Second Language Acquisition and Second ... - Stephen Krashen

more expansions as well as repetitions from caretakers (Cross, 1977). This may also be the case for
teacher-talk (Gaies, 1977, affirms that this is the case, but presents no statistics). It is not, however,
clear that this means that expansions and repetitions are useful for the acquirer, although they may
be. Cross (1977), Newport, et al. (1977), and R. Brown (1977) suggest that expansions are
communication checks: less mature children hear more of them because the mother needs to check
more.
Similarly, Cross (1977, p. 167) says that caretaker repetition comes from the child's failure to
understand, and the need to repeat naturally decreases over time. This is not to say that repetition
and expansion do not help, just that it is far from clear that they do. (See also Nelson, Carskaddon,
and Bonvillian, 1973.)
3 Another possible advantage of simple informal input over standard classroom practice is the
possibility of exposure to different discourse types and to different pragmatic uses of language. As
has been pointed out several times in recent years (Wilkins, 1976; Long, 1975, 1976), classroom use
of language (and this may include teacher-talk) is severely limited in terms of language use, in terms
of communicative functions. According to Wilkins, "language learning (in classrooms) has
concentrated much more on the use of language to report and describe than on doing things through
language" (Wilkins, p. 42). A major pedagogical goal in recent years has been to provide in-class
activities that will provide practice in various communicative functions of language; e.g. Long
(1975) discusses the possibility of group work, an in-class interlanguage-talk, as a partial solution to
this problem. Also, the "notional syllabus" suggested by Wilkins has as its goal the utilization of the
classroom for helping students learn or acquire rules of communication. The simplified informal
environment, however, may provide a built-in notional syllabus, complete with review and
sufficient repetition for successful acquisition of communicative competence. We need to determine
how much communicative competence is successfully acquired or learned by second language
performers who have had primarily simplified informal experience with the target language as
compared to those who have had primarily classroom experience.
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