing Hypothesis, Output

Hypothesis, and Interactional Hypothesis, are related to the field of English Language

Teaching as a Foreign Language.

Starting with the Input Hypothesis by Krashen, I would start by making my classes

more understandable using comprehensible input, and not caring much about the mistakes

that students would make in their speech, as long as they would focus on meaning. That only

with the purpose of them communicating in the foreign language, after I give them enough

vocabulary to start learning the language, of course. For example, when they are working in a

conversation activity in pairs, they only must know the meaning of the words they are telling

for them to understand each other's message. This hypothesis that Krashen proposed also

relates to ELT in a certain way, which is that the teacher must know how the L1 is acquired.

In that way, the teacher can infer how his or her class is going to be adapted, so their students

can learn better. For example, when we are growing, the input that we receive from our

parents or caretakers is remarkably comprehensible. They even try to mimic what they mean
by using that word they are trying to teach us.

Now, regarding the Noticing Hypothesis by Richard Schmidt, this hypothesis means

that the students will perceive a certain feature of the target language at some point, and then,

they will reach a level of awareness in which they will notice that feature, and finally, they

will understand it. For example, if they are watching the past tense in class, they would have

to notice at some point that the -ed suffix changes the tense of the verb. In that sense, we as

teachers must make that specific feature of the language that we want them to learn more

remarkable, so the students effectively get to understand the language. For instance, we can

modify a piece of text by changing the font of the sentence that exemplifies the grammatic

rule we are teaching.

On the other hand, the Output Hypothesis proposed by Merrill Swain is related to

ELT in the form of that we must not only give them comprehensible input. We must make

them produce output, in that way, the receivers of that output can give feedback to the

learners who are practicing. An example of this is such as students who mispronounce a word

or say something syntactically incorrect get to be corrected by the receiver, and thus, the

learners improve in what they failed. Consequently, the learners will also notice the gap in

their interlanguage, in the sense that they will notice what can they produce and what can

they not. For instance, students who are in a conversation cannot say a word in the target

language because they did not know what the translation was for that specific word.

Therefore, they noticed their gap.

Finally, the Interactional Hypothesis by Michael Long is related to what was

mentioned in the introduction of this essay by connecting or merging the last three

hypotheses discussed before. In the sense of that learners are giving comprehensible input

while trying to communicate and by doing that they are producing an output which helps

them notice what they are telling their peers. This theory states that students will learn better
through face-to-face interaction and communication. For example, students who are trying to

communicate in an English-speaking country and ask directions on how to get to a place will

learn by getting feedback on what they are asking in the form of recasts. In that case, the

learners will improve at asking directions in a friendlier environment.

Indeed, there are many learning hypotheses out there waiting to be learned and taught,

some of them are stated in this essay with the purpose of mentioning how they are related to

the English Language Teaching career. That is somewhat important to say because we must

be conscious and prepared for what we might face when the time of teaching arrives.

References

Krashen, S. D. (1985). The input hypothesis: Issues and implications. London: Longman.

Robinson, P., Mackey, A., Gass, S. M., & Schmidt, R. (2011). Attention and awareness in

second language acquisition. New York: Routledge.

Ortega, L. (2009). Understanding second language acquisition. New York: Routledge.

Task-based activity team:

 Barojas Dórame Luz Adriana

 García Coronado Carmen Lucía

 Pérez Riveros Naomi Patricia

 Rodríguez Quihuis Mario Esteban

 Villa Acosta Luz Melissa

Name & description of the task:

 Guess the school supplies

This task consisted on the teacher handing each student a piece of paper with the

name of a school supply. Then, the students, in groups of four, would have to guess what

school supply they were by asking questions to their teammates.