Job Discussion Forums

[Wolf]

[Dr.J]

Never heard of i+1 but it sounds like 'rough tuning' ie using language just a little higher than what your students' level so they get the perfect mix of comprehension and challenge.

Anyone ever read Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet"? There's an excellent section on the 'religion' of not-teaching.

[shmooj]

It's fine tuning isn't it. Rough would be i+n.

This is great - we are really talking shop here.

i+1 has its origins in Second Langauge Acquisition theory. SLA posits that there is a natural pattern of language development or, in other words, that students the world over learn English in the same order irrespective of whether it is taught in that order or not. I can't remember what the order is purported to be but it would look something like this:
present simple (not third person)
present continuous
past simple (regular)
etc
etc
.
.
.
third person present simple

Anyway, I'm not advocating this so bear with me.
i+1 refers to the stage directly following that which the learner is at. The learner is at stage i and, in order to move them to the next stage i.e. i+1, the teacher gives a great deal of finely tuned input which the students then naturally acquire (NOT learn) through pretty much a subconcious process.

There is meat to this theory. You see it most often in language learning situations common to the ones I guess the majority of us are in when you are teaching young kids EFL.

I think Krashen was using it back when he wrote the Natural APproach to refer mostly to grammar. I have seen it mostly working in acquiring vocabulary though. My kids acquire much more from me than they learn as they mimic stuff like "uh oh!", "cool", "no way" and stuff like that. But they are terrible with third person present simple

[denise]

Shmooj--

I know (or think, rather...) that Krashen was involved somehow in the morpheme-order studies (the order in which learners aquire specific morphemes/bits of language). There was a list of something like 23 of them, I think.

Are you sure that that's what the "+1" is, though? The language points listed were fairly specific, whereas I thought that his +1 was more general, referring more to "a little bit beyond the student's current knowledge." Providing comprehensible input of only the next morpheme on the list would be quite tricky--we'd have to confine ourselves to, for example, speaking only in the past simple until the students acquired it.

And from what I recall, one of the main morpheme order studies (Dulay & Burt) had its share of flaws... But they may have been more related to the way the project was carried out than to the underlying theory of there being a natural order of acquisition.

d

[shmooj]

No, denise, I'm not sure. It was about five years ago when I took my crash course in Krashen.

I think that what your suggesting the +1 is is similar to Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (though he was working with native speaker kids acquiring L1 I believe).

I was under the impression that morpheme order theory had been shored up by more recent research.

I'll have to consult the Purple Book and get back to you on this. Good to be challenged academically again. Need to flex the old brain a bit.

[denise]

I recall reading an anti-Krashen article or two explaining why i+1 and ZPD were not the same.

ZPD is the gap between what a learner can do alone and what he/she can do with the assistance of another--two measurable targets.

"+1" is... ??? "a bit beyond" the student's proficiency--is it measurable? Is there a limit to it?

ZPD seems to be more clearly defined, as it has a starting point (the learner) and presumably an ending point (the learner's ability with help). I hate to call it an "ending point," though--doesn't quite fit what I'm trying to say.

d

[denise]

Addendum:

I think perhaps some of my posts have sounded a bit anti-Krashen. I actually have no opinion either way. He's got sensible theories that are easily digested. It's just been all too easy for others to criticize him for not being more "researchy."

d

[shmooj]

Okay, here it is from the horse's mouth i.e. p273 of Ellis' classic "The Study of Second Language Acquisition":

"Krashen's Input Hypothesis (Krashen 1981; 1985; 1989) makes the following claims:
1. Learners progress along the natural order by understanding input that contains structurs a little bit beyond their current level of competence.
2. Although comprehensible input is necessary for acquisition to take place, it is not sufficient, as learners also need to be affectively disposed to "let in" the input they comprehend.
3. Input becomes comprehensible as a result of simplification and with the help of contextual and extralinguistic clues; "fine-tuning"... is not necessary.
4. Speaking is the result of acquisition, not its cause; learner production does not contribute directly to acquisition."

It seems that, unbeknown to me, I was right about i+1 after all. I was wrong it seems about "fine tuning" being necessary according to Krashen and I guess therefore what is described is what Dr.J correctly describes as "rough tuning".

Point 2 is the whole affective filter thing.

We haven't commented on point 4. Anyone got any thoughts?

[denise]

Re. point 4:

Depends on whether the learner wishes to be a receptive user of the language or a productive one, I suppose.

Swain's output hypothesis says that input is not enough. I tend to take her view. I can listen to all the Japanese TV/radio/conversations in the world (assuming they're at an i+1 level, not i+37, which they are now...), but until I force my brain to form/test hypotheses, and until I force my mouth to make the sounds, I will still not be able to communicate.

When you're listening to language, you can focus only on the key words--you can ignore "little" things like articles, prepositions, etc. (and many students don't even hear them!), and if you focus only on the content words, you might not even notice the structure of the phrases--word order, etc. You don't have to listen with full accuracy. Of course, you don't have to speak with full accuracy to be understood either, but you do have to put more mental effort into creating a correct utterance than in hearing/processing one.

I remember being totally baffled all through elementary school/junior high/high school because a friend of mine could understand Mandarin when her parents spoke it to her, but did not speak Mandarin. Now it makes sense--she'd had several years of input, but no output.

d