Communicative competence: Some roles of

comprehensible input and comprehensible

output in its development-Merrill Swain

Presentation by:
Elena Kadi-Montague
Dionisis Psoinos
Marilena Choraitou
Persia Dafnou
Alexander Strbak

Presentation slides by Elena KadiMontague

Communicative competence: Some roles of

comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain

Focus of her research: the relationships between input

and output at the level of language proficiency
Sample of the research: Native and immerse speakers of
English learning French as a second language( infrequent
use of French-only by the teacher and by non-native
peers).

Swains hypothesis: Although comprehensible input

(Krashen,1981 b 1982) may be essential to the
acquisition of a second language, it is not enough to
ensure that the outcome will be native like performance.
She introduced the term of comprehensible output

Communicative competence: Some roles of

comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain
Overall aim to explore the influences of :
1.Social
2.Educational
Variables on the
processes and outcomes of
SLA
3.Individual
Linguistic traits under research(as Canale and
Swain proposed,1980)

1.Grammatical
2.Discourse
3.Sociolinguistic

Communicative competence: Some roles of

comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain

Grammatical competence

Oral
production

Multiple choice Written

production

As rules of
morphology and
syntax focus on
verbs and
prepositions in
French.

Aspects of syntax
and morphology
similar to those of
the interview-oral

Able to use
certain forms
accurately?

Have they got

good knowledge
of using them?

Presented 4
situations:
To write :2
narrations using
past and present
tense and
2 letters of
request (using
future tenses)
Errors with
accuracy?

Communicative competence: Some roles of

comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain

Grammatical competence

The results?

The immerse students had

not acquired native like
abilities (the native students
scored higher than them).

Communicative competence: Some roles of

comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain

Discourse competence

Oral production
Narrative and
argumentation
The film The mole
and the bulldozer
taken individually
and asked to tell the
story:
1.Setting the scene
2.Identification
3.Logical sequence
4.Time orientation
(use of verbs and
adverbs)

Able to tell the

Multiple choice

Written
production

Presented 4
situations:
Measuring coherence:
To write :2 narrative
They were given
discourse and
sentences from the
2 letters of suasion
passage to complete
Scoring according to:
from a set of 3
alternatives
1.Basic task
fulfilment(semantic)
2.Identification
3.Time orientation
4.Anafora
Recognised
5.Logical connection
coherent text?
6.Punctuation

Communicative competence: Some roles of

comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain

Discourse competence

The results?

The immerse students scored higher on

punctuation (in the written production).

The native speakers rated higher than

immerse students on time orientation
(oral production).

Communicative competence: Some roles of

comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain

Discourse competence

The results?

Differences between the

immerse and native speakers
depend on the trait being
measured

Communicative competence: Some roles of

comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain

Sociolinguistic competence

( as the
ability to produce socially appropriate language within a context
given)

Oral production

Multiple choice

Using slides with

audio to present
12 situations of:

Testing the ability to

use a utterance
(choose the best way
out of 3).

1.Request
2.Suggestion
3.Complaint
High or low
formality (e.g.
Adults or peers)

2 formal letters
requesting a favour

and
Authentic materials
used (magazines etc) 2 notes to a
both oral and written familiar person
language.

In school or
out of school settings

Could vary their

language according

Written
production

Able to use a
utterance with

Able to use
markers of
politeness ?

Communicative competence: Some roles of

comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain

Sociolinguistic competence

The results?

The native speakers performed

better on the sociolinguistic tasks
(the immerse students were weak
in verb morphology and in the use
of conditionals -they received input in
that way by their teachers and peers in class).

Communicative competence: Some roles of

comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain

Consequently:

Krashen s

hypothesis of comprehensible
input into question.
Maybe it forwards only to grammatical
acquisition
Swain included in her research two other
parameters:
1.The discourse
2.The sociolinguistic competence

Communicative competence: Some roles of

comprehensible input and comprehensible
output in its development-Merrill Swain

According to Swain:
1.The first step to grammatical acquisition is meaning.

2.Because the message is understood the learner pays

attention to the form.

3.So,the comprehensible input is important because is

understood and not because of its focus on the meaning.

4.The delivery of what was understood-the comprehensible

output it is just as important with the +1.

Comprehensible output hypothesis