Input Hypothesis Theory

Input processing (VanPatten, 2004)

- Learners have limited processing capacity and cannot

pay attention to form and meaning at the same time.

- They tend to give priority to meaning. When the

context in which they hear a sentence helps them

make sense of it, they do not notice details of the

language form.

- Model on how the learners form meaning and connections

- What happens during comprehension that may subsequently affect or interact with other
processes

how learners perceive and process the language they hear or read (input) and turn it into what they
actually understand (intake).

In VanPatten’s (1996, 2004, 2015a) model of input processing, only part of the input is filtered through
intake into the developing system and eventually becomes available to the learner for output purposes.
Changing the way learners process input and enriching their intake might have an effect on the
developing system that subsequently should have an impact on how learners produce the target
language. Input processing is concerned with those psycholinguistic strategies and mechanisms by which
learners derive intake from input. In VanPatten’s theory, when learners attend or notice input and
process the message, a form-meaning connection is made. Developing the learners’ ability to map one
form to one meaning is therefore essential for acquisition.

The first (I) converts input to intake. From intake the learner must still develop an acquired system; that
is, not all of intake is automatically fed into the acquired system.

The second set of processes (II) then includes those that promote the accommodation of intake and the
restructuring of the developing linguistic system (25; 41; 42).

Finally, research on output reveals that learner language is not a direct re- flection of acquired
competence. Thus, a third set of processes (III) must be posited to account for certain aspects of
language production, e.g., monitoring, accessing, control, and so on.
Here are the main principles VanPatten summarises in a 2004 article. Take your time with these!

1. The Primacy of Meaning Principle. Learners process input for meaning before they process it for form.

1a The Primacy of Content Words Principle. Learners process content words in the input before
anything else (e.g. nouns and verbs rather than, say, determiners, partitives or inflections).

1b The Lexical Preference Principle. Learners rely on lexical items as opposed to grammatical form
before they process redundant meaningful forms.

1c The Preference for Non-redundancy Principle. Learners are more likely to process non-redundant
meaningful grammatical form before they process redundant meaningful grammatical forms. (For
example, in English in the phrase two books, the s is redundant because we know from the word two
that book is plural, whereas in the phrase I baked the ed is non-redundant because it carries important
meaning, i.e. "pastness").

1d The Meaning-Before-Non-meaning Principle. Irrespective of redundancy learners are more likely to

process meaningful grammatical forms.

1e The Availability of Resources Principle. The overall understanding of a whole sentence must not drain
overall processing resources. (My note: there is a limit to what short term memory can process.)

1f The Sentence Location Principle. Learners tend to process the items near the start of a sentence first,
then those in final position, then those in medial position.

2. The First Noun Principle. Learners tend to process the first noun or pronoun as the subject or agent of
an action.

2a The Lexical Semantics Principle. Learners tend to rely on word meanings rather than word order to
process meaning.

2b The Event Probabilities Principle. Learners may rely on event probabilities rather than word order to
interpret sentences (i.e. what is the meaning likely to be).

2c The Contextual Constraint Principle. Learners may rely less on the First Noun Principle if preceding
context constrains the possible interpretation of a clause or sentence.

anPatten believes that by structuring (patterning) the input you can increase the rate of acquisition. He
suggests the following;

1. Teach only one thing at a time. Don't overburden students until you are sure they have worked out
form-meaning relationships.
2. Keep meaning in focus. Students must understand to perform an activity.

3. Learners must do something with the input. Not just repeat but "internally process", e.g. students
might have to say they agree or disagree rather than just repeat.

4. Use input. Use oral and written input.

5. Move from sentences to context. Work at sentence level, but move to longer utterances and texts.

6. Keep the processing strategies in mind. VanPatten distinguishes between Referential and Affective
activities. The former involves producing right or wrong answers, the latter invite opinions, beliefs and
other affective responses which are more deeply engaging.

Input processing theory (VanPatten, 1996, 2004, 2015a) refers to how learners initially perceive formal
features of language input, and the strategies or mechanisms that might guide learners in processing
them. Learners seem to process input for meaning (words) before they process it for form (grammatical
features). Learners seem to parse sentences by assigning subject or agent status to the first noun or
pronoun they encounter in a sentence. These default strategies cause a delay in the acquisition of
formal properties of the target language. According to this theory, instruction is effective and beneficial
if it manipulates input so that learners process grammar more efficiently and accurately. The
pedagogical intervention derived from this theory is called processing instruction. Learners should be
exposed to meaningful input that contains many instances of the same grammatical meaning-form
relationship (e.g., verb ending in -ed encodes a past event). Grammar instruction should be designed to
circumvent false default processing strategies and replace them with appropriate ones

Interaction hypothesis