Chapter 1 Introduction

Since Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis was put forward in 1980s, ithas had an extensive and profound impact on the foreign language teaching in ourcountry. The SLA researchers have begun to center on the effects of comprehensibleinput on language acquisition, which leads to the neglect of language output. Despitewidespread popularity and support of Input Hypothesis, there is no lack of critics. Since1980s, SLA researchers have turned their focus on the language input to the role ofoutput in the development of second language proficiency.(But the attention to languageoutput was just put after the year 2000 in China.) Swain finds in the immersionprograms that language input is very important for language acquisition but it can notimprove the accuracy or fluency in language performance. To achieve accuracy andfluency, comprehensible output as well as enough output practices are indispensible.After giving such explanations to “output” as “producing language”, “producing thetarget language” and “language performance" in 1985, Swain revises the definition of“output” in 2000. She points out that “output” is the process of language acquisition andit has such techniques as “speaking”, “writing”, “collaborative dialogue”, “privatespeech”, “verbalizing” and “languaging”. Swain further claims that the languageapplication should focus on the fact that the students use the language, such as, talking.Any activities that have students talk, particularly when students reflect about theirspeaking or writing, are good activities. For large classes, pair work or small groupwork may give students more opportunities to use English and deepen their understanding of the target language points.Such a point refreshes those researchers who concentrate on their study on thelanguage competence and performance. It also interests some of SLA instructors andresearchers in our country. But it hasn’t drawn as much attention as that on the conceptof “output” put forward for the first time.

With the increasing international communication in our country, integratedapplication abilities of English, especially the abilities of listening and speaking, havebeen the focus of English teaching. The Teaching Requirements of College EnglishCourse issued in 2004 emphasizes this officially.An NPC member Zhang Pingying, president of International CommunicationSchool of Jishou University, claims that English learning in our country has occupiedand wasted a large quantity of teaching resources , even weakened and influenced thelearning time and learning effects of native language , but led to unsatisfactory learningresults. However, second language learners in our country limit basically their learningin the classroom practices. In the extracurricular activities, they just do some simple“output” exercises, such as memorizing the vocabularies repeatedly, consolidating thegrammatical points or sentence patterns repeatedly and etc. Ellis points out that simpleoutput is not language acquisition but the result of repeating of language points. It is farfrom comprehensible output and it can be the preparation for that. Thus it is impossiblefor such extracurricular activities to improve language competence clearly. It justaccounts for the fact that learning time and teaching resources have been exhaustedwhile learning results are very unsatisfactory.To enhance the comprehensible output in the limited learning time and improvelanguage competence has practical significance. Researches on classroom teaching andlearning have been paid close attention on. As for extracurricular further learning, it hasbeen neglected and thought of as unnecessary. But the fact is that extracurricular furtherlearning and practices do exist and become an inseparable part of learning. We cannotturn a blind eye to them. So it is practical and workable to change the practicing formsof extracurricular language exercises. Relative to other output forms like speaking,writing, private speech, languaging and etc, cooperative dialogue is a more effectiveway in our large-class language learning.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis

When it comes to Output Hypothesis, it is inevitable to mention Krashen’scomprehensible Input Hypothesis. They correlate and interact each other. As theacquisition theories point out, listening and reading are the two forms of language inputwhile speaking and writing belongs to language output. Language input is thepreconditions of output and language output is the ultimate aim of input.Krashen made the following claims to the Input Hypothesis：“The learner acquireslanguage by comprehending linguistic input that is slightly beyond his or her level ofcompetence(i+1)，and a necessary(but not sufficient)condition to move from i to stagei+l is that the acquirer understands input that contains i+l，where‘understand’meansthat the acquiring is focused on the meaning and not the form of the message”(Krashen，1982：21)Krashen emphasizes the importance of a large amount of comprehensible input andargues that high receptive skills can lead to high productive skills.

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2.2 Swain’s Comprehensible Output Hypothesis

Immersion teaching method is a teaching mode by which the learner’s nonnativelanguage is used as the school language. French Immersion Programs originated inQuebec, Canada in 1965 and Immersion Teaching Method has been considered asuccessful model in the field of second language teaching in the world. It makes thenative English kids immersed in French atmosphere from the beginning since theystarted school. During the teaching, teachers use the target language to teach the targetlanguage and other courses as well. The target language is not only the learning contentbut the learning instrument. In China, English Early Partial Immersion Programs are dominant. Partial immersionteaching is a teaching method in which English is used as a medium of instruction tohave the teaching activities for Chinese young kids. The teaching languages in Englishand Chinese are 50percent respectively, that is, half of the school time is exposed to thesecond language, English.Medium-term immersion is applied to grade 4 or 5 primary school students or juniormiddle school students on the basis of the general acquisition of their native language.At this stage, the second language is the main school language and some courses andEnglish course account for a half of the total class hours.

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Chapter 3 The Application of Collaborative Dialogue.......13

3.1 The Present Situation of EFL Classroom Teaching in the colleges and theSolution.....13

3.2 Swain’s Suggestions about Large Class Teaching......14

3.3 The Application of extracurricular Collaborative Dialogues .......14

Chapter 4 Research Design.......16

4.1The Research Questions of the Present Study .......16

4.2 Subjects.....16

4.3 Experiment Procedures.....17

4.4 Experiment Instruments....18

4.5 Data Collection and Data Analysis.....21

Chapter 5 Results and Discussion ........24

5.1 Results and Discussion .....24

5.2 Pedagogical Implications........29

Chapter 5 Results and Discussion

5.1 Results and Discussion

The pretests were conducted by the subjects ( CG and EG) at the end of the firstterm. The teacher for the oral English course in the two classes ( CG and EG) scoredtheir performances from the four aspects of pronunciation, fluency, accuracy andcommunication competence. The score for each aspect is 25 and the total score is 100.The results of the pretests were shown in Table 5.1. Table 5.1 showed that there were very slight differences between CG and EG intheir speaking output competence. The results of the pretests could prove that the meanscores for each aspect, pronunciation, accuracy, fluency and communicationcompetence had no significant differences ( P> .05).

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Conclusion

In this chapter, the major findings of the present empirical study are concluded, andthe limitations of the present study as well as some recommendations are proposed forfurther studies in this field. The purpose of the present empirical study is to testify extracurricular dialogue’spromotive function for the output competence. The results of this study support itpartially. The major findings of the study are summarized as follows.

(1)Extracurricular collaborative dialogues do not contribute to accuracy of speakingoutput competence. EG and CG had no significant difference in the progress of accuracy.Thus that he experiment group will outperform the control group on the accuracy ofspeaking output competence in the posttest is not statistically confirmed.

(2) Extracurricular collaborative dialogues facilitate fluency of speaking outputcompetence. EG significantly outdo CG in terms of fluency owing to a great number oftraining with the focus on the comprehensible meaning communication and adjustment.Thus it is definite that the experiment group will outperform the control group onfluency of speaking output competence in the posttest.

(3) Extracurricular collaborative dialogues make EG outperform CG oncommunicative competence. EG participate significantly better in the dialogues in termsof the initiative of involvement, reflection to the questions and feedbacks, promptnessof adjustment to the communication barriers, pragmatic use of communication and soon.

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