EFFECT OF REDUCED FORMS ON ESL LEARNERS' INPUT ...

Ito – Effect of Reduced Forms on Input-Intake Process 102
interlanguage system and is thus processed language. Recognizing flaws in both views,
Kumaravadivelu redefines the concept of intake as follows: “an abstract entity of learner
language that has been fully or partially processed by learners, and fully or partially
assimilated into their developing system” (p. 37). He diagrams the relationships among
input, intake, and output, as shown in Figure 1.
OUTPUT
INTAKE
INPUT
Figure 1. The relationships among input, intake, and output in a quantitative view (from
Kumaravadivelu, 1994)
SLA researchers have postulated various factors which influence the input-intake
process, in other words, factors that determine which input becomes intake. For
example, Kumaravadivelu (1994) suggests the following learner-internal and learnerexternal
factors as intake factors:
Individual factors: Age and Anxiety
Negotiation factors: Interaction and Interpretation
Tactical factors: Learning Strategies and Communication Strategies
Affective factors: Attitudes and Motivation
Knowledge factors: Language Knowledge and Metalanguage Knowledge
Environmental factors: Social Context and Educational Context (p. 39)
It is generally agreed that comprehensible input is necessary (but not sufficient) for
SLA to occur. Comprehensibility of input is determined not only by some of the factors
listed above, but also by linguistic factors such as language complexity, frequency, and
perceptual saliency. Several researchers have suggested that “perceptual saliency makes
certain features of the input more comprehensible and thus more liable to become intake”
(Henrichsen, 1984, p. 106). Hakuta (1976) recognizes perceptual saliency as one of the
factors determining which forms are acquired. However, perceptual saliency is largely
affected by the presence of reduced forms: When reduced forms are present, perceptual