The Application Of Krashen’s Input Hypothesis To Denglish Intelligent English Learning System

Krashen’s input hypothesis of second language acquisition (SLA) was put nearly30years ago and it has great influence on SLA and the study of SLA. According to inputhypothesis, language learners can only acquire a new language efficiently when theyreceive enough comprehensible language input, that is ‘i+1’. The ‘i’ in ‘i+1’ refers tolearners’ current language level, while ‘1’ is the distance between their current level andnext level. This theory caused a lot of language researchers’ interests. Among them, Payneraised his questions to this theory. He argues that though ‘i+1’ is the ideal language input,what ‘i’ stands for in real teaching is vague. Is it an individual student’s current languagelevel or the class’ level collectively? And how to assess students’‘i’ is not mentioned byKrashen. Furthermore, it is difficult to define ‘+1’ language input in real teaching.With application of Krashen’s input hypothesis to Denglish Intelligent EnglishLearning System(DIELS), the paper aims to explore how to determine student’s existinglanguage level, that is ‘i’ and a new form of CALL, which is efficient. DIELS is a newform of CALL system based on computer-adaptive testing and computer-adaptive learning.On the basis of national information education requirements and the existing hardwareconditions in middle schools, it is very feasible to promote CALL.After an interview and a teaching experiment were conducted, qualitative andquantitative research methods are applied to study how the system defines ‘i’ and itseffectiveness in real language teaching. The subjects of the interview are English teachersfrom experimental schools while the subjects of the teaching experiment are two classesfrom eighth of Wuhan Meiyuan Middle School. The controlled class remains traditionalway of English teaching while the experimental class applies the system to assist theirlearning and teaching to do comparative study. The data collected through the interview isprocessed by qualitative study. And the data of the pretests and posttests in the teachingexperiment is conducted pair sample T test with SPSS.The results of the studies indicate that the system can provide detailed and instructive diagnostic feedbacks to both individual student’s ‘i’ and a class’‘i’ collectively. And theexperimental class made greater progress than the controlled class. With the application ofKrashen’s input hypothesis, DIELS can improve learners’ efficiency of learning English.