Krashen and "Krashenite"

General discussion about learning languages
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TopDog_IK
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby TopDog_IK » Fri Sep 16, 2022 3:51 am

galaxyrocker wrote:The human brain is also perfectly equipped to misunderstand the patterns too. And it's also perfectly equipped to learn the patterns before and get more out of it later on. You've addressed neither of these points. Nor any of the other shortcomings of Krashen's arguments that have been mentioned in this thread.


If I may ask, what are your main beefs with Krashen?
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby galaxyrocker » Fri Sep 16, 2022 7:23 am

TopDog_IK wrote:[
If I may ask, what are your main beefs with Krashen?



I think it's been clear this entire thread. He just keeps saying "Humans will recognize patterns" and calling it the best/only way to learn a language. He never seems to understand that humans might misrepresent patterns and get the wrong idea, especially in a language very different from their own, nor does he seem to accept that humans might be able to read rules, recognise them, then get more out of them when doing immersion. And that's if they even recognise there is a pattern there they should recognise. Quite possible they won't, in which case of course they're not going to be picking anything up.

I'm not against immersion; nobody here is. We all recognise it as extremely important. What we're against is Krashen saying it's the only way, or best way, or most efficient way to learn a language as an adult. And then grouping everyone under that same umbrella.


Now would you care to finally answer some of the criticisms I and others have put forward?
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Kraut » Fri Sep 16, 2022 11:56 am

Since Lithuanian has so many cases and declension endings, it doesn't need and does not have any word order. But no problem for the Krashen brain. Whatever word order you offer it. It takes a millisecond to make sense of an uncomprehensible heap of words.


„Mergaite mete kamuolį“
„Mergaite kamuolį mete“
"Mete mergaite kamuolį"
"Kamuolį mete mergaite
"Mete kamuolį mergaite"
"Kamuolį mergaite mete"












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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Beli Tsar » Fri Sep 16, 2022 2:02 pm

galaxyrocker wrote:
TopDog_IK wrote:[
If I may ask, what are your main beefs with Krashen?

I'm not against immersion; nobody here is. We all recognise it as extremely important. What we're against is Krashen saying it's the only way, or best way, or most efficient way to learn a language as an adult. And then grouping everyone under that same umbrella.

This sums it up perfectly. Krashen says other things don't work; experience of a lot of very experienced polyglots here says they do, as well as the experience of somewhat less capable hobbyists like me.

A number of people in logs here have attempted purer input-only Krashen style learning. They do get somewhere, but it's painfully slow leaves massive lacunae. A number of others with more mainstream approaches make remarkable progress.

If Krashen says we need lots of input and can infer things from it, I don't think anyone here disagrees. If Krashen says - which he does - that we should all stop with the textbooks, drop explicit vocab study, etc. etc., then that matches neither formal evidence nor the personal experience of many here.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby TopDog_IK » Sat Sep 17, 2022 12:34 am

galaxyrocker wrote:I think it's been clear this entire thread. He just keeps saying "Humans will recognize patterns" and calling it the best/only way to learn a language. He never seems to understand that humans might misrepresent patterns and get the wrong idea, especially in a language very different from their own, nor does he seem to accept that humans might be able to read rules, recognise them, then get more out of them when doing immersion. And that's if they even recognise there is a pattern there they should recognise. Quite possible they won't, in which case of course they're not going to be picking anything up.

I'm not against immersion; nobody here is. We all recognise it as extremely important. What we're against is Krashen saying it's the only way, or best way, or most efficient way to learn a language as an adult. And then grouping everyone under that same umbrella.

Now would you care to finally answer some of the criticisms I and others have put forward?


I'm having a bit of trouble following your thoughts here. You are concerned that people might learn the wrong patterns if they immerse? Over time, with more immersion, and ultimately in conversations, won't they eventually realize the pattern is wrong and correct it through more immersion and use of the language?

To me, the best approach to grammar is Steve Kaufmann's: Look up grammar points when you are interested. That way the lessons will stick better. I don't think Krashen would be against people looking up grammar principles when they are interested?

Whether Krashen is correct about immersion learning and understanding messages being "the only way"... I have no idea. That's above my knowledge. But generally, it sounds like what the brain was designed for.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby rdearman » Sat Sep 17, 2022 9:23 am

You may want to search the forum for issues around "fossilized errors". I think this is one of the examples galaxyrocker is alluding to. People have learned something erroneously but through repetition it has become so ingrained they cannot fix it.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby galaxyrocker » Sat Sep 17, 2022 12:15 pm

TopDog_IK wrote:I'm having a bit of trouble following your thoughts here. You are concerned that people might learn the wrong patterns if they immerse? Over time, with more immersion, and ultimately in conversations, won't they eventually realize the pattern is wrong and correct it through more immersion and use of the language?


This sounds very idealistic. As rdearman mentioned, fossilised errors are a thing. As is just completely misunderstanding something and not realising it's wrong, even with a lot of immersion. Because, again, that assumes you actually pick up on the pattern and what it's trying to tell you. And we know not everyone does that -- as cainntear said, look at immigrants who are immersed and using English regularly. Sometimes, they don't even notice the patterns immersion is supposed to teach them, as Beli Tsar also mentioned about immersion-only learners.

To me, the best approach to grammar is Steve Kaufmann's: Look up grammar points when you are interested. That way the lessons will stick better. I don't think Krashen would be against people looking up grammar principles when they are interested?


And I find it better to learn the patterns first so I can notice them when I read/listen. To me, that's the best approach. Immersion by itself does nothing for me, even with a closely related language to English.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Saim » Sat Sep 17, 2022 1:25 pm

Kraut wrote:The normal brain masters these declension endings perfectly:
- s
- es
- 's
- s'

The food for the "Krashen brain":


The interesting thing here is not only that there are lots of forms, but that they also overlap. I get the sense that the input-only L2 learner is especially bad at dealing with syncretism when acquiring morphemes. That's definitely something I struggled with as a heritage speaker of Serbian before I got any formal understanding of the grammar.

edit: just to be clear, I’m referring to the attached Lithuanian paradigm
Last edited by Saim on Mon Sep 19, 2022 5:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby ryanheise » Sun Sep 18, 2022 10:55 am

rdearman wrote:Below, I'm quoting a small section of my Korean grammar book. (Fair usage copyright quotation of the book: BASIC KOREAN: A GRAMMAR AND WORKBOOK by Andrew Sangpil Byon)

BASIC KOREAN wrote:Meanwhile, Korean has a group of special nouns that always appear before other nouns to modify or describe the following nouns, such as 무슨 음식 "what kind of food," 이 책 "this book," 그 사람 "that man," and 어느 식당 "which restaurant." These nouns are called "prenouns" (like English words, such as "that," "this," and 'which").

Some nouns are used only after the aforementioned prenouns. These special nouns (also sometimes called "bound nouns") cannot be used by themselves but used always with the prenouns. Examples of these nouns are 이 곳 "this place," 그 분 "that person," 저 것 "that thing," and so on. Prenouns as well as bound nouns are discussed in detail in Unit 22.


Now chances are you aren't learning Korean, but if you read these two paragraphs and internalise them you now know something about the Korean language, which if you were to then start to read a book, you might recognise the fact that 이곳 is "that thing". You'll also know that bound nouns can only be used with prenouns. You aren't learning the language, you're learning about the language. You're learning the rules which are typically used by native speakers, and you are getting this information in your own native language. This is where being an adult trumps learning as a child. You can utilise the language you already learned to kickstart the learning of another language.


Here is another way to use your native language to kickstart the learning of another language that is less explanatory:

Image

(These sentences are not necessarily the most natural, but I wanted to just include examples of 이곳 even though it is more common to use 여기.)

For the person so inclined, various grammatical features may be self evident from a comparison of these examples without the explanation, but with the aid of the translations. Maybe some things will stand out to you, maybe others you'll head for the explanation. That line may differ from person to person.

I don't know of any language school that has a pre-course on how to improve one's pattern recognition skills, or of any research in this area, but I think that the ability to recognise patterns is probably a skill that could be trained if educators set their minds to it. Studies would need to be done to find whether such a pre-course would result in better language learning outcomes.

But as self learners / hobbyists, which this forum largely consists of, we are not necessarily bound by what research says about effective classroom teaching methods. And indeed the research about what is effective for self learners is far less developed than the research about what is effective in the classroom. We don't have the definitive answers, and we don't have the bulk of the research focused on us. However, what we do have is a large evolutionary experiment being run unplanned by a world-wide language learning community where, out of people's own enthusiasm and curiosity, we dare to try out different learning approaches on ourselves and see which ones work for us, and maybe work for others. And by sharing these ideas, we are learning something as a community about what approaches may work better or worse for different types of learners.

Back to this idea of picking up the grammar through translation, I am reminded of a Korean textbook I heard about from a Canadian vlogger living in Korea going by the name expatkerri. What was unique about it was that much of the text in the book was written in English, but using Korean word order. This reportedly helped her to get a feel for Korean word order before actually mastering the Korean vocabulary. So for example, there was one dialogue that went something like this:

Person A: Taste have, huh?
Person B: Yes! Very taste have. But Kimchi why not eat?
Person A: Kimchi taste not have. Too spicy. Too spicy, huh?
Person B: No, that spicy not. I this Kimchi really like. But a little salty.
Person A: Ahyew! Too full.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Sep 18, 2022 1:02 pm

ryanheise wrote:Back to this idea of picking up the grammar through translation, I am reminded of a Korean textbook I heard about from a Canadian vlogger living in Korea going by the name expatkerri. What was unique about it was that much of the text in the book was written in English, but using Korean word order. This reportedly helped her to get a feel for Korean word order before actually mastering the Korean vocabulary. So for example, there was one dialogue that went something like this:

Person A: Taste have, huh?
Person B: Yes! Very taste have. But Kimchi why not eat?
Person A: Kimchi taste not have. Too spicy. Too spicy, huh?
Person B: No, that spicy not. I this Kimchi really like. But a little salty.
Person A: Ahyew! Too full.



Do you happen to remember the name of this book? I'd be very interested in flipping through it, even with no desire to learn Korean at the moment. Just to see how it works pedagogically.
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