English Language Teaching in its Social Context

124 MICHAEL P. BREENfacilitate comprehension through the provision of linguistic input sensitive to individuallearner inclinations, or the teacher should endeavour to shape individual learning behavioursso that each learner may attain a repertoire of efficient processing strategies. The SLAmetaphor for the classroom implies tcacher as surrogatc experimental psychologist andlearners as subject to particular input treatments or behavioural reinforcement.However, this view of the language classroom leaves us with a number of unresolvedproblems that warrant more attention if we seck to understand the relationship between alanguagc class and language learning. First, the interesting variables of linguistic inputand the strategic behaviour of learners are not special to classroorns.They were not uncoveredas prevailing features of classroom life at all.’ The second and perhaps more significantproblem is that two crucial intervening variables seem to have been bypassed by SLAresearch. Both of these variables are centrally related to the processing of input. Both willdetermine what a learner might actually intake. SLA research which emphasises linguisticinput (provided by instruction or exposure) as the independent variable and some laterlearner output (in a test or in spontaneous speech) as the dependent variable leaps blindlyover any active cognition on the part of the learner. With its heavy reliance on linguisticperformance criteria for psychological change there is a resultant superficiality in itsattention to learncrs’ internal perceptual processes. The rcscarch takcs for grantcd whatthe learner may define as optimal for him. Morc fundamentally, it does not address thequestion of how a learner selectively perceives parts of linguistic data as meaningful andworth acting upon in the first place.Thercfore, thc intervening variablc of what the learneractually does to input or with input is neglcctcd. Givcn the importancc attached toComprehension by SLA research it seems paradoxical that the active reinterpretation andreconstruction of any input by the learner is not accounted for.The search for correlationsbetween, for example, thc frequency of a grammatical form in input and the frequentoccurrence of that form in some later learner performance seems motivated by a rathernarrow view of human learning. The research leads us to a causal conditioning as opposedto a cognitivc and intcractivc explanation of language development. We are left unsure howand why lcarncrs do what they do in order to intake selectively.On the face of it, lcarning strategy research seems to offer some help here. However,thcsc investigations primarily confirm that learners are unpredictable, inconsistent, andsometimes seemingly inefficient processors. Thus, the same learning outcome canbe achicvcd by different strategies while different learning outcomcs can be achieved bythe same strategy. Investigations into learner strategies have not yet hclpcd us to understandhow or why it is that one thing can be interpreted or learned by any two learnerswith seemingly different profiles of strategies. Until we understand thcsc things, thecapacity of instruction to cncourage or shape desirable or efficient strategic behaviour oflearners remains unfounded. ’This problem emerging from the data we derive from learnersconcerning their strategies leads to the second crucial intervening variable which seemsto be neglcctcd in SLA research. Learners certainly are strategic in how they go aboutlearning, but if we ask them what they think they do, or if they keep a diary of whatthey do, such retrospections, inevitably post hoc rationalisations, will exhibit a cohercnccthat bears only metaphorical resemblance to the actual moment of learning. Somethingintervenes between a learner’s introspections to a researcher or to a diary reader, just assomething intervencs between input to a learner and between what a learner has intakenand some later test performance. I suggest that one thing which crucially intervenes is thelearner’s definition of situation: the definition of bcing an informant to someone investigatingstrategies, the definition of being a language learner in a classroom, and the definition ofdoing a test. If we hope to explain fully the relationship between classroom input and