Production-driven language learning

Production-driven language learning focuses on learning things to say in the target langauge. It involves memorizing things you want to be able to say in your new languageand using them to communicate with other people. There is an emphasis on language as a social activity and as a means of communication with people. It is important to understand what is said, but the intent is to learn to say everything elicited.

Here are some of the principles this approach is based on:

• You need chances to negotiate meaning with native speakers.
• Native speakers often highly value good pronunciation.
• Repetition helps things stick.
• Comprehensible output can become comprehensible input.
• You need exposure to language in a variety of social settings.
• Language is used interactively in conversation.
• Language has social meaning.
• If you want to communicate with speakers of a language, you will be more motivated to learn it.

The audiolingual method of language learning, widely used in the seventies, was one production-driven approach. A production-driven approach emphasizing learner-directed language learning in a community setting is set forth in Brewster and Brewster 1976 and Brewster and Brewster 1986. A similar and more recent book using substantially the same approach is Marshall 1989.

• Fact module: Production-driven language learning
• In modular book: Ways to Approach Language Learning, by Carol J. Orwig
• In bookshelf: Language Learning

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 3.5, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 16 March 1999

© 1999 SIL International