Transcript Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible

Communicative competence: Some roles of
comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain
Presentation by:
Elena Kadi-Montague
Dionisis Psoinos
Marilena Choraitou
Persia Dafnou
Alexander Strbak
Presentation slides by Elena Kadi-Montague
Communicative competence: Some roles of
comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain
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Focus of her research: the relationships between input and
output at the level of language proficiency
Sample of the research: Native and immerse speakers of
English learning French as a second language( infrequent
use of French-only by the teacher and by non-native peers).
Swain’s hypothesis: Although comprehensible input
(Krashen,1981 b 1982) may be essential to the acquisition of
a second language, it is not enough to ensure that the
outcome will be native like performance.
She introduced the term of “comprehensible output”
Communicative competence: Some roles of
comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain
Overall aim to explore the influences of :
1.Social
2.Educational 
Variables on the
processes and outcomes of SLA
3.Individual
Linguistic traits under research(as Canale and Swain
proposed,1980)
1.Grammatical
2.Discourse
3.Sociolinguistic
Communicative competence: Some roles of
comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain

Grammatical competence
Oral production
As rules of
morphology and
syntax focus on
verbs and
prepositions in
French.
Able to use certain
forms accurately?
Multiple choice
Written
production
Aspects of syntax
and morphology
similar to those of
the interview-oral
Presented 4
situations:
To write :2
narrations using
past and present
tense and
2 letters of request
(using future
tenses)
Errors with
accuracy?
Have they got
good knowledge of
using them?
Communicative competence: Some roles of
comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain
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Grammatical competence
The results?
The immerse students had not
acquired native like abilities (the
native students scored higher
than them).
Communicative competence: Some roles of
comprehensible input and comprehensible output
in its development-Merrill Swain

Discourse competence
Oral production
Multiple choice
Narrative and
argumentation
The film “The mole and
the bulldozer”
taken individually and
asked to tell the story:
1.Setting the scene
2.Identification
3.Logical sequence
4.Time orientation (use
of verbs and adverbs)
Measuring coherence:
They were given
sentences from the
passage to complete
from a set of 3
alternatives
Able to tell the story?
Recognised coherent
text?
Written
production
Presented 4 situations:
To write :2 narrative
discourse and
2 letters of suasion
Scoring according to:
1.Basic task
fulfilment(semantic)
2.Identification
3.Time orientation
4.Anafora
5.Logical connection
6.Punctuation
Communicative competence: Some roles of
comprehensible input and comprehensible output
in its development-Merrill Swain
Discourse competence
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The results?
The immerse students scored higher on
punctuation (in the written production).
The native speakers rated higher than
immerse students on time orientation (oral
production).
Communicative competence: Some roles of
comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain
Discourse competence
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The results?
Differences between the immerse
and native speakers depend on
the trait being measured
Communicative competence: Some roles of
comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain
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Sociolinguistic competence
( as the ability to
produce socially appropriate language within a context given)
Oral production
Multiple choice
Using slides with
audio to present
12 situations of:
Testing the ability to use
a utterance (choose the
2 formal letters
best way out of 3).
1.Request
2.Suggestion
3.Complaint
 High or low
formality (e.g.
Adults or peers)
In school or
out of school settings
Could vary their
language according to
the social demands?
Written
production
requesting a favour
Authentic materials used
and
(magazines etc) –both
oral and written
2 notes to a familiar
language.
person
Able to use a utterance
with respect to the
social context?
Able to use markers
of politeness ?
Communicative competence: Some roles of
comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain
Sociolinguistic competence
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The results?
The native speakers performed better
on the sociolinguistic tasks (the
immerse students were weak in verb
morphology and in the use of
conditionals -they received input in that way
by their teachers and peers in class).
Communicative competence: Some roles of
comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain
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Consequently:
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Krashen’ s hypothesis of comprehensible input
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into question.
Maybe it forwards only to grammatical acquisition
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Swain included in her research two other
parameters:
1.The discourse
2.The sociolinguistic competence
Communicative competence: Some roles of
comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain
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According to Swain:
1.The first step to grammatical acquisition is meaning.
2.Because the message is understood the learner pays attention
to the form.
3.So,the comprehensible input is important because is understood
and not because of its focus on the meaning.
4.The delivery of what was understood-the comprehensible output
–it is just as important with the +1.
Comprehensible output hypothesis