AGE: WHY OLDER IS FASTER

The Comprehension Hypothesis helps us understand why older children acquire more quickly than younger children, and why, in early stages, adults are faster than children: Older acquirers, thanks to their superior knowledge of the world, understand more of the input they hear and read.

NARROW INPUT

The Comprehension Hypothesis predicts that language acquisition will proceed more rapidly if input is "narrow," that is, if acquirers obtain a great deal of input in a narrow range of subjects and gradually expand. This contrasts with the usual idea of the "survey" in which students are given a short exposure to a wide variety of topics. The "survey" only ensures incomprehensible input. Staying "narrow" allows the acquirer to take advantage of background knowledge built up through the input.

The idea of narrow input began with narrow reading (Krashen, 1981), the suggestion that language acquirers stick to one author or genre and gradually branch out. It is supported by findings showing that better readers in English as a first language tend to read more series books (Lamme, 1976), as well as reports of progress made by female adult second language acquirers who read extensively from the Sweet Valley High series, a series written for girls (Cho and Krashen, 1995, 1995a, 1995b).

In narrow listening (Krashen, 1996b), acquirers listen to recordings of several speakers talking about the same topic, a topic of interest to the acquirer. Ideally, the acquirer records the tape him/herself, from friends who speak the language. Acquirers then listen to the tape as many times as desired. Repeated listening, interest in the topic, and familiar context help make the input comprehensible. Topics are gradually changed, which allows the acquirer to expand his or her competence comfortably. Narrow listening is a low-tech, inexpensive way to obtain comprehensible input.

Dupuy (1999) reported a clear increase in comprehensibility with repeated hearings of narrow listening tapes for students of French as a foreign language. Students did not record the native speakers themselves but could choose the topics. Intermediate students improved from about half to nearly full comprehensibility after three to four listenings. Rodrigo and Krashen (1996) reported that students of Spanish as a foreign language were enthusiastic about narrow listening: 92% said the activity was very interesting and beneficial. Their subjects reported that selecting their own topics and their own speakers was more effective and interesting than hearing pre-selected tapes in a classroom situation.

SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR APPLICATION

I outline below a possible application of the Comprehension Hypothesis and related hypotheses to the EFL situation.

7