Modified Output vs Modified Input

Two complementary mechanisms: language learners receive shaped to be understood, and language they produce under pressure to be understood. Modified Input sits on the input side. Modified output, formulated by Merrill Swain (1985), sits on the production side and addresses what input alone cannot deliver.

Swain's Argument

Working with French immersion learners, Swain (1985) observed that students who had received years of rich comprehensible input still showed persistent gaps in grammatical accuracy, especially morphology. Comprehension can proceed on semantic and pragmatic cues without forcing syntactic processing; production cannot. Producing under communicative pressure forces learners from semantic to syntactic processing. Swain (1995) named three functions: noticing the gap between intended meaning and current resources, hypothesis testing through trial utterances, and metalinguistic reflection. Pushed output is output learners modify in response to feedback or self-monitoring: a second attempt more accurate than the first.

Complementarity with Long

Long (1996) absorbed Swain's argument into his updated interaction hypothesis: negotiation of meaning produces both interactionally modified input and modified output. Pica (1994) documented how clarification requests and confirmation checks elicit output more target-like than learners' initial production. Input modification supplies comprehensible form; output modification forces learners to encode form themselves.

Implications for Materials Design

Texts and listening scripts supply modified input through graded vocabulary, controlled syntax, redundancy, and glossing. Tasks pull modified output, and not every task does so equally. Pica (1994) identified the features that maximise pushed output: two-way information distribution, convergent goals, and closed outcomes that prevent learners from abandoning a difficult formulation. Information-gap, opinion-gap, and problem-solving tasks score high; open discussions and one-way display tasks do not. A unit pairing an elaborated text with a one-way comprehension question delivers input but no pushed output; the same text paired with a jigsaw or decision-making task delivers both.

References

• Long, M. H. (1996). The role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition. In W. C. Ritchie & T. K. Bhatia (Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 413–468). New York: Academic Press.
• Pica, T. (1994). Research on negotiation: What does it reveal about second-language learning conditions, processes, and outcomes? Language Learning, 44(3), 493–527.
• Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development. In S. Gass & C. Madden (Eds.), Input in second language acquisition (pp. 235–253). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
• Swain, M. (1995). Three functions of output in second language learning. In G. Cook & B. Seidlhofer (Eds.), Principle and practice in applied linguistics: Studies in honour of H. G. Widdowson (pp. 125–144). Oxford: Oxford University Press.