Making Input Comprehensible

Abstract

In view of the evidence that comprehensible input is necessary for language acquisition (Krashen 1980, 1982, Long 1981, 1983, 1985), this study compared the listening comprehension of NNSs' of English on directions to an assembly task given by a NS under two input conditions : (1) Syntactically and semantically premodified input without interaction and (2) Unmodified input with interaction. Two hypotheses were tested in the study. First, it was predicted that interaction in Condition (2) would lead to even greater syntactic and semantic modification of input than was built in a priori in Condition (1) and second, that NNSs' comprehension of input in Condition (2) would exceed that in Condition (1). Both hypotheses were supported. Analysis of the data indicated that the most significant aids to comprehension brought about by interaction were increased quantity and redundancy of input. Several specific interactional modifications, such as confirmation and comprehension checks and clarification requests were also shown to be critical factors in input comprehension. However, a reduction in the syntactic complexity of the input was observed to play no significant role in its comprehension.