Krashen´s Theories

Krashen´s Theories of Second

Language Learning
The acquisition-learning hypothesis
The natural order hypothesis
The monitor hypothesis
The input hypothesis
The affective filter hypothesis
The acquisition-learning hypothesis
Krashen’s Acquisition-Learning Distinction hypothesis, his first
and perhaps most important hypothesis, claims that adults
pick up languages via two distinct processes:

• Acquisition – A subconscious process by which we are

exposed to language input and then intuitively pick up its
patterns. In turn, we are able both to understand and speak
language without having to reason through every word and
sentence construction. We’re basically on auto-pilot.

• Learning – A conscious process by which we are taught

grammar, rules, and meta-information of the language, and
are expected to understand the language logically.
What’s important to notice here is that these are treated as
two completely distinct processes. In a sense, these two
processes are competing for our attention. And Krashen has
determined that one is much, much more valuable than the
other.

I won’t make you wait for the thrilling conclusion: the winner
is acquisition. Basically, according to Krashen’s writings, when
you learn, you know about a language. When you acquire, you
know a language.
Implications
If this hypothesis is true, it would mean a few things.
• First, language learning takes time.
Acquisition is a slower process than learning. Also, since it’s a
subconscious activity, it’s difficult to rush, being out of our
control and all.

• Second, formal studying has limited impact.

Studying grammar tables and memorizing vocab lists won’t
tap into that acquisition process, since those activities are
firmly in the domain of the learning process.
• Third, we’re teaching languages wrong.
Every foreign language class in every high school and college across the
world “teaches” the language. They may vary slightly in their methods,
sure, but at the end of the day you’re going to be doing some kind of
verb conjugation or vocab memorization.

• Fourth, the deal of picking up a language isn’t on the teacher, and

it’s not really on the student either. It’s on the student’s brain.
If acquisition is really a subconscious process, then you basically have
to get out of the way and let the brain do its work and form its neural
pathways. Then after enough time you know another language.
• So how do we “acquire” a language?
According to Krashen, it’s via comprehensible input, which is a
separate hypothesis and the topic of another post.
Important issues
• This hypothesis is definitely on to something:
_Why we learn languages as children without ever picking up a
grammar book or ever being “taught” a language. We’re not perfect by
the time we enter school, but most of us are able to communicate
fluently.

And in cases where people don’t go to school and don’t receive an

education, they’re still able to speak their native language enough to
communicate with their neighbors.
_Why my American colleagues in Germany–IT engineers who
were educated, were extremely smart, and could pass any
certification test you threw at them–had difficulty learning
German, while their kids were picking it up in kindergarten.

And it’s not because kids learn languages faster, because they
absolutely don’t (and in fact learn slower). It’s that my
colleagues were trying to learn the language and not doing
the things to help them acquire it.
_Why language learning takes time. It can take months and
even years to become fluent in a foreign language. Acquisition
would help explain the mechanisms behind this.

There are some other reservations about this hypothesis.

It is not entirely convincing that acquisition and learning are

two completely different processes. In fact, a little learning
can help acquisition.
For example, “I have” in Spanish is tengo, while “you have” is
tienes. Both are from the infinitive verb tener, which means
“to have.” If you pick up that pattern on your own and acquire
it, awesome.

But let’s say that you “learn” that pattern, from a teacher who
explains it to you explicitly. I don’t think you’re forever
predestined to knowing it only superficially. It’s just that
you’ve now learned it at the conscious level and need time to
let it sink in subconsciously.
Here’s an example: multiplication. Elementary school teachers
first taught students multiplication using things like crayons.
Three crayons, three times totaled up to nine crayons. They
understood the idea very consciously but couldn’t pass any
math tests with that.

But the next step was drills. Then multiplication tables. Then
flash cards. And then years of homework. Students have
acquired single-digit multiplication. They know it
subconsciously. They know that 9 X 9 is 81 without having to
think about it. Their learning the theory early on didn’t hinder
them from learning, but actually helped them spot the pattern
so that later on they could acquire it faster.
So where are we getting this disconnect? How can Krashen’s
hypothesis seem so right and at the same time leave us with
reservations?
We can say that what Krashen calls “acquired” and “learned”
language knowledge is labelled differently by other people.

Cognitive researchers and neuroscientists separate

knowledge into two kinds:
• Declarative knowledge – Factual information, which the
brain stores as static information.
• Procedural knowledge – Knowledge of how to perform,
which the brain stores as dynamic information.
With declarative knowledge, you know the names for the
different parts of a bike. With procedural knowledge, you
know how to ride a bike.

I think what Krashen might be referring to as acquisition is the

development of procedural knowledge, while learning is the
development of declarative knowledge.
If that’s the case, then it’s not fair then to lump all grammar
and language instruction into the “learning” camp. Skills are
successfully “taught” and “learned” all the time, at dance
studios, martial arts schools, driving schools, and on and on
and on.

It’s just that with language, you have to be careful to teach the
procedural knowledge and not just the declarative knowledge.

So, if you’re “learning” grammar, minimize the lectures and

spend more time with flashcard and workbook drills.
Wrapping Up
No matter what kind of terminology you want to use–acquisition,
learning, declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, whatever–if
you want to speak and understand a new language, you have to let it
sink in deep.

You have to let its thousands of moving parts get down deep inside you
and take root so that you can understand what the other person’s
saying, and then reply back instinctively, paying attention to what
you’re trying to say and not how you’re saying it.

Krashen´s acquisition-learning theory has much in common with both

the communicative approach to language study and Noam Chomsky's
theory of generative grammar.
Information taken from:

• http://www.languagesurfer.com/?s=Krashen
• http://www.tesolclass.com/applying-sla-theories/monitor-model/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgKM8J14mGg
The Natural Order Hypothesis
When you’re learning a new language, you can guess what
kind of grammar you’re going to learn first.

We can look at some examples. We can remember the

grammatical rules we learned, and the order in which we
learned them (roughly):
1. English doesn´t have masculine and feminine words.
2. The different definite/ indefinite article: “the” / “a”
3. Present tense verb conjugation: I want, you want, we want,
he wants, they want
4. Reflexive verbs: I like (it pleases me), she stays
5. Present perfect: I have had, you have seen
…and on… and on.
But did we learn those grammatical constructions first
because our brain is cued in to learn certain grammatical rules
before we learn other?

That’s what Stephen Krashen believes is going on. He

promotes something called the Natural Order Hypothesis,
which means that we acquire grammatical patterns in a
predictable order.
Implications,
It’s a little tricky to think about why this is important, unless you
put it in the context of Krashen’s other hypotheses.

If acquisition is a subconscious process (which we discussed in Part

One of the series) then all we have to do is expose ourselves to
comprehensible input: foreign language materials to listen to and
read, which we can mostly (but not completely) understand.

The natural order in which we learn grammar occurs, well,

naturally. What we mean is, we don’t have to set out and learn it
and teachers don’t have to worry about teaching it in a particular
order. This hypothesis is important in helping us select
comprehensible input.
Krashen suggests that a language learner finds a text that is
only one level above where she is at currently. With the
Natural Order hypothesis, we have an idea about which
grammar a learner is likely to pick up first, and can therefore
select texts that use those basic grammatical structures.

But does this hypothesis more or less match up with what we

as language users have noticed, personally?
…..Maybe.
The hypothesis sounds like it has merit. If we look at our
kindergarten-aged students, we can see that they go from
single-word utterances (Mama! Dada! Water!) to simple
sentences (I want it!) to less simple sentence (I don’t like this
show).

Lately, they are able to say stuff like, “Actually, we didn’t read
this book in school today,” which can surprise listeners
because they are trying out more complex sentence
structures, and it comes across like a kid wearing his daddy’s
shoes.
What about for adult learners?
Well, adults have a preference for simpler constructions or
anything like that, but that is because language courses teach
that material in that order.

Their brain doesn’t necessarily prefer simple grammar,

because it’s been exposed to a lifetime of more complex
English grammar. One thing is true, adults revert back to
complete infancy when they begin learning a new
language…..and many of us behave like that as learners!
Wrapping Up
The Natural Order hypothesis may or may not be sound, from
a scientific perspective. But even if it were 100% correct, we
cannot be sure if there’s enough information out there to help
us apply this hypothesis to language learning.

One thing might be more useful for language teachers is to

identify the most common grammatical structures used in
communication–not necessarily the grammatical structures
that Krashen believes our minds prefer to learn first–and
teaching those and really drilling those in.
The natural order hypothesis (NOH) proposed by Krashen
(1985) views both primary and secondary language
as acquired, not learned.
Assuming that language is acquired rather than learned, it is
more effective to place ELLs in authentic language use
situations, rather than teach them directly the rules of
language in a decontextualized way.
According to the NOH, teachers best facilitate the language
acquisition process by supporting the natural patterns that
occur as part of language development, and by
providing comprehensible input to ELLs.
The process of language acquisition begins by building a
listening (receptive) vocabulary, which then lends itself to the
production of verbal language.
During the language acquisition process, the classroom
environment should be welcoming and supportive, like parents
encouraging their children as begin to produce utterances like
“mama” and “papa.”
Along with such encouragement, it would be helpful to expose
ELLs to the phonetics of English by taking them places rich with
dialogue like a farmer’s market, the movies, a concert, play, or
anywhere else that ELLs have the opportunity to participate in
dialogue and use their senses to contextualize the language,
and increase its comprehensible input.
The natural order hypothesis also suggests we develop certain
speech capacities before others, like the low back vowel
sounds.
It would make sense then, to start with English language
learners (ELLs) development of vowel sounds, especially since
English contains fifteen vowel phonemes, while Spanish and
Japanese have only five (Freeman and Freeman 2004). I feel
like a lot of singing would help develop these vowel sounds.
The implications for the classroom are simple…
Teachers need to remember that students may not acquire
certain forms of the language when they are taught in the
classroom because they are not ready.
It is important for teachers to always review and recycle
language and give students multiple opportunities for
acquisition (following their own individual natural order).
Information taken from:

• http://www.languagesurfer.com/?s=Krashen
• http://www.tesolclass.com/applying-sla-theories/monitor-model/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgKM8J14mGg
References:
• Crystal, David The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University
Press, 1997.
• Krashen, Stephen D. Principles and Practice in Second Language
Acquisition. Prentice-Hall International, 1987.
• Krashen, Stephen D. Second Language Acquisition and Second Language
Learning. Prentice-Hall International, 1988.

• http://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html
• http://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash-english.html
• http://www.languagesurfer.com/?s=Krashen
• http://www.tesolclass.com/applying-sla-theories/monitor-model/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgKM8J14mGg