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Is Language Learned or Acquired?
Is language learned or acquired? Language fluency cannot be learned, says Stephen D. Krashen, one of the theory’s leading exponents. That is, conscious mastery of grammar and vocabulary–while serving an editing function in speech or writing–is an insufficient basis for effective communication. Instead, such proficiency must be acquired, Mr. Krashen argues, and this happens, he says, “in one fundamental way: We acquire language when we understand it.”
The following is an excerpt from EdWeek:
“What is spectacular about this idea,” he explains, “is that it happens incidentally, involuntarily, subconsciously, and effortlessly.”
Language acquisition, in Mr. Krashen’s theory, requires “comprehensible input”–ideally, second-language messages that make sense, but that are just beyond the listener’s level of proficiency. Not only vocabulary, but grammatical rules are “picked up” in this way, he says, through understanding the messages in which they are embedded.
What counts is the quality of second-language exposure, not the quantity. A limited-English-proficient child placed in a “sink or swim” classroom primarily hears noise. With contextual clues–such as having a lesson first taught in the native language–English input becomes more comprehensible.
Mr. Krashen adds that “speaking per se does not cause language acquisition,” but is a result of it, “a result of obtaining comprehensible input.”
This corollary of the “input hypothesis” explains why LEP children typically go through a “silent period,” and then suddenly begin speaking in English. “When they begin to speak,” he says, “they are not beginning their acquisition; they are showing off their competence.”
On the other hand, Mr. Krashen maintains, attempts to teach language through memorization and mimickry, through what he terms mindless exercises that illustrate the “structure of the week,” are futile for several reasons.
First, there is no complete set of rules for what native speakers have internalized. Linguists, he says, “have described only a fraction” of the complex structure of any natural language, and most grammar textbooks are therefore woefully incomplete. But even if a learner could achieve intellectual mastery of a new syntax–something that few educated adults can do, Mr. Krashen notes–and could successfully “focus on form” while using it to communicate, the process would work too slowly to be of use in conversation.