Application Of 'Input Theory' Into TEFL

'Input Theory' gives us deep insight of what happens in the 'black box' of second or foreign language learners and how the external factors affect SLA or FLA or the internal factors cause effects on the outside. Many teachers and language practioners benefit from them. It enlightens us on the points that used to confuse us in pedagogical practice and language learning. I investigated a problem existing in our teaching approaches from the perspective of 'Input Theory'. That is imbalanced teaching approach. The problem I point out here is that there is too much formal instruction, such as language study, grammatical rules, and vocabulary, and too little language acquisition, such as 'acquisition-centred' input and activities, in the conduction of English class.One of the purposes of our teaching work is to develop students' communicative competence and language proficiency, which is set up as one of main aims in New Curriculum Criterion for senior high school that was issued by the Ministry of Education in February, 2003. As a matter of fact, the meaning and the purpose of the research is to help students develop communicative competence and improve their language proficiency.Although students grasp explicit knowledge by formal instruction and are able to do well in exams, they have low level of communicative competence because of a lack of implicit knowledge and language acquisition. The problem to be solved in the research is how to change students' explicit knowledge into implicit knowledge so as to improve students' communicative competence.'Learning' and 'acquisition' are two important terms in the thesis. 'Learning' is very important in TEFL, 'acquisition' is equally important in TEFL. I strongly believe and hypothesize that TEFL should be a process of combination of 'learning' and 'acquisition' in terms of form and function, language and culture. In current situation, there is a lack of 'acquisition-centred' input and activities in pedagogical practice to develop students' communicative competence. It is high time and suitable to increase 'acquisition-centred' input and activities to improve students' communicative competence and language proficiency, which is emphasized and advocated in the New Curriculum Criterion. As a result, I designed more 'acquisition-centred' activities in the experiment to combine 'learning' and 'acquisition'.Consequently, I designed the experiment to test the hypothesis expanding from 'Input Theory'. The results of the research show us a clear picture of achievements consistent with the hypothesis. Through the research, we will be deeply convinced that the application of 'Input Theory' into TEFL has considerable significance in the sense of pedagogical practice and language learning.