Comprehensibility of input and the acquisition of grammar
Part of : Εφαρμοσμένη γλωσσολογία ; No.14, 1998, pages 71-87
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71-87
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This paper discusses some reasons why learners may fail to acquire grammar from even large amounts of input. The situation of Malay English learners in Brunei is used to illustrate failure to acquire tense/aspect despite English Medium education and extensive use of English. It is argued that we should distinguish between comprehensibility of content and grammatical comprehensibility and that the latter is not a necessary concomitant of the former. To elaborate on that we discuss briefly what TA notions Malay and Greek learners respectively need to acquire which are not present in their own Lis and to what extent these notions or their realizations can be deduced from input which is comprehensible in terms of content. It will be argued that crucial information is not easily available in comprehensible texts and that teachers and teaching material need to engage learners in discovering the evidence, much of it negative.
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Περιέχει βιβλιογραφία
