Stephen Krashen and Language Acquisition

Anyone who's going to spend the time and effort to learn a language should understand how the process works and there is no better explainer than Stephen krashen. Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here today. Today, I'm going to talk about Stephen Krashen and the theory of language acquisition.

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So, uh, I mentioned Steven Krashen in one of my previous videos, and I said that he has put out a book, a thin book, uh, which really, he says all there is that we need to know about language acquisition and someone asked, what is the book? Well, actually there are quite a few books and I would recommend that people Google for Stephen Krashen go to his website and you'll find all kinds of free material. And I think it's important for people who are interested to learn a language, interested in language learning, that they understand how the process works and the best explainer of how we learn languages in my opinion, by far, is Stephen Krashen.

And, uh, so I was gonna, I thought I would do one or several videos where I walk through some of his explanations about language learning. So this is a book that I got in Taipei when I was there I don't know, 15 years ago. And he was presenting there and I didn't know him, but I listened to him and it was kind of like a Eureka moment.

And I bought this book. So let's just start here and it's not like I'm reading from the Bible, but almost. So the principles of language acquisition.

First of all the following five hypotheses, you know, explanations of how we learn are the core of current theory on language acquisition. First of all, the acquisition learning hypothesis claims that we have two independent ways of developing language ability. One is language acquisition as a subconscious process and the second one is a deliberate effort, the way we learn in school.

And his point is that we learn primarily naturally in a, as a subconscious process and that the rules and the grammar that we learn at school don't help us very much. The second hypothesis is the natural order hypothesis, which states that there is a natural or. der with which we're going to acquire the elements of a language.

And there's a natural order, uh, for acquiring certain elements of grammar. And it doesn't necessarily relate to how simple or complex those particular grammar issues are. And he uses the example of the sort of progressive form in English.

The ". . .

ing" I'm going, learning, doing versus the third person singular, which takes an "s" as we know. Takes an "s" takes an "s". So even though the idea that the third person singular in the present tense takes an "s" is a very simple concept, it takes a long time for most language learners, people learning English to acquire.

Whereas the ". . .

ing" form, that continuous or the progressive form, is acquired very early. And studies have shown that a number of issues in grammar in different languages seem to be acquired in the same order and it doesn't really matter how much effort is put into teaching these. It's not because something is taught that we acquire it because there is a natural order.

And so the natural order is not based on simplicity or complexity, it's immune to deliberate teaching. And so the, and the correlary in a way is that, you know, the natural order is not the teaching order. So you may still teach different things, but it's going to be acquired according to this natural order.

The third element of his language acquisition theory is the monitor hypothesis and the conscious sort of teaching of the language creates in us a monitor. Here are the correct rules. Here is how the language is spoken, but he makes the point that the monitor, our knowledge of grammar can make only a very small contribution to language acquisition, because there are so many rules of grammar.

And so few people who know all the rules. The idea that the learner will know the rule when he or she needs to use it, will remember the rule. If the learner spends their time and effort on thinking about the rule and I"'m about to say this now, let's think about the rule.

Is this correct? " They won't be able to speak because it's just simply too difficult to do while speaking. So the monitor, if anything, can actually inhibit speaking.

So the monitor, uh, as a means of, you know, improving our knowledge of a language is not very effective. Okay. The next thing is the input or comprehension hypothesis.

We, we learn languages when we understand the message, when we're interested in a message and we understand the message comprehensible input is the only thing that works says Krashen in language acquisition. We have tried grammar rules. We have tried repetition drills and the input hypothesis, uh, claims, however, that comprehending messages is the only way language is acquired.

There is no individual variation in the fundamental process of language acquisition. And then he goes on to explain that we acquire language to input when we already have enough things that we have already acquired. So that I plus one, we, we acquired that next thing that we could learn.

We can learn once we have acquired sort of the previous things. And so we learned from context. And therefore the teaching method has to be focused on giving learners comprehensible input.

Now a corollary of the, uh, input hypothesis is that talking is not practicing. In other words, you can't output your way to language acquisition. It is the input that's going to give you the language acquisition.

If you get enough input, then you will have that situation, sort of N+1, because we'll be getting so much input that there will be elements there that you are already familiar with that will enable you then to learn some additional elements with enough input. Now, immediately, people are going to say, well, when you first start, you don't understand anything. And so Krashen in this book explains how in a classroom, this sort of total physical response TPR.

It's a method in the classroom where the teacher can simplify the language content, can use gestures, can use pictures, can use a whole range of things to help the learner start to get a toehold in the language, create that N or he refers to it as I, so that incrementally additional things can then be added to what is understood. I happen to believe, with a system like LingQ, and people are going to criticize me, but the idea that we can create that same sheltered environment, even for people who are not in a classroom, uh, using say the mini stories where there's a lot of repetition of vocabulary, you can look words up, you can listen again, you can read again. Somewhere, you have to get a start in the language.

You have to get a start. Initially, nothing is comprehensible. You have to start to acquire little bits and pieces so that you can then build on that with additional things that start to become comprehensible.

And so the complexity of what you're listening to, it gets greater and greater as you're able to expand into new domains. I think I'll stop it there. He has a lot of research to back up what he said.

But I, I just think it's it's well worthwhile anyone who's going to spend the time and effort to learn a language should understand how the process works. And there is no better explainer than Stephen Krashen. So whether it be this particular book or whether you simply go to his website and download all of the free material that's there, I'll leave a link in the description box, I very much suggest you do it.

And, uh, I think armed with this sense of how we learn, like, even if we think we're not progressing, it's obvious from what Krashen writes based on all of his research and experience, as long as we continue to expose ourselves to the language, we will continue to gradually improve. Okay. I thought I'd just bring you up to date on, on where you can get some more information about Stephen Krashen, because there were questions about that.

Thank you.