Merrill Swain is a Canadian applied linguist whose research has focused on second language acquisition (SLA). Some of her most notable contributions to SLA research include the Output Hypothesis and her research related to immersion education. Swain is a Professor Emerita at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. Swain is also known for her work with Michael Canale on communicative competence. Swain was the president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics in 1998. She received her PhD in psychology at the University of California. Swain has co-supervised 64 PhD students.
The Output Hypothesis
Merrill Swain came to propose the Output Hypothesis based on her observations of French immersion classrooms that very rarely did students say anything longer than a clause, and that many graduates of French immersion programs still had grammatical inaccuracies in their speech that never went away even after many years of immersion education. In contrast with Stephen Krashen’s 1977 Input Hypothesis, Swain’s Output Hypothesis posited that comprehensible input on its own is not enough for language learning. The Output Hypothesis proposes that “through producing language, either spoken or written, language acquisition/learning may occur”, because learners are more likely to notice gaps in their knowledge when producing output, and learn as a result of trying to fill that gap. The Output Hypothesis attributes three main functions to the production of language (output) that are relevant to language learning:
The noticing/triggering function - in attempting to produce language, learners may become aware of a gap between their intended meaning and the form closest to that meaning that they can produce using their current knowledge. The hypothesis-testing function - output can be a reflection of hypotheses about the language that learners are testing. The metalinguistic (reflective) function - “using language to reflect on language produced by others or the self mediates second language learning”.
Immersion Education Merrill Swain has contributed significantly to immersion pedagogy through her extensive observation and research of French immersion classrooms and other second language learning contexts. In the 1970s, immersion education in Canada centrally focused on comprehensible input, achieved by teaching school subjects in French. In the 1970s, Swain pushed for change in the way immersion language teaching was conducted. Swain pointed out in a 1974 paper co-authored by Henry Barik about their observations in French immersion classrooms in two schools in Elgin county that, even after many years in the immersion program, “some of the errors do not disappear”. Therefore, Swain pushed for a “combination of emphasis on grammatical accuracy and … meaningful communication from the very start”. Swain hypothesized that when exposed to content instruction in the target language, learners can deduce the meaning of language through contextual knowledge without needing to understand grammatical structures, and that it is more difficult to use this kind of shortcut when producing output. Swain suggested that students should be given more opportunities to produce output in the target language, as it would cause students to better notice structural aspects of the language. These ideas formed the basis of Swain’s Output Hypothesis. Merrill Swain’s research also showed that teachers’ typical language use was limited in the variety of grammatical forms used, which meant that students had a low amount of exposure to those forms not used by teachers. This lopsided input was a factor in students’ continued inaccuracies in some forms. To remedy this, Swain suggested that teachers should design activities that “naturally elicit particular uses of language”.
Awards 2003: Recipient of the Robert Roy award, given by the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers for her contributions to the field of second language education. 2004: Recipient of the Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award, given by the American Association for Applied Linguistics for her contributions to the field of applied linguistics.
Writing Merrill Swain is the co-author or co-editor of 12 books or special issues, 95 book chapters, and 135 papers in refereed journals. Listed here is a small sample of her numerous works.
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