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The Past The Skill-Building Hypothesis Approaches to language teaching in the recent past have been based on 'skill-building', the hypothesis that we develop competence in language and literacy by first 'learning about' language, that is, consciously learning the rules, and by deliberately studying vocabulary.Skill-building cannot be the major means of producing competence in language and literacy.Nearly all texts in foreign language
education are based on skill-building, with presentations of grammar and vocabulary followed by very short texts and exercises designed to help the student 'automatize' the rules.They assume that children must . First consciously learn all soundspelling correspondences (phonics), and then practice applying the rules of phonics in reading simple texts.In fact, expert linguists admit that they have not succeeded in fully describing the grammatical rules of any language or the rules of phonics, and those they have come up with are often forbiddingly complicated.Correction helps us, it is claimed, by forcing us to reformulate our rules, to change our idea of the rules until we get themright. The Skill-Building Hypothesis is a delayed-gratification hypothesis.
Second, there are abundant cases of those who have acquired all or nearly all of a second language but who do not have conscious knowledge of more than a handful of rules (for cases, see Krashen 1981, 2000, 2004). Third, the effect of error correction on language development has thus far been shown to be weak or nonexistent (Truscott 1996).For the public, the Skill-Building Hypothesis is not an hypothesis: it is an axiom.Most approaches to literacy development are also based on skill building.Real reading is delayed until phonics is mastered.Real language use is delayed until the rules are 'mastered'.First, the system to be consciously learned is simply too complex and has not even been completely described.
The Present: The Comprehension Hypothesis Newer approaches to language teaching do not rely on painful 'skill building' but are based on the idea that we acquire language when we understand what we hear and read.A number of short-term comparisons have been done that claim to compare the impact of grammar instruction and comprehensible input, and the results have been interpreted as support for grammar, or the SkillBuilding Hypothesis.(It may be impossible to test pure forms of these hypotheses: while traditional methods are based on Skill-Building, they will inevitably contain some comprehensible input.Also, students in classes using methods based on the Comprehension Hypothesis may engage in self-study . The case for reading has been strengthened by a new wave of research from Asia, studies demonstrating the efficacy of in-school for elementary school children in Korea . In both first and second language development, students who participate in classes that include in-school self-selected reading programs (known as sustained silent reading) typically outperform comparison students, especially when the duration of treatment is longer than an academic year .The manifestation of the Comprehension Hypothesis in literacy is the Reading Hypothesis, the claim that we learn to read by reading, as well as the claim that reading is the source of much our vocabulary and spelling competence, our ability to handle complex grammatical structures, and to write with an acceptable writing style. Those who get more comprehensible input in the form of reading do better on a variety of measures, a result that holds when other possible confounds are controlled.James Asher and Harris Winitz, among others, also hypothesized that comprehension is the mechanism underlying language acquisition in publications that predate mine.But there is no doubt that traditional methods involve more skill-building than those based on the Comprehension Hypothesis.) For beginning language teaching, methods based on the Comprehension Hypothesis, such as TPR, the Natural Approach, and Focal Skills have been shown to be more effective than traditional methods on tests of communication, and at least as effective on tests of 'skills' .
According to the Comprehension Hypothesis, most of our languagebcompetence is the result of what we have subconsciously acquired, or absorbed, not what we have learned consciously, and real language competence is stored in the brain subconsciously.
The Future
The future of language education, in my view, will, I hope, include at least two steps forward:
1.The first sub-step in applying this aspect of the Comprehension Hypothesis is to simply make good reading material available, the establishment of super-libraries, filled with good books, magazines, and comics, with a selection wide enough to ensure that each student of English can read for pleasure in a variety of areas for hours at a time and for years, if desired.Funding for such an enterprise is modest, compared to the millions we are willing (and eager) to spend on computer technology, despite the fact that there is no solid evidence that computer-aided instruction helps languagedevelopment (but see below).(A more subtle version of the Comprehensible Output Hypothesis maintains that the 'need' to use certain structures in production makes acquirers more sensitive to these structures when they occur in input.) I have presented arguments against the strong form of the Comprehensible Output Hypothesis .The teacher sets up a situation that students are likely to encounter in real life' According to this definition, the Communicative Approach is implicitly based on the Comprehensible Output Hypothesis the view that we acquire language when we try to produce it, fail to make ourselves understood, and keep trying until we achieve communicative success when we finally get it right.Briefly, instances of comprehensible output are too rare for it to make any substantial contribution to language competence and language acquisition is possible without output of any kind.Distinguishing between the Comprehension Hypothesis and the Communicative Approach . Communicative language teaching has been defined as an approach that 'makes use of real-life situations that necessitate communication.Evidence against the weak form, that comprehensible output contributes to language development, is the fact that there is no clear empirical evidence supporting it .The Communicative Approach (again, as I understand it) is thus not only not the same as the Comprehension Hypothesis, it is the opposite.