This document discusses different settings for second language learning, including natural acquisition settings, structured-based instructional settings, and communicative instructional settings. It outlines key differences in how language is presented and practiced in each setting. The document also discusses factors that influence language learning like teaching methods, language input, authentic vs non-authentic language examples, and the balance between complexity, accuracy and fluency in the classroom.

1. Instructed Second Language
Learning

2. • Natural and Instructional Settings
Natural acquisition contexts
should be understood as those in which the
learner is exposed to the language at work or in
social interaction or, if the learner is a child, in a
school situation where most of the other children
are native speakers of the target language.
In instructional environments,
the language is taught to a group of second or
foreign language learners.

3. In natural acquisition settings
1. Language is not presented step by step.
2. The learner is exposed to a wide variety of vocabulary
and structures.
3. Learners’ errors are really corrected.
4. The learner is surrounded by the language for many
hours each day.
5. The learner usually encounters a number of different
people who use the target language proficiently.
6. Learners observe or participate in many different types
of language events: brief greetings, commercial
transactions, exchange of information, arguments,
instruction at school and in workplace interactions.

4. In structure-based instructional settings
1. Linguistic items are presented and practised in isolation, one
item at a time, from simple to complex.
2. Errors are frequently corrected. Accuracy tends to be given
priority over meaningful interaction.
3. Learning is limited to a few hours a week.
4. In situations of foreign language learning the teacher is often the
only native or proficient speaker the student comes in contact
with.
5. Students experience a limited range of discourse types.
6. Students often feel pressure to speak or write the second
language and to do so correctly from the beginning.
7. Teachers use the learners’ native language to give instructions or
for classroom management.

5. In communicative instructional settings
1. Input is simplified and made comprehensible by the use of contextual cues, props,
and gestures, rather than through structural grading. Students provide each other
with simplified and sometimes erroneous input.
2. There is a limited amount of error correction on the part of the teacher, and meaning
is emphasized over form.
3. Students tend not to overtly correct each other’s errors when they are engaged in
communicative practice. Because the focus is on meaning.
4. Learners usually have limited time for learning. In a typical teacher-fronted classroom
with 25-30 students, individual students get very little opportunity to produce
language in a 60 minute class, and when they do, it is usually in the form of short
response to a teacher’s question. When students work in pairs or groups, they have
opportunities to produce and respond to a greater amount and variety of language.
5. As in structure-based instruction, it is usually only the teacher who is a proficient
speaker. Learners have considerable exposure to the interlanguage of other learners,
particularly in student-student interaction. This naturally contains errors that would
not be heard in an environment where the interlocutors are native speakers, but it
provides many more opportunities for students to use the target language than is the
case in most teacher-fronted activities.
6. A variety of discourse types may be introduced through stories, peer and group work,
the use of authentic materials such as newspapers and television broadcasts.
7. There is little pressure to perform at high levels of accuracy, and there is often a
greater emphasis on comprehension than on production, especially in the early stages
of learning.
8. Modified input is a defining feature of this approach to instruction. The teacher makes
every effort to speak to students in a level of language they can understand.

6. • Teaching and language input
An important element in L2 success appears to
be how learners are treated: the teaching
method they encounter, the language they hear,
and the environment in which they are learning.
The purpose of language teaching in a sense is
to provide optimal samples of language for the
learner to profit from-the best input to the
process of language learning.

7. What advice can be given about input in the classroom?
1. Be aware of the levels at which the learner enters into
the classroom. Over-using teacher talk undermines a
communicative classroom.
2. Be aware of the different sources of input. Language
may come first from the teacher, second from the
textbook or teaching materials, and third from other
students, not to mention sources outside classroom.
3. The input that the students are getting is far more than
just the sentences they encounter. The whole context
provides language.
4. Students learn what they are taught. For ex: students
taught by listening methods turn out to be better at
listening; students taught through reading are better at
reading.

8. • Processing input and instruction
1. Give learners information about a structure
or form.
2. Inform learners about a particular processing
strategy that may get in the way of selecting
the form/structure during comprehension.
3. Structure input so that learners must rely on
form/structure to get meaning and not rely
on natural processing tendencies.

9. Authentic and non-authentic language
A further distinction is between authentic and non-authentic language.
Here is a typical textbook dialogue taken from Atlas I.
A: H. Are you a new student?
B: Yes, I am. I’m Claudia. What’s your name?
A: Tom.
B: Nice to meet you Tom.
This is non-authentic language specially constructed for its teaching
potential. People in real-life conversations do not speak in full grammatical
sentences and do not keep a clear sequence of turns. Instead they speak like
these two people.
A: Oh, how extraordianary.
B. So….’ cos quite a quite a lot of things like that.
A. I mean were they frightened? Cos I think if I actually…
B. … saw a ghost because I don’t believe in them really, I would be
frightened, you know to think that I was completely wrong.
This is then an example of authentic language, defined as language «created
to fulfil some social purpose in the language community in which it was
produced».

10. Two justifications for the use of authentic text in
communicative teaching are put forward by
Little et al. (1988):
• Motivation and interest: students will be
better motivated by texts that serve a real
communicative purpose.
• Acquisition-promoting content: authentic
texts provide a rich source of natural language
for the learner to acquire language form.

11. Teachability-Learnability
Learners can only learn the next stage in the
developmental sequence.
{ If they are at stage N, they can only learn N + 1.
{ If they are taught an N + 3 structure, they
cannot learn it.
{ They can only learn N + 1.
{ This is a testable version of Krashen’s i + 1
hypothesis.

12. Focus on form and Focus on FormS
Following Long (1991), two kinds of form-focused instruction can be
distinguished—focus-on forms and focus-on-form. The former involves
the pre-selection of specific features based on a linguistic syllabus and
the intensive and systematic treatment of those features. Thus, in
focus-on-forms instruction the primary focus of attention is on the
form that is being targeted. A good example of a focus-on-forms
lesson is one conducted by means of ‘PPP’ (i.e. a three stage lesson
involving the presentation of a grammatical structure, its practice in
controlled exercises and the provision of opportunities to produce it
freely).
In contrast, in focus-on-form instruction the primary focus of attention
is on meaning. The attention to form arises out of meaning-centred
activity derived from the performance of a communicative task.
For example, students might be asked to perform an information-gap
task and in the course of doing so have their attention drawn to one or
more linguistic forms which are needed to perform the activity or that
are causing the students problems.

13. • Complexity-Accuracy-Fluency
Complexity: This presentes new, cutting-edge, and
possibly risky language and foreshadows growth in
the interlanguage system.
Accuracy: This represents a striving for control and
error avoidance, possibly the avoidance of cutting-
edge language, and by avoiding fluency to enable
more time to be used to achieve higher accuracy.
Fluency: This represent a focus on meaning,
automatization, lexicalization, and a push for real-
time processing.