Input and Intake Revisited

Reflections on 'Input' and 'Intake'

In the field of applied linguistics, and more specifically in the field of second language acquisition, the terms 'input' and 'intake' can be traced back several decades. Corder (1967: 165) was the first to use the term 'intake' as distinct from 'input' in his renowned quote:

The simple fact of presenting a certain linguistic form to a learner in the classroom does not necessarily qualify it for the status of input, for the reason that input is 'what goes in' not what is available for going in, and we may reasonably suppose that it is the learner who controls this input, or more properly his intake.

In the 1950s, Skinner (1957) and Chomsky (1959) had already made reference to these same phenomena without proposing the specific terms 'input' and 'intake'. At that time, the debate focused on the degree to which external factors influenced language acquisition, or rather, whether an internal innate structure, known as Universal Grammar guided language acquisition (cf. Chomsky, 1959, 1965). In his criticism of Skinner's work in which Skinner reflects on the notion of 'stimulus' (the environment) and 'response' (individual behaviour), Chomsky remarks that, 'We cannot predict verbal behaviour in terms of stimuli in the speaker's environment, since we do not know what the current stimuli are until he responds' (Chomsky, 1959: 32). In other words, we cannot know what the individual has taken in until the moment of response, leaving an important gap in our ability to observe language processing.

Decades later, Hatch (1983: 81) reflects on this distinction between input and intake:

If we wish to keep both terms, we may say that input is what the learner hears and attempts to process. That part that learners process only partially is still input, though traces of it may remain and help in building the internal representation of the language. The part the learner actually successfully and completely processed is a subset called intake. That part, then, is the language that is already part of the internal representation.

Hatch extends Corder's definition of intake from that which is controlled by the learner and actually 'goes in' to that which the learner 'successfully and completely' processes. That which is only 'partially' processed remains input. The distinction, in fact, is found in the role that this processed information will play in building internal language representations. This is all fine and well, but we are still faced with the problem of identifying what information is 'taken in' or 'processed'. Hatch's explanation is quite representative of our understanding of input and intake in the 1980s and 90s. A distinction between the two having already been made, researchers then attempted to articulate this difference more clearly. The essence of the problem, however, remains in our inability to measure the phenomena involved in these processes. How can we know what elements of the linguistic environment are processed completely, partially or not at all? How can we know if learners even 'hear' a signal in the input and if they process what they heard? How can we know what part of the signal is processed and what part is not? These are questions that continue to challenge us in the field of language acquisition today.

Numerous researchers concerned with the study of input and intake in SLA express a shared concern. VanPatten (2000: 294) articulates this in his article entitled 'Thirty years of input': '... in spite of the significant advances made by SLA research and the diversification of theoretical and research frameworks in which to conduct this research, our knowledge of the role of input has remained relatively unchanged during the last 30 years'. Carroll (2001: 1) confirms VanPatten's concerns when describing input as '... one of the most under-researched and under-theorized aspects of second language acquisition'. This lack of research has become apparent in part because everyone, regardless of the theoretical framework, seems to agree on the importance of input in language acquisition. As VanPatten (2000: 295) points out, 'We seem to concur that input is somehow central to SLA, that without it successful SLA is not possible'. Carroll (2001: 2) makes a similar remark: '... one point on which there is consensus is that SLA requires exposure to the second language'.

The study of 'intake' evokes similar concerns. According to Carroll (2001: 2), 'There is no agreement on what kind or how much exposure a learner needs. Indeed, we know very little still about the kinds of linguistic exposure learners actually get'. Consequently, we know very little about what learners do with what they get. In order to move forward in our understanding of input and intake, we need to analyse the divergence that exists between the different research perspectives, revealing at the same time the complexity of these two terms. According to the current dominant definition, 'input' refers to the linguistic environment of the learner, that is, to that which is available to be taken in, or rather, to everything in the TL that the learner is exposed to and has the opportunity to either hear or read. The dominant definition of 'intake' is less clear. Researchers disagree on how input is processed and on when and how intake enters the picture. Thus, their definitions reflect their research agendas. Wong and Simard (2000) provide a comprehensive overview of research conducted on intake, showing how researchers differ in their views as to whether intake is a process, a product or a combination of both. In fact, we appear to be in a deadlock in that the true debate focuses on the distinction between product and process, a distinction for which we have not yet found appropriate terminology.

It is unlikely that one approach alone will be able to resolve all the aspects of this debate. It is rather through collaboration and exchange of methodology, results and knowledge that we will come to discover what is actually going on in the mind of an L2 learner when exposed to TL input. Diverse theoretical frameworks have already contributed and will continue to contribute in their own way to our understanding of input and intake. This study in no way intentionally eliminates research findings due to difference of approach. On the contrary, it attempts to incorporate what we already know about learners' processing, regardless of the source (theoretical framework) of this knowledge. We will now review four of these sources: connectionism (including the Competition Model),...