COMPREHENSIBLE OR INCOMPREHENSIBLE LANGUAGE INPUT

One of the essential issues in second language acquisition which has been the focus of many studies in the last three decades is language input and its role in SLA. While the importance and the role of language input have been advocated by various theories of language learning, there has been a controversy over the extent of its importance. Krashen (1982) claimed that language acquisition can happen in formal and informal language learning settings only if language learners are directly involved in intensive exposure to a type of input which is comprehensible. In contrast to this claim, other researchers also considered comprehended input (Gass, 1988, 1997) incomprehensible input (White, 1987), and comprehensible output (Swain, 1985) to provide the necessary language input for SLA. In the same line, the present paper aims at providing an overview with regard to the importance of language input from different theories of SLA.