Significant Input

by Kaj Vardinghus

I have coined the term Significant Input by combining Carl Rogers’ Significant Learning (Experiential Learning) with Stephen Krashen’s Comprehensible Input (The Input Hypothesis).

Through my own experience with language learners of all ages and walks of life, I have learned that language penetrates and is acquired when input is significant and motivating to the learner. I shall try to explain myself by shortly describing the ideas of Carl Rogers, Stephen Krashen and Malcolm Knowles (Andragogy) in relation to learning content (input) and add a few comments and examples from my own experience.

In Experiential Learning (Rogers, Carl R., 1969), Carl Rogers talks about personal involvement, self-evaluation (what the learner needs and wants to learn) and that learning should mean something to the learner. Although Rogers’ ideas were not only directed at language learning, they are absolutely valid in this context. Rogers showed us that the content must be meaningful to the learner. I real life, language learners often have to learn a particular language which is not necessarily chosen by them, so the “teacher” (facilitator) or the learner himself, must create learning experiences that lead to personal involvement and make the language learning experience more than just another “have-to-do task”.

During the first class with my learners I always ask them what topics they like and what their immediate needs for using the language are. This way I can prepare classes that are meaningful to them by using topics that are interesting to them, or if they are professionals in need of specific work-skills, meaningful because they see the relevance of the vocabulary and language skills for doing their jobs. Learners who want to do a self-study should also do such an “interest/needs analysis”, to find the topics and real needs that will keep their attention while working on improving their language skills.

If classes are done with a facilitator, he or she often has to go a “long distance” to get real results. At the moment of this writing, I’m teaching a teenager, and although he says he likes this and that, I can really only get his complete attention when we talk about Basketball. Believe me, I’m not an expert on Basketball, but I can use video-clips, texts and vocabulary that I find on the Internet, and of course, use his knowledge to tell me about Basketball (in English of course). He has definitely improved his English in a very short time, and recently his mother called me to say thanks. She told me that he is doing much better at English at school.

Stephen Krashen (Krashen, S., 1982) also touches on penetration in his “Affective Filter Hypothesis”, showing that affective factors like motivation, self-confidence and anxiety influence the penetration of the language the learner is exposed to. So supplying the learner with Comprehensible Input does not suffice – input and method must be emotionally and adequately suited to the individual learner or learners.

Language institutes and schools ask their teachers to evaluate learners on an on-going basis, often each class, to have an idea what skill-area needs work. Unfortunately, it often becomes quite mechanical like: “xx needs to improve her listening skills”, and perhaps time is not always spent on doing emotional and/or needs assessments. Here is an example from my own work:

“Once I was hired to give one-to-one classes to an executive from a large Brazilian company. The material I was supposed to use, was all related to listening skills, as teachers had written that the learner needed to improve his listening skills in the class-reports (no-one had really tried to understand the root of the problem). Very well, I began the classes telling him that we were going to work on his listening skills and gave him a short overview of the material, and then we began. The first activity went quite well, the second one a little worse and the third was a complete disaster! He had begun yawning, so I asked him if he was bored or sleepy, but he said “No”. Then I asked him if he was anxious – he said, “Perhaps a little”. There I stopped the listening activities to find out what the real affective problem was. Soon I found out that in his childhood he had had individual classes with a very aggressive woman, and that these listening activities brought back feelings of this childhood experience. I spend the rest of the day working on his listening skills by talking with him about his problem (including using a simple NLP phobia elimination technique), his life and his work. And guess what? Utilising this format, he had no real listening problem!”

This shows that content and form must be tailored to the individual! I also try to base the learners’ further studies on their real needs, meaning, problem areas that are identified during classes, to work on what the learners don’t master in the language, and not, what they already have seen and learned well!
Malcolm Knowles, who was clearly inspired by the qualities of good facilitation argued for by Carl Rogers, in his Andragogy Theory, highlights that adults are self-directed and expect to take responsibility for decisions. Adult learning programs must therefore accommodate this fundamental aspect.
The principles of his theory are:

1. Adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their instruction.

2. Experience (including mistakes) provides the basis for learning activities.

3. Adults are more interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance to their job or personal life.

4. Adult learning is problem-centred rather than content-oriented.

All these principles apply to language learning as well. I would even go further and say, that these principles are valid for teenagers too. Teenagers have reached a time in their life when they begin to question what happens to- and around them – they have begun to form their own opinions.

If we look at these principles individually, we can see that they match quite well what I’ve already mentioned above:

1. Involvement in planning – the needs analysis I’ve mentioned above.

2. Learning experience – further activities based on “what they don’t master” (“their real needs” – here language needs).

3. Learning subjects – especially the professionals mentioned above.

4. Problem centred – working on tasks in the language, not necessarily focusing on language forms, and this way acquiring the language.

So, as we have seen in above, content, form and emotional issues matter when we are learning. That is what I call SIGNIFICANT INPUT.

In conclusion: it is important to design or choose skills activities (reading, writing, speaking and listening) according to the learner’s interest and needs to keep his/her attention and thus gaining maximum results from the studies. This also applies to completely self-initiated studies.

Copyright © Kaj Vardinghus 2009

References:

Unpublished notes on Significant Input, Vardinghus, Kaj, 2006

Krashen, S. (1982), Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition, Pergamon

Krashen, S. & Terrell, T.D. (1983), The Natural Approach, Pergamon

Rogers, Carl R. (1973) Liberdade para aprender. Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Interlivros

Rogers, Carl R. (1969) Freedom to learn. Colombia, Ohio, USA: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company

Knowles, M. (1975). Self-Directed Learning. Chicago: Follet.

Knowles, M. (1984). The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species (3rd Ed.). Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing.

Knowles, M. (1984). Andragogy in Action. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.