The input hypothesis by Stephen Krashen states that language learners benefit from receiving intelligible input just beyond their current understanding level. This helps them acquire new grammatical features. Trial-and-error communication with conversation partners is the best way to gather this input. Speech output has little relevance, according to Krashen, but other researchers disagree.
The input hypothesis is a hypothesis in second language acquisition developed by Stephen Krashen, which states that a language learner gets the most benefit from receiving linguistic input just beyond his or her current interlanguage or grammatical understanding level. This type of input is known as intelligible input or “i + 1”, where “i” refers to the student’s interlanguage. According to Krashen, understandable input is more likely to be obtained from interacting with another speaker of the language.
In some respects, the input hypothesis is quite intuitive. Someone who understands only a few basic sentences of Chinese will not benefit much from listening to scientific talk in Chinese as it will be incomprehensible. Similarly, someone who is nearly fluent in Italian won’t gain much grammar knowledge from a children’s picture book, because it won’t introduce new grammatical features.
Krashen, however, draws on more complex theories of second language acquisition to make his claim. The interlanguage hypothesis states that learners acquire the grammatical features of a language in a predictable order and that at any given time the learner has an internally consistent grammatical structure known as interlanguage. As the student progresses, Interlanguage becomes more and more similar to the real grammar of the target language. The input hypothesis states that input one stage closest to the target language – oi + 1 input – helps the learner acquire the next set of grammatical features. It is not enough, however, for a student to passively receive understandable input; he or she must then analyze the new data to advance interlanguage.
The input hypothesis states that the best way for students to gather intelligible input is through some sort of trial-and-error communication process. The student looks for conversation partners, who modify their speech until it becomes understandable to the student. This process can be aided by non-verbal communication, such as student gestures and feedback. When the process is successful, the student’s interlanguage grows to match the new grammatical features she has observed.
Krashen says that speech output, or production, has little or no relevance to second language acquisition. Many other researchers have criticized this position, however, stating that more advanced language learning and syntactic processing must go through the trial-and-error process of not only understanding, but also speaking. Language output allows the speaker to test their grammatical assumptions and to modify them if communication is unsuccessful.
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