Learning Spanish Part Twenty-four: The Acquisition-learning Hypothesis


by Douglas Bower - Date: 2007-07-22 - Word Count: 332 Share This!

Dr. Stephen Krashen's foundational principle in his theory of Second Language Acquisition is called "The Acquisition-Learning hypothesis." In this idea, a distinction is made in that wonderfully exciting and gaiety-galore world of linguistics and language pedagogy between learning a language and acquiring it.

"The acquired system" is the means through which spoken fluency is acquired.

I can recall scores of students who come to Guanajuato, Mexico (where we live), who have told me they would pay any amount of money to have the spoken fluency of a Mexican child being packed off to his or her first day of class in primary school. It is, after all, what most of those with whom I've spoken are after-spoken fluency. Sure, they would love to read and write in Spanish but they seem to have an instinctive understanding of what comes first. They know the cart does not draw the horse. They are after the horse and then the cart.

To acquire the target language is the result of a process almost identical to what we all went through in acquiring our native languages. This process is a natural event in which the learner of the language is involved with the actual act of communication and not so much in a formal relationship to grammatical structures (the horse before the cart).

"The learned system" is a system in which the learner comes into a possession of a lot of information about the language. Rules of grammar and cold-memorization of vocabulary are the thrusts of instruction. It is putting the "cart" before the "horse" and expecting, somehow, the cart to pull the horse.

"Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural communication - in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding." Stephen Krashen

If what you seek is how to exegete a text of the target language, then go for the cart.

If what you want is communication in the target language, then find that horse.

NEXT: the Monitor hypothesis


Related Tags: spanish, mexico, guanajuato, learn spanish, mexican living, san miguel

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