The Language Teacher
October 2000
Learner Intervention in the Language Classroom
V. Michael Cribb
Kansai Gaidai University
The notion of learner intervention in the language classroom has received little attention in second language acquisition literature in comparison to its counterpart, teacher intervention, over the years. In this article, I'd like to redress the balance somewhat and argue that learner intervention is a notion that is potentially equal in importance to, if not more important than, teacher intervention. This is especially true when we consider that most theories which call for some focus on form in the classroom today eschew rigid presentation and drilling of form in favor of "consciousness raising" and "noticing" techniques. Since these theories lay emphasis on cognitive processing, it seems logical that learners should not merely react to form-focused events, but need to actively create and shape them.
In the first part of the paper, I will lay out some of the theoretical background to the issue and extract from this a working pedagogical hypothesis that assumes that some attention to form in the classroom is necessary. Then, I will briefly discuss teacher intervention before showing how learner intervention can be brought into play in a variety of guises to optimize this attention.
A Working Pedagogical Hypothesis
Rather than simply furnishing conditions in the classroom that provide the learner with comprehensible input (Krashen, 1982), most teachers now accept that some focus on form is necessary to optimize the second language acquisition process. For many teachers, though, there will be some doubt as to how they arrived at such a conclusion. Indeed, the debate as to whether consciously focusing on form does lead to L2 acquisition still rages in the literature from time to time (e.g. Sheen, 1994; Long, 1994), and our profession has yet to answer this fundamental question.
Most teachers who are looking to introduce some degree of focus on form into their classrooms are reluctant to go back to the "old days" of rigidly drilling students with teacher-supplied grammatical forms and vocabulary items introduced at the chalk-face. Thus theories such as Schmidt's (Schmidt & Frota, 1986, Schmidt, 1990) "notice-the-gap" principle and Rutherford & Sharwood-Smith's (1985) "consciousness raising" have found favor with modern, form-focused protagonists. Both of these theories allow the teacher a wide degree of freedom in how such form-focused instruction may be brought into the classroom, yet both stress the need for "conscious" awareness of form as a pre-requisite for L2 acquisition, particularly if fossilization and backsliding are to be prevented.
Schmidt's (Schmidt & Frota, 1986, Schmidt, 1990) notice-the-gap principle claims that learners will begin to acquire a target-like form if it is present in the input and noticed. Noticing here means becoming consciously aware of a form that, for a learner, will generally occur during some language learning activity. Robinson (1995) has recently expanded on this and recast noticing as a process of detection and rehearsal. Rutherford and Sharwood-Smith (1985) offer consciousness raising (CR) as an alternative to explicitly teaching grammar in the traditional way. In CR, the teacher provides instruction on grammar with varying degrees of elaboration and explicitness to allow students to discover the target structure by themselves.
Whilst there is still a fair amount of debate over these theories, I'd like to include them in a working pedagogical hypothesis for the purposes of this article. That is, I will assume that a certain degree of focus on form in the classroom does lead to second language acquisition at a rate over and above that of simply supplying comprehensible input. This clearly states, then, that it is not enough for learners to simply immerse themselves in the target language and hope that L2 acquisition takes place. Instead, there must be some active intervention in the process, either by the teacher or the learner, which engages cognitive learning processes to allow learners' awareness of form to be raised. It is the aim of this article to articulate such intervention, in particular, that which needs to be supplied by the learner. In order to understand learner intervention fully, though, it is best to look at the notion of teacher intervention first.
Teacher Intervention
Teachers' intervention in the language acquisition process can be applied most notably through selection and sequencing of syllabus, and implementation (i.e. methodology) of activities. Further intervention that is more closely related to the hypothesis takes place in the classroom. To illustrate this, I will consider a task where students are involved in goal-orientated, meaning-focused activities (Skehan, 1996). A typical task consists of pre- and post-task components (often referred to as in-briefs and de-briefs), which are teacher-centered, and a midtask component, which is student-centered, where students work in pairs or small groups.
During the pre-task components, the teacher attempts to bring certain forms to the attention of the learners through the presentation of instances of lexis, formulaic units, and syntactic rules, with various degrees of elaboration and explicitness. The purpose here is for the teacher to make particular aspects of the language that are relevant to the task more salient to increase the opportunity of noticing (Schmidt, 1990) and restructuring (McLaughlin, 1990) during task performance.
For the post-task component, the teacher has at his or her disposal a whole range of activities. Having just completed the exercise, the students can attend to the form of the language more easily since the cognitive load of the task has been lifted. The teacher thus seeks to engage the students in a teacher-centered dialogue by questioning them on the task outcome, modeling performance, challenging their solutions and providing additional information related to the content of the task. All the time, the teacher expands, paraphrases, and corrects the students' language, thus drawing attention to language forms that are judged to have been the most salient during task execution, and providing a model of native-like performance.
The teacher has less opportunity to intervene during the midtask component, since by nature this part is student-centered. The concern then is that, in the absence of any teacher moderation, fluency will be prioritized at the expense of accuracy (and thus form) because pressures to accomplish the task completely consume cognitive resources. The teacher can in part reduce his or her presence to that of a peer and then act to monitor form -- surreptitiously providing corrections and bridging gaps in linguistic knowledge as the group works towards a solution -- but this can be done only in a limited way. Critics of task-based teaching point to this as the major stumbling block of the method, and so it is here that learner intervention becomes paramount if we are to overcome this. I will consider this notion next.
Learner Intervention
If we accept as our working pedagogical hypothesis that noticing and form-focused attention do have a facilitative role in L2 acquisition, whether peripheral or central, there is no reason why we cannot bring learners into play and give them the means to take advantage of this. Many commentators have lamented on exasperated teachers who attempt to force their students to notice particular language features, who interrupt smooth-flowing tasks to explain an item of grammar, or who keep their own finger on the tape recorder pause button during a listening exercise. But if conscious awareness of language forms is such a subjective state of mind, then it seems logical that it is only learners who can judge when and what they have noticed, and only learners who can control the degree of rehearsal (Robinson, 1995) for it.
This subjectivity extends not just to the students as a group, but also to each and every student. Even in a well-streamlined class, which is very rare, students will vary in what language features prove to be important to them at any particular point in that time. Each student will have his or her own list of grammatical and lexical items that he or she has been practicing, and will vary in the depth and nature of understanding of these items.
Learner intervention means, then, that we have to make students aware of the need to be form sensitive at certain times and give them the means for handling instances of noticing and the like. That is, we need to give them the metacognitive learning strategies so that features made available through teacher correction, consciousness raising and, in particular, instances of negotiation of form become optimally salient. This will allow for detection and rehearsal when student attention is stretched to the maximum. Giving students such means is not an easy task, since teachers are normally fully occupied in trying to get students to use their English in the classroom and have little time to spare to explain notions about second language acquisition. But it is important early in a course to find the right balance between teacher and learner intervention in order to take the load off the teacher later on, especially with more advanced groups.
Consequently, one thing I do early in my course is to give all of my students a small book that fits in their shirt pocket. Every time they "notice" something in the form of the language in the classroom, they are required to take out the book and write it down. If I see it coming out too often, then I go over the concept of noticing again and tell them that only forms that they become consciously aware of and seem important to them at that particular time should be noted. It is impossible to completely define the rules for this, but for an intensive course where students are in class all day, then a 10 to 20 item-per-day rule is a practical solution.
Having made students responsible in part for their own intervention, then it is important that we raise their "awareness about the pedagogical coherence of the course" and explain "the rationale underlying the selection of tasks and the way they are used" (Bygate, 1994, p. 243-4). Some tasks may be cognitively light, such as a picture description exercise, and thus may allow students to focus more on form than tasks that are cognitively heavy, such as a debate. Students need to understand this and be told at the beginning of the task what level to expect.
During midtask performance, there will be a great degree of peer-to-peer talk. It is important that students balance form with meaning, and in particular, inquire into the language they are using and hearing. A right to a brief consultation with the teacher can quickly solve this -- the teacher steps in, confirms the group moves on quickly with the task. Again, a balance is important, and it's a balance that needs to be taught and practiced. If students don't realize the need for one then, during a task, in the absence of the teacher, there will be a tendency to structure communication and comprehension strategies rather than engaging in language that is "required to constantly stretch interlanguage and lead to change" (Skehan, 1996, p.40).
Of course, it will take students time to find the right balance between form and meaning, and it is certainly not a skill that can be taught or learnt within the first few days of a course. But students are really the only ones who can reliably introspect on their own learning process, and practice and experience will show them what works best: when to focus on form, when to push for fluency, how to handle teacher corrections during task processing and the degree of rehearsal required, what to do when they notice something, and the value of negotiating their communication. Just as importantly, students need to know the amount of (off-task) planning and extra-curricula "housekeeping" (1) they need to support and augment their task-based learning. Without this degree of commitment to and awareness of learner intervention in the acquisition process, I don't believe language courses can be successful. Learner intervention, in a way, is really a reversal of the traditional teaching sequence. Rather than the teacher supplying students with a form, asking them to learn it and then giving them opportunities to use it in class, the students are involved in classroom interaction and, from this, they decide what items are important and then learn them.
Such sequence reversal and intervention are not just limited to task-based courses though. In most teaching environments, students who have been suitably prepared for and made aware of the need for intervention can make a real difference. For example, students are often called on to submit writing assignments which the teacher then corrects and returns with the expectation that students will incorporate the form(s) into their interlanguage. Several studies (e.g., Zamel, 1985, p.81; Ferris, 1995) have questioned the effectiveness of such procedures though, and teachers are often disappointed and frustrated by the amount of uptake from the students. Perhaps part of this is due to the fact that what seems to be important for the teacher is not necessarily what the students feel is important for them, even though the students recognize the error. Further, form and its correction that appear to be appropriately timed from the teacher's point of view are not necessarily appropriately timed from the point of view of the students' interlanguage development and thus fail to become uptake.
I regularly try to reverse the traditional procedure somewhat in writing assignments by asking students to underline three or four items in their compositions that they have a question about or they feel to be important. This may be a vocabulary item, a phrase, or the use of an idiom or a whole sentence. At first, they feel awkward doing this and wonder why they need a teacher if I'm not prepared to immediately tell them where their errors are. However, if I follow this up and give them real feedback (including further follow-ups on the item) on what they have shown to me to be important for them, then they come to realize that they can intervene in the learning process on their own behalf and should not just merely react to form-focused events.
Of course, I'm not suggesting that teachers should completely ignore errors that students make until the students inquire about them, but it does seem that for a long time the traffic has been all one way, with teachers telling students what is wrong with their interlanguage, followed by students reacting to this. Such uni-directional concern for form can hardly be optimal when we consider that modern form-focused theories demand the engagement of students' cognitive learning processes.
Another method that encourages learner intervention can be employed during a tape listening exercise (or video). Here, one student is chosen to come to the front of the class and be the tape player "controller" while the teacher moves to the back of the class. The students listen to the tape, and the controller presses the pause button whenever he or she cannot understand, or has a question. (The other students will often cue the controller to pause when they cannot understand.) The teacher then steps forward to explain and provide the necessary elaboration before moving back to allow the students to continue. After a few listening exercises like this, students will begin to intervene on their own behalf even with teacher-fronted listening exercises.
A Lifetime Commitment
The days of the "heroic" teacher who feels he or she can provide all the necessary form just at the right time for the students with the right amount of elaboration seem to be numbered. If you are a teacher who believes that students need plenty of meaning-focused activities in the classroom but feel that a certain degree of focus on form is appropriate (even if you don't know how you have come to this conclusion), then you will be concerned with finding the right balance between the two in your daily teaching; one that satisfies both you and the students. Real leverage, I believe, comes by getting students in on the act: making them understand how language learning takes place, getting them to balance form with meaning, explaining the rationale behind the course, and asking them to intervene in the language learning process by actively creating and shaping form-focused events for themselves.
If, however, you still believe learners have no need to intervene in the process, then consider this final comment: Learning a language is a lifetime commitment. Your students' contact with you is merely a transitory phase in this undertaking. Your course will end soon, and the students will move on. If you don't give them the means and motivation to intervene in their learning process, then who will?
Note
1. Housekeeping is the term I use to refer to out-of-class recording and manipulation of form by students. For example, the upkeep of a small book with learnt vocabulary items.
References
Bygate, M. 11994). Adjusting the focus: Teacher roles in task-based learning of grammar. In M. Bygate, A. Tonkyn, & E. Williams (Eds.), Grammar and The Language Teacher, (pp. 236-245). London: Prentice Hall.
Ferris, D.R. (1995). Student reaction to teacher response in multiple-draft composition classrooms. TESOL Quarterly, 29(1), 33-53.
Long, M. H. (1994). On the advocacy of the task-based syllabus. TESOL Quarterly, 28(4), 782-789.
McLaughlin, B. (1990). "Conscious" versus "unconscious" learning. TESOL Quarterly, 24(4), 617-634.
Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practices ill second language acquisition. New York: Pergamon Press.
Robinson, P. (1995). Attention, memory, and the "noticing" hypothesis. Language Learnin g, 45(2), 283-331.
Rutherford., W.E., & Sharwood-Smith, M. (1985). Consciousness raising and universal grammar. Applied Linguistics, 6(3), 274-282.
Schmidt, R.W. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11(2), 129-158.
Schmidt, R.W., & Frota, S.N. (1986). Developing basic conversational ability in a second language: a case study of an adult learner of Portuguese. In R.R. Day (Ed), Talking to learn: Conversations in second language acquisition (pp. 237-322). Mass.: Newbury House Publishers, Inc.
Sheen, R. (1994). A critical analysis of the advocacy of the task-based syllabus. TESOL Quarterly, 28(1), 127-151.
Skehan, P. (1996). A framework for the implementation of task-based instruction. Applied Linguistics, 17(1), 38-62.
Zamel, V. (1985). Responding to student writing. TESOL Quarterly,19(1),79-101.
V. Michael Cribb currently lectures in linguistics and ESL at Kansai Gaidai University. He spent eight years teaching in South Korea before co1ning to Japan last year. He can be contacted at <vinc@khc.kansai-gaidai-u.ac.jp>.
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