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Nick Ellis and LEA
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Raising Awareness to Form
Nick Ellis Research Implies Changes to Krashen Model
In a recent article "The Dynamics of Second Language
Emergence: Cycles of Language
Use, Language Change, and
Language Acquisition" (Modern Language Journal, 2008),
Nick Ellis explains "an emergentist account of
second language acquisition," i.e., why language
learners who are taught without explicit attention
to form tend to hit a ceiling in their proficiency
below what is required for academic success in the
second language.
The emergentist argument addresses spoken language,
and ways in which some of the most frequently
used sounds tend to be reduced, making them
difficult or impossible for learners to perceive
in the streams of speech they are exposed to. Many
of these sounds are what Ellis refers to as "grammatical
functors," and because these are typically missing
from the comprehensible input in the ideal communicative
settings that Krashen, Terrell, Brown, Candlin, VanPatten, and others
have promoted over the years (Ellis does not take
on these authors directly), "maximum contact languages
learned naturalistically can thus simplify and lose
grammatical intricacies."
To fill in these language learning gaps, Ellis
proposes the use of "dialectic forces, socially
recruited, involving the dynamics of learner
consciousness, form-focused attention, and
explicit learning."
Sylvia Ashton-Warner's concept of "organic
reading," from the book "Teacher" (1963) develops
texts for learning from the students' own pictures,
ideas, and immediate interests. Similarly, Freire
built his literacy instruction for construction
workers by starting with the words for the tools
and objects they were most familiar with.
In 1983, Dixon and Nessel described how Ashton-Warner's
organic reading could be adapted to teach ESL
learners, in their book "Language Experience Approach
to Reading (and Writing)" (Alemany Press).
LEA may be a perfect complement to standard
communicative or "natural" approaches to ESL/EFL
instruction, because, as Marcia Taylor points
out in her Eric Digest article (ED350887, 1992),
these organic texts fulfill Krashen and Terrell's
requirements for the selection of reading texts:
In Taylor's words:
The other advantage of LEA is that it provides
a way to raise the individual learner's consciousness
regarding elements and aspects of English which
are either not present or not clearly discernible
in comprehensible spoken input, addressing Nick
Ellis's concerns about a proficiency ceiling
(which he calls "the Basic Variety") beyond
which learners cannot progress without attention
to form.
The Language Experience Approach goes like
this:
Second, this original transcript becomes
the text for the teacher to go over
together with the learner, focusing
on grammar and word choice, leaving
the paper marked up as needed.
Third, the learner writes the text
again, taking care to incorporate all
the changes and corrections.
Fourth, the learner reads the revised
text outloud to the teacher, experiencing
what it is like to express himself or
herself with enhanced clarity.
These exercises which encourage the
learner to focus on his or her areas
for improvement (in speech and writing)
are likely to reach more deeply into
their long-term awareness of the
second language in ways that become
evident in spoken (and written)
performance.
By Robb Scott
2008-2009 ESL MiniConference Online
PDF conversion by PDF Online
Editor, ESL MiniConference Online
Robb@eslminiconf.net
