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Language Teaching Methodology
Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition
This text explores the relationship between second language teaching practice and what is known about the process of second language acquisition and summarizes the current state of second language acquisition theory.
-- Draws general conclusions about the application of theory to methods and materials and describes the characteristics that effective materials should include.
-- Concludes that language acquisition occurs best when language is used for the purpose for which it was communication.
-- Draws general conclusions about the application of theory to methods and materials and describes the characteristics that effective materials should include.
-- Concludes that language acquisition occurs best when language is used for the purpose for which it was communication.
212 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1982
34 people are currently reading
1251 people want to read
About the author
Stephen D. Krashen
37 books149 followersStephen Krashen is professor emeritus at the University of Southern California, who moved from the linguistics department to the faculty of the School of Education in 1994. He is a linguist, educational researcher, and activist.
Dr. Krashen has published more than 350 papers and books, contributing to the fields of second-language acquisition, bilingual education, and reading. He is credited with introducing various influential concepts and terms in the study of second-language acquisition, including the acquisition-learning hypothesis, the input hypothesis, the monitor hypothesis, the affective filter, and the natural order hypothesis. Most recently, Krashen promotes the use of free voluntary reading during second-language acquisition, which he says "is the most powerful tool we have in language education, first and second."
Dr. Krashen also holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and was the winner of the 1978 Venice Beach Open Incline Press. He spent two years in Ethiopia teaching English and science with the Peace Corps.
Dr. Krashen has published more than 350 papers and books, contributing to the fields of second-language acquisition, bilingual education, and reading. He is credited with introducing various influential concepts and terms in the study of second-language acquisition, including the acquisition-learning hypothesis, the input hypothesis, the monitor hypothesis, the affective filter, and the natural order hypothesis. Most recently, Krashen promotes the use of free voluntary reading during second-language acquisition, which he says "is the most powerful tool we have in language education, first and second."
Dr. Krashen also holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and was the winner of the 1978 Venice Beach Open Incline Press. He spent two years in Ethiopia teaching English and science with the Peace Corps.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 31 reviews
April 1, 2018
4 stars
I hope this is the last school-related book I had to read. I'm so fed up with studying, I want to read REAL books!!!
I hope this is the last school-related book I had to read. I'm so fed up with studying, I want to read REAL books!!!
January 13, 2019
Very amazing and eye-opening book. The gist of his theory is that language isn't acquired at all by studying grammar, memorizing vocabulary, etc. like traditional classroom, but rather by exposing oneself to lots and lots of "comprehensible input" in low-pressure situations. He justifies his theory by convincing field experiment results as well as by intuitive explanations. As someone who studies second languages multiple time, I'm very impressed with the theory, and feel that it matches what I experienced/observed so far. I read with glee when the author destroys many "traditional" methods used in teaching languages, but also praises a few eccentric methods, and discusses results of experimental research that supports his idea. If you're learning or teaching second languages, this book is golden.
September 11, 2020
This is an incredibly perspective-changing book on how we acquire a second language that all language students and ESL/foreign language teachers need to read, at least in a condensed form if not this text itself.
While written in a surprisingly conversational tone with some jokes thrown in, it's undoubtably technical. It's a linguist writing about linguistics, so to be expected. But with that said, I have 0 linguistic training and this is the fastest I've read a book this year because I found it that interesting. Maybe I'm just a nerd tho
Some of my takeaways:
* Older students (including adults) actually acquire language faster than younger students
* Language classes should only be used to propel students to an "intermediate" level, where they can begin to understand native content. Once students can get comprehensible input from these more natural and interesting sources, they need less guidance
* Overt focus on grammar does not help students acquire said grammar. There's conditions we can use learned grammar (ie when time permits, on careful writing assignments), but when speaking it's extremely difficult to conjure up grammar consciously. Instead we have to rely on what's be acquired
* This implies that grammar errors are and will be extremely common when learning a language (which seems obvious) but it ALSO implies that error correction, at least orally during conversation, is almost never helpful. Students simply need more exposure to the language and will self-correct in time, just as children learning their first language do. This is the exact opposite of what I thought and was taught
* The focus should be on the meaning of a sentence, not the form of the sentence's grammar. If the sentence's meaning is understood, that will move the learner toward acquiring that particular structure
* Factors like confidence and anxiety level strongly influence the acquisition process like a filter. Although I never considered it before, anyone who's been through language classes in US high schools will understand this; teacher's focus on students producing error-free output (which is an impossible ask especially for beginners) in front of their peers, and as a result, students are super stressed to go to Spanish class and feel like they're just bad at languages. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
* Traditional teaching methods where you learn a grammar structure and some vocab and then practice it like we did in literally every language class I've taken and every ESL course I've been part of are FAR from that ideal method for learning because 1) they focus on language learning (conscious) rather than acquisition and 2) they just don't give enough understandable, interesting input for learners
In some ways this is a disheartening read. Published in the 80s (almost 40 years ago!!), it certainly would have been a radical suggestion then. But 40 years later? Idk how the field of linguistics considers it nowadays, but the fact that the input hypothesis as discussed here still feels like such a radical idea and is so far from how any of the foreign language classes I took in middle school, high school, and college (in the US, the classes I took in Spain actually align fairly well methodologically, I just didn't know it at the time) were taught is saddening. In some ways it feels like American foreign language courses achieve the exact opposite of what they attempt to do: not only do they not lead their students to acquiring a reasonable amount of the language given the extensive class time (2 - 4 years in some cases), they inspire a defeatism within their students that makes them feel that they will never understand and give up trying entirely.
I'll be thinking about this one for a while
While written in a surprisingly conversational tone with some jokes thrown in, it's undoubtably technical. It's a linguist writing about linguistics, so to be expected. But with that said, I have 0 linguistic training and this is the fastest I've read a book this year because I found it that interesting. Maybe I'm just a nerd tho
Some of my takeaways:
* Older students (including adults) actually acquire language faster than younger students
* Language classes should only be used to propel students to an "intermediate" level, where they can begin to understand native content. Once students can get comprehensible input from these more natural and interesting sources, they need less guidance
* Overt focus on grammar does not help students acquire said grammar. There's conditions we can use learned grammar (ie when time permits, on careful writing assignments), but when speaking it's extremely difficult to conjure up grammar consciously. Instead we have to rely on what's be acquired
* This implies that grammar errors are and will be extremely common when learning a language (which seems obvious) but it ALSO implies that error correction, at least orally during conversation, is almost never helpful. Students simply need more exposure to the language and will self-correct in time, just as children learning their first language do. This is the exact opposite of what I thought and was taught
* The focus should be on the meaning of a sentence, not the form of the sentence's grammar. If the sentence's meaning is understood, that will move the learner toward acquiring that particular structure
* Factors like confidence and anxiety level strongly influence the acquisition process like a filter. Although I never considered it before, anyone who's been through language classes in US high schools will understand this; teacher's focus on students producing error-free output (which is an impossible ask especially for beginners) in front of their peers, and as a result, students are super stressed to go to Spanish class and feel like they're just bad at languages. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
* Traditional teaching methods where you learn a grammar structure and some vocab and then practice it like we did in literally every language class I've taken and every ESL course I've been part of are FAR from that ideal method for learning because 1) they focus on language learning (conscious) rather than acquisition and 2) they just don't give enough understandable, interesting input for learners
In some ways this is a disheartening read. Published in the 80s (almost 40 years ago!!), it certainly would have been a radical suggestion then. But 40 years later? Idk how the field of linguistics considers it nowadays, but the fact that the input hypothesis as discussed here still feels like such a radical idea and is so far from how any of the foreign language classes I took in middle school, high school, and college (in the US, the classes I took in Spain actually align fairly well methodologically, I just didn't know it at the time) were taught is saddening. In some ways it feels like American foreign language courses achieve the exact opposite of what they attempt to do: not only do they not lead their students to acquiring a reasonable amount of the language given the extensive class time (2 - 4 years in some cases), they inspire a defeatism within their students that makes them feel that they will never understand and give up trying entirely.
I'll be thinking about this one for a while
January 4, 2016
Krashen rarely seems to be mentioned in famous language learning. The first time I encountered Stephen Krashen's name was when I had a class called "Educational Psychology" Since that class that name pushed me to be curious about his research concerning the acquisition/learning of the second language. I find this guy fascinating! I am currently reading "The Natural Approach". As a language learner, I learned a lot from Krashen. He says that the best way to learn a language is through using it in conversation. And he explains a lot of things like the difference between language acquisition and language learning. I don't want to spoil the book, but it is a very interesting book and you can download the PDF version on his official web page.
February 21, 2019
Fantastic and radical take on second language acquisition that I could imagine many college students/language learners don't seem to know of or really place too much weight on it.
Read
May 10, 2013Krashen rarely seems to be cited in mainstream child language research and he may be considered eccentric by language teachers, but a lot of this book made sense according to my experience as a language learner. He says the best way to learn a language is through using it in conversations and reading of interest to you - common sense, right? - and explores the way traditional foreign language teaching fails to meet these needs. I remain skeptical about his idea that grammatical morphemes are acquired in a fixed order, regardless of the 1L and 2L in question. This book is free to read at his homepage; download the PDF for cleanest reading experience.
Read
November 22, 2024Skipped over the sections where he discusses best methods for instructor teaching but this was pretty cool
December 23, 2022
Thank you S. Krashen, for helping me get my master's degree! Contrary to what Krashen often says, this book is very interesting and I wish all teachers in Poland read it. "There is nothing as practical as a good theory!"
January 12, 2025
4.5- I enjoyed this book. I found it well explained and was interested in the different concepts and theories of it all. I find it is/ will be very useful to me for acquiring languages!
October 8, 2019
Stephen Krashen is an important American linguist, specialist of bilingualism. His work is definitely of interest to anyone passionate about language learning, and, I think (being familiar with articles I have read here and there before) that, among the many books he wrote, this one to be the best to discover his impact in the field. Indeed, he details his theories' main points, while demonstrating how they can be used in order to learn a foreign language.
The thing is, anyone having faced such a challenge (learning another language) will know the problem far too well. If schools focus on accuracy (translations of texts completely irrelevant outside classrooms' walls; grammatical drills doing next to nothing to encourage fluency, but, worst, just leading to an ingrained fear of making mistakes when it comes to actually converse...) other approaches targeted to wider audiences are as inefficient when it comes to be fluent (eg all these audio methods 'listen-repeat', completely useless yet sold massively on the market). Discouraging? Far from that! On the contrary, it's all perfectly normal as Krashen explains in here, going against all preconceived ideas on the topic, and underlying what will appear common sense and obvious to bilingual/polyglot people yet remain, again and again, ignored by traditional teachers and formal educational systems.
Be warned right now: here's a book by a linguist about linguistics, so his jargon will seem complicated at times! His core ideas, though, are actually very simple.
Drawing a distinction between acquiring a language - his unconscious and natural assimilation- and learning a language - the conscious study of its structure and grammar- he emphasises acquisition over learning. He insists on the importance of what he calls 'comprehensible input' that is, the assimilation of any item necessary on a day-to-day basis to the one learning a language. Indeed, as mastering a foreign language is, above all, using it in a practical and relevant way, only what serve speech and feed conversation can lead to fluency. Learning is not about critical studies of written texts (as is too often done in schools) because writing relies on a different language use than speech. That is not to say that reading is useless, but, that reading is only one way to reinforce the understanding of a language structure - its grammar.
Grammar, Krashen insists, cannot be mastered by learning rules by rope or drills completely useless beyond such exercices themselves. Grammar can only be assimilated by being confronted naturally as often as can be that is, by speaking and reading. Putting a strong emphasis on grammar and accuracy right from the start of the learning process is not only a discouraging waste of time, but counter-productive. Only listening/reading that is, fluency, will allow learners to correctly appropriate themselves the grammatical rules of their target language. More, he assures us that like children learning how to talk before formally studying the grammar of their mother tongue, it is in fact perfectly possible to be fluent in any language, using an accurate grammar, without knowing why such or such rules are correct or not. Here's where he introduces the reader to what he calls our 'monitor' that is, our natural capacity to filter our mistakes simply by adjusting our errors as we learn along. Here's another kick into traditional teaching's butts: interrupting learners to correct every single mistakes they make is useless, a long as their mistakes doesn't prevent them from being understood. In fact, if anything, it just undermines their self-confidence, and therefore their will to speak freely (so much for fluency!).
Here's definitely a tedious book for the non-linguist, but it's a fascinating read. Beyond its purely academic aspect regarding language learning, it has in fact a very practical value. Criticising sharply (debunking?) the common methods used and sold to supposedly learn another language, Stephen Krashen's theories can indeed serve as tips to better face such a challenging endeavour: learning another language. Remarkable.
The thing is, anyone having faced such a challenge (learning another language) will know the problem far too well. If schools focus on accuracy (translations of texts completely irrelevant outside classrooms' walls; grammatical drills doing next to nothing to encourage fluency, but, worst, just leading to an ingrained fear of making mistakes when it comes to actually converse...) other approaches targeted to wider audiences are as inefficient when it comes to be fluent (eg all these audio methods 'listen-repeat', completely useless yet sold massively on the market). Discouraging? Far from that! On the contrary, it's all perfectly normal as Krashen explains in here, going against all preconceived ideas on the topic, and underlying what will appear common sense and obvious to bilingual/polyglot people yet remain, again and again, ignored by traditional teachers and formal educational systems.
Be warned right now: here's a book by a linguist about linguistics, so his jargon will seem complicated at times! His core ideas, though, are actually very simple.
Drawing a distinction between acquiring a language - his unconscious and natural assimilation- and learning a language - the conscious study of its structure and grammar- he emphasises acquisition over learning. He insists on the importance of what he calls 'comprehensible input' that is, the assimilation of any item necessary on a day-to-day basis to the one learning a language. Indeed, as mastering a foreign language is, above all, using it in a practical and relevant way, only what serve speech and feed conversation can lead to fluency. Learning is not about critical studies of written texts (as is too often done in schools) because writing relies on a different language use than speech. That is not to say that reading is useless, but, that reading is only one way to reinforce the understanding of a language structure - its grammar.
Grammar, Krashen insists, cannot be mastered by learning rules by rope or drills completely useless beyond such exercices themselves. Grammar can only be assimilated by being confronted naturally as often as can be that is, by speaking and reading. Putting a strong emphasis on grammar and accuracy right from the start of the learning process is not only a discouraging waste of time, but counter-productive. Only listening/reading that is, fluency, will allow learners to correctly appropriate themselves the grammatical rules of their target language. More, he assures us that like children learning how to talk before formally studying the grammar of their mother tongue, it is in fact perfectly possible to be fluent in any language, using an accurate grammar, without knowing why such or such rules are correct or not. Here's where he introduces the reader to what he calls our 'monitor' that is, our natural capacity to filter our mistakes simply by adjusting our errors as we learn along. Here's another kick into traditional teaching's butts: interrupting learners to correct every single mistakes they make is useless, a long as their mistakes doesn't prevent them from being understood. In fact, if anything, it just undermines their self-confidence, and therefore their will to speak freely (so much for fluency!).
Here's definitely a tedious book for the non-linguist, but it's a fascinating read. Beyond its purely academic aspect regarding language learning, it has in fact a very practical value. Criticising sharply (debunking?) the common methods used and sold to supposedly learn another language, Stephen Krashen's theories can indeed serve as tips to better face such a challenging endeavour: learning another language. Remarkable.
September 9, 2022
Krashen’s a Buddha to all second-language teachers who have discovered his work. This text features, in chapter 2, the best place to read about his 5-fold theory of language acquisition.
���——
There was a great defense of Krashen, titled “Krashen, A Victim of History” by Garon Wheeler that was published in an academic journal in 2003 and is freely available via Google now. In it, he describes how Krashen is harshly criticized by the academic community because his hypotheses are not falsifiable, so they are therefore not scientific and must be rejected. This is how the scientific method works as introduced by Popper and refined by Kuhn. But the irony of this is that the fundamental tenet proposed by Kuhn and to this day widely accepted in both the scientific and philosophic community is that our theory of science is never perfect - it’s just the best one we’ve figured out so far.
The irony comes in when you realize that the reason Krashen’s hypotheses are not falsifiable only because cognitive science and neuroscience has not progressed remotely far enough to prove it wrong. His theories are the best we have for now - and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Krashen openly labels these as “hypotheses,” and listen to any of his speeches and he will lovingly bring out the word “conjecture” just so he can give a shout-out to his son, a professor of mathematics, and label him as “the real Professor Krashen.”
———
But, I think people underestimate Krashen’s impact just because the methods for teaching second-language don’t revolve around his comprehensive input in 99% of foreign language classrooms. This book was published in 1982.
Lots of his advice in it is common sense now, such as:
-Teachers grading their speech to their students (textbooks, on the other hand, still have a ways to go)
-Never translating back-and-forth between languages. Any FL classroom worth its salt is done entirely in the foreign language.
———
I find it pretty hilarious that godfather Krashen would have gotten himself fired for what he said on page 65: “Comprehension checking can range from simply asking "Do you understand?" occasionally, to monitoring comprehension via students' verbal and non-verbal responses.” At my institution, if any teacher asks, “Do you understand?” as a comprehension question during their first observation lesson, they’d likely be let go. This is because almost every student on Earth will respond affirmatively to that question regardless of the truth.
———
I do disagree with Krashen’s claim on page 69-70 that contextualizing grammar into realistic usages of language makes it inherently dull or “distorts the communicative focus.” You just have to spend shit ton of time creating it, and in the world we live in, this is the only way I can implement Krashen’s ideas and continue to teach ESL. Ideally, I’d just be the ultimate librarian who knew what everyone’s language skill and interests were, but my students - like almost all the rest - have to take a series of tests at the end of the term that I have no say in the drafting of.
Also, allow a brother a moment to complain: it’s fucking hard to live in a developing country with where books are 3x as expensive and 100x more rare. And even with the internet, there is a missing chunk of comprehensible reading for intermediate to upper-intermediate students. They graduate from graded readers and are then totally lost in native content. The only option is to suggest YA novels about western teens that the students are almost definitely not interested in, or constantly scour the internet for articles that are both interesting, long enough, and written simply enough. The dearth of comprehensive input for upper-intermediate students is the bane of my existence.
���——
There was a great defense of Krashen, titled “Krashen, A Victim of History” by Garon Wheeler that was published in an academic journal in 2003 and is freely available via Google now. In it, he describes how Krashen is harshly criticized by the academic community because his hypotheses are not falsifiable, so they are therefore not scientific and must be rejected. This is how the scientific method works as introduced by Popper and refined by Kuhn. But the irony of this is that the fundamental tenet proposed by Kuhn and to this day widely accepted in both the scientific and philosophic community is that our theory of science is never perfect - it’s just the best one we’ve figured out so far.
The irony comes in when you realize that the reason Krashen’s hypotheses are not falsifiable only because cognitive science and neuroscience has not progressed remotely far enough to prove it wrong. His theories are the best we have for now - and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Krashen openly labels these as “hypotheses,” and listen to any of his speeches and he will lovingly bring out the word “conjecture” just so he can give a shout-out to his son, a professor of mathematics, and label him as “the real Professor Krashen.”
———
But, I think people underestimate Krashen’s impact just because the methods for teaching second-language don’t revolve around his comprehensive input in 99% of foreign language classrooms. This book was published in 1982.
Lots of his advice in it is common sense now, such as:
-Teachers grading their speech to their students (textbooks, on the other hand, still have a ways to go)
-Never translating back-and-forth between languages. Any FL classroom worth its salt is done entirely in the foreign language.
———
I find it pretty hilarious that godfather Krashen would have gotten himself fired for what he said on page 65: “Comprehension checking can range from simply asking "Do you understand?" occasionally, to monitoring comprehension via students' verbal and non-verbal responses.” At my institution, if any teacher asks, “Do you understand?” as a comprehension question during their first observation lesson, they’d likely be let go. This is because almost every student on Earth will respond affirmatively to that question regardless of the truth.
———
I do disagree with Krashen’s claim on page 69-70 that contextualizing grammar into realistic usages of language makes it inherently dull or “distorts the communicative focus.” You just have to spend shit ton of time creating it, and in the world we live in, this is the only way I can implement Krashen’s ideas and continue to teach ESL. Ideally, I’d just be the ultimate librarian who knew what everyone’s language skill and interests were, but my students - like almost all the rest - have to take a series of tests at the end of the term that I have no say in the drafting of.
Also, allow a brother a moment to complain: it’s fucking hard to live in a developing country with where books are 3x as expensive and 100x more rare. And even with the internet, there is a missing chunk of comprehensible reading for intermediate to upper-intermediate students. They graduate from graded readers and are then totally lost in native content. The only option is to suggest YA novels about western teens that the students are almost definitely not interested in, or constantly scour the internet for articles that are both interesting, long enough, and written simply enough. The dearth of comprehensive input for upper-intermediate students is the bane of my existence.
July 21, 2017
I'm still reading it but so far, this is a great book, I highly recommend it!
I'm studying the B.A in English Teaching, (ESL) and was lucky to start my semester with this book which is really complete and helpful, I was one of those students who didn't like English classes and was forced to study it, I learned with the method of sight words, phonic, etcetera, so even when I didn't pay attention, I learned, when I decided to pay attention, I started watching TV shows and could understand all the words I've learned, after a time I was at an intermediate level.
A couple of years ago, I started wondering why students who want to learn English, who even pay private lessons to learn English, why they are not learning English? I mean, they have the desire and are making an effort to learn English, it's not a lack of desire that is hindering their learning.
Many of the things I've read in this book are true, most of the students, mainly in Mexico, they're taught to only repeat certain dialogues, teachers teach them grammar and then they have to answer some grammar exercises but they aren't learning much vocabulary and even worse, understanding anything.
I started giving English lessons and was surprised to find that my students were reading books in a short time, (3-6 months), just this week, a student's mom told me after a month of English lessons, that her children are watching cartoons, TV shows and all by themselves, all the vocabulary I've taught them, her children are repeating, using it in real life and they're speaking already.
This method works!
I'm studying the B.A in English Teaching, (ESL) and was lucky to start my semester with this book which is really complete and helpful, I was one of those students who didn't like English classes and was forced to study it, I learned with the method of sight words, phonic, etcetera, so even when I didn't pay attention, I learned, when I decided to pay attention, I started watching TV shows and could understand all the words I've learned, after a time I was at an intermediate level.
A couple of years ago, I started wondering why students who want to learn English, who even pay private lessons to learn English, why they are not learning English? I mean, they have the desire and are making an effort to learn English, it's not a lack of desire that is hindering their learning.
Many of the things I've read in this book are true, most of the students, mainly in Mexico, they're taught to only repeat certain dialogues, teachers teach them grammar and then they have to answer some grammar exercises but they aren't learning much vocabulary and even worse, understanding anything.
I started giving English lessons and was surprised to find that my students were reading books in a short time, (3-6 months), just this week, a student's mom told me after a month of English lessons, that her children are watching cartoons, TV shows and all by themselves, all the vocabulary I've taught them, her children are repeating, using it in real life and they're speaking already.
This method works!
June 23, 2020
Lays out the foundations of second language acquisition. While much of the explanation is theoretical, the last chapter offers a survey of comparisons between different methods of teaching. The outlines of the input hypothesis, which posits (in its simplest form) that the key to language acquisition (which is subconscious and prior to conscious language learning) is large amounts of comprehensible input, are reasonable and well supported. The book is not written as a polemic -- rather, it's mostly a dry academic text -- but I came away from it thinking, "wow, everything I know about language learning is wrong". What's more frightening is that I always considered myself a "good" language student, but I now realize that this can all be explained in terms of the input hypothesis -- I just happened to be the kind of student who enjoys grammar as a subject, which made me more open to comprehensible input. And I would have been able to get much farther with focusing on just, taking in a lot more comprehensible input that's barely out of reach.
But, again, I don't want to give the impression that this short, numbers-heavy book is an invective against traditional methods of teaching a foreign language. It's just an exceptionally lucid and cogently arranged introduction to (probably, I don't know anything about applied linguistics) the current most plausible theory of how we actually acquire new languages, supplemented with a litany of its implications. I wish I had read this book ten years ago!
But, again, I don't want to give the impression that this short, numbers-heavy book is an invective against traditional methods of teaching a foreign language. It's just an exceptionally lucid and cogently arranged introduction to (probably, I don't know anything about applied linguistics) the current most plausible theory of how we actually acquire new languages, supplemented with a litany of its implications. I wish I had read this book ten years ago!
October 23, 2021
An interesting and quite academic book (I read this from his website and not a physical copy).
In essence, I can summarise the takeaway right here:
- Learning a Language and Acquiring it are distinct tasks. You can know all of the rules of a language and still be incapable of using it, and likewise you can speak a language fluently without knowing a single grammar rule.
- The more comprehensible input for a language learner, the better (Overwhelmingly so)
- There is a natural order to the acquisition of a language which cannot be forced
- Placing too much emphasis on memorising grammar rules can destroy spoken fluency if a speaker is continually thinking them up to speak properly
Basically, read as much as possible in the language you are trying to learn, and don't waste time learning the grammar too well, although it is somewhat important.
In essence, I can summarise the takeaway right here:
- Learning a Language and Acquiring it are distinct tasks. You can know all of the rules of a language and still be incapable of using it, and likewise you can speak a language fluently without knowing a single grammar rule.
- The more comprehensible input for a language learner, the better (Overwhelmingly so)
- There is a natural order to the acquisition of a language which cannot be forced
- Placing too much emphasis on memorising grammar rules can destroy spoken fluency if a speaker is continually thinking them up to speak properly
Basically, read as much as possible in the language you are trying to learn, and don't waste time learning the grammar too well, although it is somewhat important.
October 29, 2024
stimulating! gave me a lot of new ideas, as well as confirming some of my own suppositions/resonating with my experiences. in particular:
- i want to try tpr = total action response
- comprehensible input does not require content that is "dumbed down"; all content will naturally contain material that is i + 1
- conscious learning of grammar/?vocab can be valuable for confirming/rejecting the student's conclusions and to provide a diagnostic to enable the student to feel their own progress and hence trust the method
- extensive reading ▷intensive reading, and skimming can be valuable
- it is important to make the environment comfortable: low anxiety, little to no error correction, no forcing speech before student is ready; discomfort/embarrassment reduces willingness/ability to acquire language. calming breathing, relaxing music, stretching, or mindfulness exercises can help too
- i want to try tpr = total action response
- comprehensible input does not require content that is "dumbed down"; all content will naturally contain material that is i + 1
- conscious learning of grammar/?vocab can be valuable for confirming/rejecting the student's conclusions and to provide a diagnostic to enable the student to feel their own progress and hence trust the method
- extensive reading ▷intensive reading, and skimming can be valuable
- it is important to make the environment comfortable: low anxiety, little to no error correction, no forcing speech before student is ready; discomfort/embarrassment reduces willingness/ability to acquire language. calming breathing, relaxing music, stretching, or mindfulness exercises can help too
August 7, 2019
I was reading this book for pleasure to get some insight that could possibly enable me to acquire a third or a fourth language . Going into the book , I knew that it was meant for highly academic students but I found it very repetitive . That being said , this book is an absolute treasure for anyone that likes learning languages on her/his own but you still might want to watch the YouTube videos discussing it .
This one is my favorite :
https://youtu.be/fnUc_W3xE1w
This one is my favorite :
https://youtu.be/fnUc_W3xE1w
May 18, 2024
I've read several books about language learning and similar topics. I must say that this one is the most eye-opening I've ever read related to languages. To fully understand it, you might need some experience with learning languages, such as attempting to learn a few yourself. I really like Krashen's work; it has significantly changed the way I see languages and the way I learn now. Great book!
April 2, 2019
Totally answer the questions clinging to me for a long time since I began to wander what I was doing when I took an English class and why I can still not be able to speak and use English fluently even I had gotten a high score in examination and How I can make progress.
April 10, 2021
Only read the Second Language Acquisition Theory section for a class. As a teacher-trainee, it is really important for me to be up-to-date with the latest theories on my subject. Krashen's theory helped to analyse my own studying experience and rethink my own approach.
July 19, 2021
It says, one of the best methods for you to learn a foreign language, or to improve your vocabulary is to read, read a lot, and enjoy what you are reading, I'm applying that lesson and at least for me, it works a lot!
July 2, 2018
A very enlightning book for second language learners
May 20, 2022
i really need to get back to learning acquiring korean instead of reading about sla theory on the internet
September 16, 2022
学习语言的方法说的很好，如果早些读，现在英语估计无敌了
December 31, 2024
The Input Hypothesis
The Affective Filter Hypothesis
The Monitor Hypothesis
The Natural Order Hypothesis
The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis
The Affective Filter Hypothesis
The Monitor Hypothesis
The Natural Order Hypothesis
The Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis
February 19, 2012
I think this book has a lot going for it. I think that it under-emphasizes grammar. Grammar, in my view, is a scaffolding that allows beginning and intermediate language learners to participate in conversations far, far, FAR more quickly than natural grammar acquisition. However, the comprehensible input theory does seem pretty logical to me. I know I'll be trying some of these techniques in my own TESOL classroom, total physical response.
September 26, 2015
Great book, it intents to prove the Second Language Acquisition Theory, it's extremely helpful for students to understand those principles in order to become fluent in a foreign language, but it's not a practical book, it's assigned to the Academy, you'll not find tips and tricks, just a theoretical discussion.
November 7, 2016
I simply loved this book.
April 22, 2022
If you want to learn a language just watch his speech.
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