Communicative competence: some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development *

The role of input is, without a doubt, of critical importance in understanding the what and why of second language acquisition. To this end, we are seeing an increasing number of studies which focus on fine-grained analyses of the nature of foreigner talk, teacher talk and learner talk, as well as on the variables intervening between input and intake. The data base for the majority of these studies is input to learners of English as a second or foreign language, and input to adults.