COMPARING LANGUAGE COMPLEXITY IN ENGLISH AND ARABIC

Comparing language complexity in English and Arabic

Comparing language complexity in English and Arabic

Krashen wrote that the Input Hypothesis "may be the single most important concept in second language acquisition theory today" (1982: 9). Its importance stems from its attempt to answer the crucial question of how one acquires a second or a foreign language. Described briefly, the Input Hypothesis, as advanced by Krashen, claims that" a necessary (but not sufficient) condition to move from stage ito stage i + 1 is that the acquirer understand input that contains i + 7, where understand means that the acquirer is focussed on the meaning and not on the form of the message" (Krashen, 1982: 21). The Input Hypothesis posits that linguistic input is a prerequisite to production, which emerges on its own over time, not as a direct consequence of teaching (Krashen, 1982). While it is not within the scope of this study to evaluate the latter part of this claim, it is interesting to note that comprehensible input is given precedence over production. Elsewhere, Krashen reiterates that "speaking skills emerge significantly later than listening skills" (1982: 7).

Similarly, findings in second language acquisition research support the hypothesis of a silent period that precedes production. Hatch (1972) reported the case of a five-year-old child acquiring English as a second language. Apart from a few set phrases learned as whole utterances, the child did not use creative language for the first few months of his learning. Krashen offers an explanation of this phenomenon within the framework of the Input hypothesis. He proposes that the child, during the silent period, "is building up competence in the second language via listening, by understanding the language around him" (1982: 27). Although Krashen does not elaborate on the components of this competence, one can safely assume that phonological competence must be an intrinsic part of it. During the initial stage of building up competence, the learner's first task, then, is necessarily the construction of an interim, target-language phonological system (this system is interim in the sense that it remains variable at least until maximum approximation of the target system is achieved). Overall competence could become possible once the phonological contrasts are established.

Ordering instruction of language skills so that they start with listening then speaking is not a unique characteristic of communicatively-oriented approaches to L2 teaching. The well-known minimal pair drills of the Audiolingual Method (and other methods, for that matter) are used as a tool to help the learners construct their individual phonological systems of the target language by providing them with the phonological oppositions necessary to build such a system. Implicit in the use of this technique is the conviction that helping the learners perceive the contrasts through exposure (and then repetition) would ultimately lead to the production of sounds that are roughly equivalent to the target sounds.

The unanimity in the literature regarding the precedence of listening over production and, hence, the important role of perception in ...