Notes

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Stephen Krashen

Table of contents:

Second Language Acquisition

Link

  • Acquisition vs. Learning
    • Acquisition
      • Subconcious
      • “picking up” a language
    • Learning
      • Conscious
      • rules, grammar, error correction
  • Natural Order Hypothesis
    • Language acquisition happens in a predictable order
      • There’s variation between learners, but nothing extreme
    • “Simple” rules don’t always come first, complex ones not always later
    • This cannot be changed
      • Q: Why can’t it be changed? What in our psyche makes it such that we generally learn the progressive (-ing verbs) before the third person singular -s in English?
  • Monitor Hypothesis
    • “Consciously learned language is only available to use as a Monitor, or editor.”
    • Three conditions: (1) we know the rule, (2) we’re focused on form/correctness, and (3) we must have time to think about those rules
  • Comprehension Hypothesis
    • “We acquire language when we understand messages”
    • “To be a little more precise, we acquire language when we understand messages that contain aspects of language (vocabulary, grammar) we have not yet acquired but that we are ‘ready’ to acquire”
    • Origin of the i+1 method of language learning
    • “two amazing facts about language acquisition: … is is effortless. […] [it] is involuntary”
    • Corollaries
      • “Talking is not practicing”
      • “Given enough comprehensible input, i+1 is present”
  • Affective Filter Hypothesis
    • “affective variables do not impact language acquisition directly but prevent input from reaching what Chomsky has called the ’language acquisition device,’ the part of the brain responsible for language acquisition.”
    • In short, acquirers who are anxious, distanced, etc. will learn less; acquirers who are included, happy, “open” will learn more
  • Application
    • “The goal of language classes is to bring students to the point where they can begin to understand at least some ‘authentic’ (real-world) input. When they reach this point, they can continue to improve on their own”
    • Beginners

Further Reading

Total Physical Response, a body movement based language learning technique developed by James Asher