English Language Teaching in its Social Context

Chaptev 4Pet e r S It e ha nCOMPREHENSION AND PRODUCTIONSTRATEGIES IN LANGUAGE LEARNINGN AN INFLUENTIAL PAPER WHICH discusses differences between firstI and second language learning, Bley-Vroman (1989) draws attention to the extent towhich second language (L2) learning often does not lead to success while first languagelearning, except in unusual cases, does. Faced with such an unsettling vote of no confidence,it is hardly surprising that the language teaching profession has explored many alternativesin the search to find more effective methods (Larsen-Freeman 1986). And it is equallyunsurprising that one of the responses the profession has made is to see whether approachesto second language tcaching which connect withfirst language acquisition hold out anypromise.This chapter will review two such instructional approaches. The first is broadlyconcerned with comprehension-driven learning, regarding second language developmentas likely to proceed, under the right conditions, simply as a result of exposure to meaningfulinput.The second, which in some ways arose out of dissatisfaction with the first, proposesthat engaging in interaction and producing output will be sufficient to drive second languagedevelopment forward. In each case, clearly, interlanguage development is seen to be theby-product of cngaging in meaning-processing ~ in the first case through comprchcnsion,and in the second through production. As a broader aim, the chapter develops the claim thatinstructional activities that emphasize meaning, whether comprehension or productionbased,may induce learners to rely on strategies for communication which result in abypassing of the form of language.The place of comprehension in language learningThe clearest example of a comprehension-based account of second language developmentderives from Krashcn (1985). He proposed that comprehensible input is the driving forcefor interlanguage development and change, and that the effects of such change carry over toinfluence production ~ that is, one learns to speak by listening, a claim,which is interestingbecause of its counter-intuitive nature. Krashen argues that thc prcdictability of the contextmakes what is said function as a commentary on what is already understood. The result isthat it is more likely that thc interlanguage system will be extended by the context-tolanguagemapping involved.