Started: November 11, 2017
Finished: December 8, 2017
Why I Read This Book / My History with Krashen
This is the second book I've read by Krashen.
The first book was The Natural Approach which I reviewed on this blog back in March 2015.
As I said in that review, I read The Natural Approach for 2 reasons:
1) I was over-due to read some Krashen anyways. (He's one of the biggest names in the field of Second Language Acquisition).
2) It was recommended reading for the Distance Delta course that I had been doing.
Now, 2 years later, I've got a book club going at work in which we try to read one book for professional development every month. For utilitarian reasons, we try to sync our reading choices with the recommended reading list for the DELTA. The list we are using is here.
There are a few different reading lists out there for the DELTA, and it's funny how different lists will recommend different books. The Distance Delta had recommended The Natural Approach as the quintessential Krashen book, whereas this list here recommends Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition.
("So what's the difference?" you may ask. Well, I'll get to that more thoroughly in my review down below, but the short answer is: "Not much." Both books contain pretty much the same theories.)
Anyways, regardless of which book is on which list, I thought it would be fun to read some Krashen for our book club. Love him or hate him, he's responsible for stirring much of the debate in the field for the past 35 years. I figured we were bound to get some good discussion out of him.
The Review
So... this is largely the same set of theories that I already reviewed 2 years ago in The Natural Approach. (This book was published in 1982, and The Natural Approach was published in 1983.)
Since I already wrote at length about all my thoughts on Krashen's theories in my review of The Natural Approach, I'm not going to repeat myself here.
Consequently this will be a short review.
I'll just make a few really quick comments, and then jump straight into my bookclub notes:
* I don't have a copy of The Natural Approach in front of me, so I'm basing this comparsion off of memory. But as far as I can remember, the theories presented in this book are exactly the same theories as presented in The Natural Approach.
The difference, however, is that in The Natural Approach Krashen and Tracy Terrell spend more time talking about how these theories would look in practice in the classroom. practical classroom activities. Whereas in Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition, Krashen spends a lot more time justifying his theories with studies and statistics.
* Related to the above point: simply from a readability standpoint, I really liked the beginning of this book, and I really liked the end of this book, but I thought the middle of this book was a bit of a slog as it got a bit bogged down in recounting experimental data and statistics.
* Related to the above point: my understanding is that the method-comparison studies of the 1970s pretty much failed because there were too many variables. (I think I picked this up from one of my professors at school).
Krashen, however, in the 2nd half of the book spends a lot of time talking about the statistical results of comparing methods.
To be fair to Krashen, he does acknowledge all the variables. But he claims that while the results of any one study might be suspect, the patterns that emerge from multiple studies are reliable.
I suspect some people might debate this.
* In "How Languages are Learned" by Patsy Lightbown and Nina Spada, the authors talk about how Krashen's critics cite the French immersion school programs. (The students picked up a lot, but they did not get 100% accurate grammar).
Interestingly, in this book (way back in 1982) Krashen is already aware of the problem. He writes that he knows that French immersion school students still have grammar problems, and he says that it is because the students are only getting input from the teacher, and the teacher's input only contains certain forms. (For example, the students are not picking up on conversational discourse, because they're not getting input from their peers.)
* In my review of The Natural Approach (and many of my subsequent blog posts referring back to it), I'm sometimes guilty of forgetting co-author Tracy Terrell. Krashen is the more famous name, so it's much easier just to refer to the whole thing as "Krashen's book".
Interesting, then, that in this book Krashen talks about The Natural Approach like it's an independent approach created by Terrell.
It appears that Terrell created The Natural Approach on his own, but without all of Krashen's theories about the Monitor and the Affective Filter, et cetera. Krashen was a big fan of Terrell's The Natural Approach, and then appears to have inserted his theories into the approach in their collaborative book. (At one point in Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition, Krashen makes the comment that Terrell's The Natural Approach originally did not have the monitor hypothesis in it, but it has since been integrated into the approach.)
* My own opinions:
I've expressed myself at length elsewhere on this blog, so I'll keep this pretty brief.
I differ with Krashen in that I believe some grammar can be acquired through instruction, and that some instruction is necessary to smooth out the rough edges.
But, I believe that for anyone who wants to achieve actual proficiency in a foreign language, getting lots and lots comprehensible input is at least 90% of the road to fluency. And so I consider myself largely in sympathy with his ideas.
I've expressed my opinions in the workshops: "Comprehensible Input in Young Learner Classes" and "Upgrading Your Input". I've also over the last 2 years created several resources and classroom activities that aim to provide learners with lots of input.
Book Club Notes
After the first book in the book club, a couple people expressed to me their frustration about not getting more support on reading the book. They wanted some kind of online discussion to keep them motivated as they read through the book. Ever since then, for every subsequent book we've done, I've tried to make a rule to post on our Book Club Facebook page at least once a day. Below are all my posts on this book.
The first post was not actually by me, but by XXXX, who got a head start on the book. (I'm replacing everyone's names with XXXX for privacy reasons.)
XXXX Posted
I know most readers probably aren't there yet, but...
Krashen wastes a lot of paper talking about Suggestopedia, and seems to think pretty well of it, at least in terms of it meeting his optimal conditions for input and grammar and the like.
Frankly, I thought the general consensus was that suggestopedia was pseudoscience BS. Not only did it look utterly foolish in videos, but I recall it being 99.9% TTT with a bit of choral drilling here and there. I guess considering how low Krashen values conversation (other than as a source of input) it isn't that surprising that he'd be in support of this.
But what do you all think? Was I too quick to judge suggestopedia for appearing like stupid hippy nonsense? Does anyone think well of it?
I Commented:
TEFLology did an episode on Suggestopedia:
https://teflology-podcast.com/2015/05/27/episode-25-language-evolution-suggestopedia-and-lionel-billows/They said that one of the reasons it was so popular was that it did actually work. It did actually produce results. The question is, however, does it work as good or better than other techniques.
Thanks for the link, Joel. Fair enough. With the amount of hours they put in it ought to produce results.I Commented:
From a teaching perspective, it seems pretty piss-easy doesn't it?
Step 1: have a comfy room with comfy music
Step 2: talk a lot
Step 3: profit
I mean, hell. Why don't we just open our own Suggestopedia school and rake in that easy money?
Another thought: I suspect the reason Suggestopedia gets so much space in this book also has to do with the publication date. 1982. Suggestopedia was in its hey-day back then, so you pretty much had to pay some sort of attention to it. I suspect that the further we get away from the 1970s, the less is written about Suggestopedia.XXXX Commented:
Yeah, there was a lot of "research" in the book being referenced from the 70s. Had me doubting various parts of it. We ought to have a far better understanding of things by now.I Commented:
For example, a lot of research basically saying that teaching things is useless because students won't remember the rule. There's a lot of shit I don't remember. I don't remember how the photosynthetic pathways in plants work, but I know that there is a path and it gives me a generally better understanding of how life functions. That I forgot the specifics hardly means I never ought to have been taught it to begin with. But I digress. I should save this for the future meeting.
The book is a classic. It pretty much set the tone of the debate for the next 30 years. But, yeah, the research will probably be out of date. That Lightbown and Spada book we read back in February gave a pretty good summary of which of Krashen's claims have and have not held up to experimentationPost 1
XXXX has obviously got a head start on this book, but for everyone else, I'll be going to the print shop on Saturday.
A word or two of introduction.
Krashen is someone who we've encountered second-hand many times before in this bookclub.
"How Languages are Learned" which we read back in February, spent a lot of time discussing Krashen and his theories.
Krashen has somewhat gone in and out of fashion over the years (the way all these theories do), but he was a really big deal in the 1980s.
According to this TEFLology episode, at the height of his fame in the 1980s Stephen Krashen has the unique distinction of being the only applied linguist who ever needed his own agent.
https://teflology-podcast.com/2014/11/12/episode-11-stephen-krashen-authenticity-and-language-teaching-in-uk-schools/
To over-simplify somewhat, Krashen's primary claim to fame is his hypothesis that languages are acquired by comprehensible input, and not by studying grammar rules.
(I'm over-simplifying, but we'll get more into the nuts and bolts of his theories as we read the book).
It's a proposition that has sharply divided language teachers ever since. But whether you agree or disagree with Krashen, he has been responsible for setting the terms of the debate which followed for the next 30 years. (And is still going on now). So I think it's useful to read him just to know what the debate is, even if you disagree with him.
It's also useful to read Krashen first-hand, because sometimes he gets distorted by his critics. So it's interesting to go back to his original books,and see what he is actually saying.
I've not read this book yet, but I did read one of Krashen's other books "The Natural Approach". And I remember being surprised to find out that Krashen was actually a lot more reasonable and balanced than his critics had led me to believe.
For example, I found out that Krashen was actually not against any teaching of grammar. Krashen just believed that grammar rules only helped the learner monitor their language, and not truly acquired it. But he still believed it was useful to learn grammar rules.
Anyway, we should be able to get some good discussion out of this book, hopefully.
XXXX Commented:
Seems a pretty level-headed guy overall, indeed. I've more or less blasted through this book (to make time for other obligations). Looking forward to the discussions brought about by it.Post 2
Related: if anyone wants to keep up to date with what Krashen is doing nowadays, he has a blog.
http://skrashen.blogspot.com/
He posts a lot of diverse stuff on his blog. Over the past couple years, he's been very interested in the state of bilingual education in California, and has been posting a lot of stuff on that.
He posts a lot on the benefits of reading for pleasure--both for Second Language Acquisition, but also for increasing literacy in your own language.
He also delves into politics, and posts a lot of anti-Trump stuff.
Of note recently:
His post recently on the disadvantages of computers in the classroom got me thinking about the disadvantages of edu-tech:
https://skrashen.blogspot.com/2017/11/computers-in-classroom.html
I also thought this post was interesting
https://skrashen.blogspot.com/2017/10/given-rich-interesting-input-i1-is.html
I think this is part of a move he's been making in recent years that is away from "comprehensible input' to "compelling input". That is, if the learners are engaged with the input, you don't have to worry about how comprehensible it is. The fact that they are engaged with it will guarantee that "i+1" will be somewhere in the input.
In my own classes, I've used this principle to justify doing stories and movies that are arguably above my students' current level. But as long as they are enjoying the movie/story, I figure they will get "i+1" out of it. (For children especially, it's very easy to tell whether or not they are engaged with a story. My usual rule of thumb is that when they get upset when you stop the story, and say you'll do more tomorrow, that's a good sign that they are still engaged with it. If they ever get to a point where they don't mind stopping in the middle of the story, that's a sign that they are not engaged with it).
Oh, also Krashen is active on Twitter. But a lot of stuff he posts is more political than linguistic. (Krashen doesn't like Trump).
https://twitter.com/skrashen
Post 3
For anyone who's concerned about these things, you can sleep with a clean conscience for the next month. For once, the book we are using has not been illegally copied on to the school drive. The version on the ILA drive appears to be the exact same copy that Krashen himself has made freely available on his website:
http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/principles_and_practice.pdf
It is interesting that in the Introduction to the Internet edition (the 2nd page) Krahsen says he really hasn't changed his mind about any of this. The only thing he's changed his position on is how fully to share the methodology with learners.
Interesting... I could have sworn I've read in several places that Krashen has adjusted his theories over the years. But maybe I'm wrong about this. Maybe Krashen is still advocating the same things he was advocating in 1982.
Post 4
p.5 Krashen claims that the audio-lingual method came from "the direct application of the principles of behaviorist psychology in the classroom"
This is indeed the traditional narrative--Audiolingualism came out of Skinner. (If memory serves, Lightbown and Spada also said the same thing in the previous bookclub book "How Languages are Learned")
Recently some people have questioned the timeline, and argued that audiolingualism does not come from Skinner. See Russ Mayne's blog post:
https://malingual.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-myth-of-neat-histories.html
(Also discussed on a TEFLology podcast episode)
https://teflology-podcast.com/2017/01/18/episode-53-wilga-m-rivers-female-dialogue-in-films-and-teaching-organizations/
Post 5
p.5-6: Krashen talks about the influence of Transformational Grammar in language teaching.
What is Transformational Grammar? I believeTransformational Grammar is Chomsky's theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformational_grammar
It's interesting that Krashen is arguing against the use of Chomsky's theories in the classroom, because Krashen himself is often characterized as being influenced by Chomsky. (This is what other writers say about Krashen. I'm not sure Krashen himself has ever made the link).
Does anyone remember the previous book club book we read: How Languages are Learned by Lightbown and Spada. In that book, Lightbown and Spada said on page 36:
"One model of second language acquisition that was influenced by Chomsky's theory of first language acquisition was Stephen Krashen's Monitor Model"
But in his own words on page 5-6 Krashen seems to be rejecting a link between his methods and Chomsky.
But this raises the question: on page 5-6, Krashen is obviously complaining about some language teaching materials that were based on the Transformational Grammar theory. But does anyone know what kind of materials were created based off of TG?
Post 6
p.4-6
More thoughts on page 4-6.
I got a bit of a chuckle about Krashen's two diagrams--about how ideally theory and research should interact with teaching practice, and how it does in reality.
In Fig 1.2, when Krashen claims that the only thing that informs teaching practice is "ideas and intuition", I thought it was funny because it was true.
However, at the bottom of page 5, I was slightly confused when Krashen transitioned from this to talk about two examples of how theory had directly impacted teaching (audiolingualism, and Transformative Grammar). Didn't this contradict the point he was making the paragraph earlier, about how theory has no influence on teaching?
But as I kept reading onto page 6, I think the point Krashen was making was that it was because of the failure of audiolingualism and Transformative Grammar that teachers no longer trust research, and rely exclusively on their own ideas and intuitions.
A couple more points:
In addition to their own ideas and intuitions, I think teachers also rely on their own experience. We remember what has worked well in the classroom, and what hasn't. When the students react positively to an actively, we tend to repeat that activity. (Perhaps like Pavlov's dogs, we are almost unconsciously conditioned to repeat what got us a positive reaction.) Assuming that what students react positively to, and what students benefit the most from, are one and the same, I guess this isn't a problem. But if we ever discovered that what benefits the students most isn't the activities they react positively to, then it would be a problem.
One last point:
on page 5, in defense of the teachers, Krashen writes:
"There is good reason for this lack of interaction, especially the failure of researchers and teachers to interact. The reasons for this lack of communication do not stem from any anti-intellectualism on the part of teachers. They stem, rather, from the failure of research to supply relevant input in the past, combined with the insistence on the part of theoreticians that their insights were the only legitimate determinant of teacher behavior and materials construction." *End Quote*
True, perhaps, but another major reason for this lack of communication is that most teachers don't have access to the research. Because all of the research is published in journals that no normal person has access to unless they pay humongous subscription fees that no teacher could afford.
The TEFLology Podcast did an episode in which they talked about that problem.
https://teflology-podcast.com/2015/11/25/episode-35-dogme-on-the-diploma-dave-willis-and-the-lingua-walkout/
I commented (on my own post):
Actually, sorry, one more comment on this.Post 7
Some of Krashen's critics, who believe that his claims have not held up to research, have tried to explain away his popularity with teachers by saying that Krashen gained such popularity because his ideas intuitively appealed to teachers. (If memory serves, Rod Ellis made this claim in "SLA Research and Language Teaching".) Ironic, then, that Krashen starts off his book by saying that the problem is that language teaching is only informed by ideas and intuition
p.7 the comparative research studies
Flipping ahead in the book, it looks like Krashen is going to address the problems will comparative research studies later on in the book. So maybe I should hold off on my comments until I get to that part. But already in the opening chapters, he mentions a couple times the comparative research studies, and what the best method is.
My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that in the 1970s there was an effort to find out once and for all what the best teaching method was by doing controlled experiments. But that these controlled experiments largely fell apart because there were way too many variables to account for (The teacher, the students, the L1, the L2, the age, the learning situation, individual variables, etc.)
Also... another book that is on the Delta Module 1 reading list is The Language Teaching Matrix by Jack Richards:
https://www.amazon.com/Language-Teaching-Matrix-Cambridge-Library/dp/0521387949
In that book, Jack Richards adds this little tidbit about why the comparative studies fell apart:
“Observers of teachers using specific methods have reported that teachers seldom conform to the methods they are supposed to be following….Swaffer et al. found that many of the distinctions used to contrast methods, particularly those based on classroom activities, did not exist in actual practice….Methods hence make assumptions about the nature of teaching that are not based on the study of the process of teaching.” (Richards p.36-37).
In other words, it appears that all the different methods that practitioners have come up with only exist on paper--at least in their pure form. Teachers never actually follow any of these methods perfectly, which makes it impossible to get data to compare them.
Post 8
Hypothesis 1. The Acquisition-Learning Distinction (p.10-11)
There's a lot of assertions being made in these 2 pages. Much of which we've discussed before in previous book club books (acquistion vs. learning, age of acquisition, error correction, 1st language acquisition). What do you guys think? Do we learn a language best by studying the rules, or by just picking it up? Does age matter? Should parents correct their children's grammar mistakes?
Post 9
p.12-13 The Natural Order Hypothesis
So, this is another thing that's popped up in book club before. I think "How Languages are Learned" and "Second Language Acquisition". I'm not sure I have anything new to say about it that we haven't discussed in the past.
I think some of the other books we've read have attributed the natural order hypothesis to Krashen himself, although it doesn't read like he's taking credit for. It sounds like he's just reporting what other researchers have discovered.
Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics (which is also on the recommended Delta reading list) deals with the "Natural Order Hypothesis" under the heading of "Accuracy Order" and states:
"also known as difficulty order. Some linguistic items, forms, and rule seem to be consistently produced with higher accuracy than others by language learners, permitting such items to be ordered with respect to their relative difficulty. Accuracy Orders based on CROSS-SECTIONAL RESEARCH are sometimes taken as evidence for an order of acquisition, although such claims need to be reinforced through LONGITUDINAL RESEARCH"
What is your reading of this? That the longitudinal research should always be done? Or that the longitudinal research hasn't yet been done, and needs to be done?
By the way, speaking of the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics, for anyone studying DELTA Module 1 exam, I've put several of the definitions on quizlet.
https://quizlet.com/166263536/info
Post 10
p.17
Krashen writes "when we give our adult subjects tests that meet the three conditions, i.e. a pencil and paper 'grammar'-type test, we see 'unnatural' orders, orders unlike the child L2 order of acquisition or difficulty order. The interpretation of this result is that the natural order reflects the operation of the acquired system alone, without the intrusion of the conscious grammar, since adult second language acquisition is posited to be similar to child (second) language acquisition. When we put people in situations where the three conditions are met, when they have time, are focused on form, and know the rule, the error pattern changes, reflecting the contribution of the conscious grammar." *Endquote*
This is a good reminder that the Order of Acquisition only applies to free production. Students can still use in controlled practice forms that they are not yet ready to use in free production.
Rod Ellis, in his book "SLA Research and Language Teaching" suggests that this may be a solution for teachers who are forced by the curriculum to cover grammar points beyond their students current level of acquisition--the grammar points can still be taught for comprehension, and you can still do controlled practice exercises--even if the students are not yet ready to acquire the grammar for free production
Post 11
p.17
On page 17, Krashen writes: "...only certain items can be supplied by most Monitor users; the Monitor does a better job with some parts of grammar than with others. Specifically, it seems to do better with rules that can be characterized as 'simple' in two different ways. First, rules that do not require elaborate movements or permutations; rules that are syntactically simple. Easy rules in this sense include bound morphology, such as the third person singular in English, or the de+le=du contraction in French. Difficult rules in this sense include the English wh- question rule, which requires moving the questioned word to the front of the sentence, a subject-auxiliary inversion, and in some cases the insertion of do in the right place..."
So, I've got a teaching anecdote that seems to support this. In my previous school in Cambodia, I was responsible for teaching reported speech questions to a class of teenagers. On the test they were supplied with a question (e.g. Mary said, "What is your name?") and they had to change it to reported speech (Mary asked what my name was). And it was a disaster. There were 4 questions, and every student missed all 4 questions.
I thought this was my fault as a teacher, so the next term I had the same level, and I drilled and drilled and drilled the form. And it still made no difference on the test. All the students still missed all the questions.
I just came to the conclusion that they weren't ready to acquire the form.
Which seems to support what Krashen is saying above how even the Monitor can't handle complex grammar that's not yet ready to be acquired.
(...although...I don't know, what's your reading of the above quotation? Is Krashen talking about the Monitor use during speaking, or would this still apply to controlled practice situations like a written test exercise?)
Post 12
p.18
Krashen writes:
"As we shall see in Chapter IV, it is not easy to encourage noticeable Monitor use. Experimentation has shown that anything less than a real grammar test will not bring out the conscious grammar in any force. Keyfetz (1978) found natural orders for both oral and written versions of the SLOPE test, showing that simply using the writing modality is not enough to cause an unnatural order. Houck, Roberston and Krashen (1978a) had adult subjects (university level international students) correct their own written output, and still found a natural order for the corrected version. Krashen, Butler, Birnbaum, and Robertson (1978) found that even when ESL students write compositions with plenty of time and under instructions to be very "careful", the effect of Monitor use was surprisingly light. The best hypothesis now is that for most people, even university students, it takes a real discrete-point grammar-type test to meet all three conditions for Monitor use and encourage significant use of the conscious grammar." *ENDQUOTE*
Well, anecdotally, this is certainly true, right? I always get so frustrated when my students make lots of grammar mistakes in their writing with grammar points that they "know" .
But it's still curious, isn't it. If the student has lots of time to think, and is instructed to be careful, why wouldn't the monitor be used in written essays?
Post 13
p.21
Krashen writes: "A third part of the input hypothesis says that input must contain i+1 to be useful for language acquisition, but it need not contain only i+1. It says that if the acquirer understands the input, and there is enough of it, i+1 will automatically be provided. In other words, if communication is successful, i+1 is provided. As we will discuss later, this implies that the best input should not attempt to deliberately aim at i+1" *EndQuote*
This is remarkably similar to what Krashen wrote on his blog just a few weeks ago, indicating he hasn't changed his opinion on this.
https://skrashen.blogspot.com/2017/10/given-rich-interesting-input-i1-is.html
In a post I made last week, I said this represents a change in Krashen's thinking from comprehensible input to compelling input. But after reading page 21, I'm going to have to take it all back. Clearly there has been no change.
XXXX Commented:
It's always nice to find experts who validate one's own assumptions. I remember looking through the shelves of graded readers at ILA and picking out a Wodehouse book. I couldn't read more than a page it was so utterly dull and robotic. Tried a Sherlock book. Same story. I couldn't imagine a person actually suffering through an entire novel like that. It wasn't compelling input in the slightest.I Commented:
The irony is that these graded readers come from Krashen's influence. Krashen's influence in the 1980s was responsible for the extensive reading craze, which was responsible for the graded readers publishing.XXXX Commented:
I used to use them in my teen classes back in Cambodia. (Although we don't have them at our school, the publishers have made an accompanying audio CD, so I'd made photocopies and we'd read and listen to one chapter a day.) I had really good luck with the Graded Reader versions of "Dracula", "Frankenstein", and "Phantom of the Opera". I had really bad luck with "Last of the Mohicans" and "White Fang".
It's unfortunate that so much of the ESL reading material uninteresting. (I'm not sure if it's a law of nature that ESL material has to be boring). But if you can get your students into extensive reading programs, the benefits are enormous.
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/extensive-reading-why-it-good-our-students%E2%80%A6-us
while I do find Krashen as engaging to the extent that it verifies what a lot of teacher intuitively understand about their ESL lessons, I do not find his conception to actually have much value, to be honest. Not every 'i' is the same we can't possibly know what the "i" is (even for one student; it serves only as a metaphor, not as an actual measure): therefore, the idea of teaching a class at i + 1 is, by definition, meaningless, and worse, ignores the fact that learners brings a rich constellation of experiences, goals, knowledge, etc. into the classroom.I Commented:
Furthermore, the +1 metaphor begs the questions about what the "1" really is....as research into SLA gathers more data, more academics have begun to insist that the "1" is just too variable to have any real meaning.
So, I guess Krashen is feel-good in the sense that it reinforces what we already assume about learning, but I have a hard time actually seeing it as useful or practical.
I do like Krashen's ideas about "compelling" input, which I think takes into account (although still without practical explanation) the perspective of single students as having their own interests that they bring to L2 learning.
Love the posts by the way!
Thanks for the comment XXXX.Post 14
1) A previous book we read "How Languages are Learned" by Lightbown and Spada, pointed out exactly what you said--that Krashen's critics pointed out that because his terms are so vague, it is not a scientific theory. We can never define what "i" or "i+1" actually is with any sort of precision, therefore the theory cannot be tested.
2) That being said, I think Krashen is sometimes misrepresented by his critics. He clearly said in his book that there's no need to try to target the input at exactly "i+1". Rather, if you just give the learner lots of input, "i+1" will be present in the input somewhere. So I think it works as a pedagogical theory even if it doesn't work as a scientific theory.
3). Studies from immersion programs show that input is not enough for the students to gain full grammatical competence. So in that respect Krashen's theories have not held up to the evidence.
4) But that's the glass half empty part of the evidence. The glass half full part of the evidence is that students can make enormous gains in lexis and communicative competence from input alone. Also the research from extensive reading programs have shown that students who spend a lot of time just reading books that they like in English make tremendous gains. See for example here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0346251X96000632Although these guys don't cite their sources, they do mention a study in which it was shown that less than 6 hours a week of input provided no gains.
https://theteflshow.com/2015/12/21/krashens-theories-of-language-aqusition-do-they-still-have-value-in-the-elt-classroom/Is it even worth bothering with lots of input in situations where you see the students for less than 6 hours a week?
My own preference is to take Krashen as a good starting point, but not an ending point. That is, students need to be pumped full of lots of input, but they will also need some help refining their grammar. I believe that's more or less the consensus nowadays (to the extent that there is ever a consensus in this field).
5) But then what to do about an EFL environment, where you only see the students for 4 hours a week, and you have to make tough choices about what to do in those 4 hours. Do you focus on grammar, or on input?
Footnote 5 to page 24.
Some of the most interesting stuff is buried in the footnotes. For example footnote 5 to page 24:
"Interlanguage talk, the speech of second language acquirers to each other, may or may not be useful for acquisition. This is an important question that, to my knowledge, has not been directly dealt with in the professional literature. Arguments in favor of its utility for language acquisition are these: it satisfies the input hypothesis in that it is meant for communication and might contain input at some acquirers' i+1. On the other hand, there is the question of whether the ungrammaticality of much interlanguage talk outweighs these factors"
Although Krashen ducks the question, Rod Ellis takes it up in his book SLA Research and Language Teaching
Ellis cites the plus side and the minus side interlanguage (i.e. students getting most of their input from other students.)
On the plus side, on page 243, Ellis cites a study that says: “linguistic forms that learners of L2 French negotiated in small group-work were subsequently used independently by individual learners. One of Donato’s main points is that whereas no individual learner initially possessed knowledge of the forms in question they were able to establish them collectively. another is that learners can successfully acquire new knowledge through the scaffolding provided by other learners (i.e. they did not have to rely on expert others.)
But on the negative side,
On page 52, when talking about why French immersion students in Canada never develop beyond “a very defective and probably terminal classroom pidgin”, Ellis writes: “The reasons advanced for the failure of immersion in Hammerley’s eyes are the fact that immersion learners spend a large amount of time interacting with other interlanguage speakers, the impossibility of creating a ‘natural sociolinguistic language acquisition setting’ in the classroom, the tendency of learners to transfer structures from their L1, and the lack of motivation to advance to higher levels of proficiency once learners become functional.” (From Ellis p. 52)
And on page 51:
A further problem of communicative classrooms is that much of the talk which learners hear come from other learners. This interlanguage talk may encourage fossilization, a point which Prahbu (1987) has argued forcefully. In short, although much can be done to make a classroom communicative, the resulting environment may not be conducive to successful grammar acquisition, because the input learners receive is impoverished, because they resort to their L1, and because opportunities for certain kinds of output are limited. (From Ellis p.51)
What do you guys think? Is this a potential problem for PBL lessons, or other lessons that rely heavily on groupwork and student-centering?
Post 15
p.26
Krashen writes: "It has been noted that children acquiring a second language in a natural, informal linguistic environment may say very little for several months following their first exposure to the second language."
p.27
"We should note that case histories dealing with children acquiring second languages... agree that several months may elapse until they start talking..."
Interesting. I feel like this is often not fully appreciated by some of the Vietnamese parents of young children, who often complain when their child is not speaking English after only a few months of classes.
Post 16
p.30
So, besides the book we're currently reading, the other book Krashen is most famous for is "The Natural Approach"
https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Approach-Language-Acquisition-Classroom/dp/0136099343
"The Natural Approach" was actually co-authored by Tracy D. Terrell. But whenever anyone is citing this book, they always forget Terell and only mention Krashen's name. (In some of my past posts, I'm guilty of this as well).
Interesting, then, that according to page 30, Krashen is citing Terrell as the originator of the Natural Approach.
Terell, unfortunately, had a very short career, since he retired in 1989 because of his illness, and died of AIDS in 1991. Krashen is still alive and actively touring and lecturing. That may be another reason why Krashen is remembered better than Terell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy_D._Terrell
Post 17
p.30-32: The Affective Filter Hypothesis
We've talked before how Krashen has been criticized for being unscientific, and I think "The Affective Filter Hypothesis" is probably a prime example. There's no evidence for it, and there's no way it could ever be tested.
It also, as an hypothesis, is overly convenient for Krashen. It can perfectly explain away any instance in which language isn't acquired despite plenty of exposure.
All that being said, I suppose it doesn't mean Krashen is necessarily wrong on this. What do you guys think?
I hate to say this, but many of us are probably prime examples of this. We get plenty of exposure to Vietnamese every day, and yet many of us (myself included) fail to really learn it.
...Also, interesting little anecdote in footnote 14 (note to page 32, but actual footnote on page 54). What did you guys think of that?
In my own classes, I've gotten into the habit of over-correcting the adult students. Simply just because Vietnamese students like being corrected, so it's a simple enough way to keep them happy and avoid complaints. But that story in footnote 14 made me re-think things again.
XXXX Commented:
I most definitely think this theory is one of his most valid theories to date. Every learner is different, but one cannot learn a language effectively under pressure, stress, or anxiety. This is why rapport is SO important in language classes. Vietnamese students who WANT the correction are not uncomfortable with it, so they thrive. However, from my own experiences, and listening to my students from other areas of the world, self-confidence and stress have a large ability to hinder language acquisition. Over-correcting from my own Spanish teacher made me feel awful. I shut down and eventually her rapport with me broke down. I couldn't learn as well. A semester later, I had a French teacher who just let me talk and talk and talk. I flourished. However, she often corrected my best friend over and over again because she liked learning that way. It is all about the learner! A student's filter may be high or low at any point, but teacher's need to be aware of it in order to help the student better. This is my thought, anyways.
More importantly, I walked away without fossilized errors. Even from a lack of correction. She only corrected me if it was truly impacting my ability to communicate, or if we were focusing on a certain language point.
The affective filter is more than error correction, though. If my student walks into class and is stressed about a family affair or upcoming exam s/he isn't in a place where they can effectively learn. Sure, they take away bits and pieces, but will it stick? As a teacher, it's our job to try and understand how to make a classroom environment open and safe, so that whatever stresses a student is encountering do not impact their learning as much.
This is also the thing with theories, right? It's a theory. We take these theories and adapt them to our own teaching. We ask ourselves, "How can I take this theory, or parts of it, and apply it to my own learning as an educator?" So, when I read about the Affective Filter, I think, "okay...what part of this can I take with me into my classroom?" What I learned from it was that the affective filter applies to more than language. If a student in any content area feels uncomfortable, distressed, or unsure, their filter is UP! What can educators do to ensure the best learning takes place? For me, it begins with rapport, letting the student know they are in a safe place to make mistakes, and making sure their identity is reflected in the language learning process (i.e. incorporating ways to throw in the native language to support SLA, creating lessons the promote intrinsic motivation, etc...)
There actually was a test for it.
I will try to find it!
This isn't it, but it is an interesting dissertation in regards to input hypothesis
https://is.muni.cz/th/14768/ff_m/text.pdfAnd this is just another study I was able to dig up about the Affective Filter
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED503681.pdfHave you guys read Krashen's book? It's free online. All of his books are free actually.
http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/principles_and_practice.pdf(Page 30 talks about Affective Filter)
I Commented:
So... Funny you should mention this book in particular: http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2017/11/blog-post.htmlXXXX Commented:
Hahahaha awesome!! You're going to love it
I will admit to being bias, as I have a massive educator crush on Krashen for his research in reading and literacy, which was his main focus before moving onto ESL
I Commented:
I agree. I'm also a big fan of his advocacy of extensive reading.Post 18
p.43-45 Age
What do you guys think about Krashen's discussion of age?
Krashen claims that there is no set biological age of acquisition, but that younger learners simply do better because they have lower affective filters.
In my case, my thinking on this has changed over the past couple years. When I first read Krashen a couple years ago, I felt like this was just him trying to unscientifically make excuses for his theory.
And while the "affective filter" is blatantly unscientific, I've got to admit that anecdotally I've largely come around to this view.
3 years ago I didn't teach young kids. But since coming to our school, I've been teaching a lot of Super Juniors. And I've noticed that their affective filter is indeed totally down. They don't worry about making mistakes. They don't stress out about whether or not they can understand what the teacher is saying. They don't get stressed out about their progress level, or their grammatical accuracy. They're just concerned with communicating.
And as a result, they all make progress. Some of them faster than others, but they all eventually make progress.
I've currently got a J5B class. Some of them I've been teaching since J1A. I was a little bit worried about some of them at one point, because they weren't doing well on their grammar tests. But I didn't fail them because they seemed to be enjoying the class, and I have a soft heart. And now they've managed to catch up to the rest of the class, seemingly just by being in the classroom every week and absorbing the English.
Adult students, however, do not seem to make the same sort of progress. Some of them study for years, but just keep stuck at the pre-intermediate level.
Post 19
Some people are a bit behind on the book reading. Anyone who wants to come to the meeting on Friday, but isn't going to finish the book by then, is welcome to watch some videos instead.
Below are the links to 2 videos and 2 podcasts. You don't need to listen to all 4 of them. Any one of them should be sufficient to get you more or less up to speed.
First youtube videos
Here's a classic video of Krashen from way back in the day (1980-something):
Here's a more recent video of Krashen doing an interview:
Second podasts:
Krashen’s theories of language acquisition- do they still have value in the ELT classroom?
https://teflology-podcast.com/2014/11/12/episode-11-stephen-krashen-authenticity-and-language-teaching-in-uk-schools/
I Commented:
I Commented:
PS--Watching these videos, I'm going to have to revise what I said earlier about Krashen never linking his theories to Chomsky. Clearly, he's referencing Chomsky a lot in this first videoI Commented:
From the second video:
Krashen and Steve Kaufmann talk about the problem of language teaching. The problem, as they put it, is that to acquire a language you need a lot of interesting comprehensible input. But if the input is low-level enough to be comprehensible, then it is unlikely to be interesting. And if it is interesting, it is unlikely to be comprehensible.
In my own classes, however, I've had good experiences using movies and story books.
Of course any authentic Hollywood movie is going to contain lots of grammar and vocabulary that is far too advanced for the student. But as Krashen said: "we need not, and should not, aim at i+1. If we supply a great deal of rich and interesting comprehensible input, i+1 is automatically present. We don't have to "target just the right spot" for optimal acquisition."
https://skrashen.blogspot.com/2017/10/given-rich-interesting-input-i1-is.htmlIf the student can tolerate all the "noise" of language they do not understand (and as Krashen says in the video, different learners have different tolerances for this), they will at least understand something out of the language in the movie or storybook.
In my movie worksheets, I initially used the Star Wars movies. The students were exposed to 10 minutes of the movie at a time, but only had to complete 10 gap-fill sentences with sentences that I thought were at their level.
I continued this approach with the Disney movies, but this time even though they only had to do gap fills on 5-10 sentences, I printed out the whole script for the learners (who knows, some of it might get noticed),
Some of the Story Books I've used with the learners also contain complex language, but the pictures carry the meaning so much that the students usually enjoy the stories anyway, despite not understanding everything.
Movie Worksheets Here Story Book Presentations Here
Post 20
If anyone gets a chance to look over this before the meeting today--this study of "Wes" is often cited by Krashen's critics. It is an interesting counter-point to Krashen's book:
http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/PDFs/SCHMIDT%20Interaction,%20acculturation,%20and%20the%20acquisition%20of%20communicative%20competence.pdf
Slideshow for Book Club Discussion: slides, pub
http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/PDFs/SCHMIDT%20Interaction,%20acculturation,%20and%20the%20acquisition%20of%20communicative%20competence.pdf
Slideshow for Book Club Discussion: slides, pub
Video Review
Video Review HERE and embedded below:
Link of the Day
The Haury Conversation - Noam Chomsky Talks With Toni Massaro
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