Principles of Input Processing

click to edit

P1. Learners process input for meaning before they process it for form.

P1a. Learners process content words in the input before anything else.

P1b. Learners prefer processing lexical items to grammatical items

(e.g., morphology) for the same semantic information.

P1c. Learners prefer processing “more meaningful” morphology before

“less” or “nonmeaningful” morphology.

P2. For learners to process form that is not meaningful, they must be able

to process informational or communicative content at no (or little) cost to

attention.

P3. Learners possess a default strategy that assigns the role of agent (or

subject) to the first noun (phrase) they encounter in a sentence/utterance.

This is called the first-noun strategy.

P3a. The first-noun strategy may be overridden by lexical semantics

and event probabilities.

P3b. Learners will adopt other processing strategies for grammatical

role assignment only after their developing system has incorporated

other cues (e.g., case marking, acoustic stress).

P4. Learners process elements in sentence/utterance initial position first.

P4a. Learners process elements in final position before elements in

medial position.

Processing Instruction

click to edit

Processing Instruction aims to improve second language acquisition by focusing on learners' underlying cognitive processes.

click to edit

It provides the learners with activities that allow them to practice in real time

click to edit