Krashen and "Krashenite"

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aaleks
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby aaleks » Mon Jun 28, 2021 6:42 pm

To me such a correction looks more like a nitpicking... but I am not a native speaker so I don't have a say in this I guess...
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby garyb » Mon Jun 28, 2021 7:26 pm

I remember there being a fairly strong "Krashenite" vocal minority in the early days of this forum, but thankfully the community has evolved since then.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby jeffers » Mon Jun 28, 2021 8:09 pm

garyb wrote:I remember there being a fairly strong "Krashenite" vocal minority in the early days of this forum, but thankfully the community has evolved since then.


I remember when I first joined HTLAL there was someone who made a few long posts about how anyone who wasn't strictly following Krashen's methods was not only wasting their time, but it seems actually causing themselves harm. That poster actually gave me quite a bad impression of what Krashen is really about. When I later read articles written by Krashen himself, mostly on the topics of reading for pleasure, I was surprised at how reasonable and sensible he actually seemed to be! :lol:
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Cainntear » Mon Jun 28, 2021 8:10 pm

aaleks wrote:To me such a correction looks more like a nitpicking... but I am not a native speaker so I don't have a say in this I guess...

1 was nitpicking at best and arguably perfectly acceptable English. [shitton, which I would personally write with a hyphen if I was writing it, but it's rarely written]
1 was definitely acceptable English [having ever vs ever having]

1, though, was relevant to this discussion: obtain vs obtained. (I wasn't going to bring it up, but it's on the table now...)

Lysi touched on a similar topic:
Lysi wrote:4) Input hypothesis:

I don't disagree with an input hypothesis, after all, input is absolutely the most important part in language learning. I do think that his definition of "comprehensible input" isn't very clear and not particularly useful. It's true that new features can be acquired through input, but it requires more specification. For example, with passives, there are some passives where the semantic meaning is the same as if it wasn't a passive. In the sentence "John was kissed by Mary", there's really no way that someone could acquire the passive through that alone, and yet it meets his idea of "n + 1". There's also plenty of features that, if not attended to, will just not be acquired. -s (third person conjugation for verbs) in English is a good example, since it's semantically useless, so it's acquired very late. Grammatical gender is an even better example since it's also semantically useless, and yet unlike -s, if you haven't been paying attention to it from the start you have to learn the gender of every noun after having already learned them.

-S has two problems: not only is it a redundant feature (which I would argue isn't exactly "semantically useless" as stated) but it's also a bound morpheme that isn't even a single syllable, and although I don't know a short technical name for that, I do know that it's a very hard feature for non-natives to acquire.

-ed may not be fully redundant, but it's a non-syllabic bound morpheme, and it creates a consonant cluster that doesn't exist in a great many languages. It is not something the non-native ear can pick out, so it's not something that will be learned from exposure.

Krashenites do not accept this as a failure in the teaching/learning process, but instead invoke "universal order of acquisition" and say it simply hasn't been learned yet. And if the learner never acquires it, then that still is not a failure of the teaching, it's that the learner's "affective filter is raised" and it's their fault.

Natural, predictable learner difficulties with phonology are left unaddressed until the learner has acquired an incorrect grammar based on their incorrect perceptions of sound.

I think Krashen's views have caused massive harm globally, personally.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby jeffers » Mon Jun 28, 2021 8:13 pm

garyb wrote:I remember there being a fairly strong "Krashenite" vocal minority in the early days of this forum, but thankfully the community has evolved since then.


I remember when I first joined HTLAL there was someone who made a few long posts about how anyone who wasn't strictly following Krashen's methods was not only wasting their time, but it seems actually causing themselves harm. That poster actually gave me quite a bad impression of what Krashen is really about. When I later read articles written by Krashen himself, mostly on the topics of reading for pleasure, I was surprised at how reasonable and sensible he actually seemed to be! :lol:


EDIT: here's an example, an article about "narrow reading":
http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/2004_case_for_narrow_reading_lang_mag.pdf
He concludes with the following list of points:
  • Lower your standards (be happy to read trash),
  • Don't worry about pushing ahead rapidly to harder and to different material,
  • If the book or magazine is too hard, or not really interesting, stop reading and find something else
  • Carry the book or magazine with you everywhere
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Kraut » Mon Jun 28, 2021 8:45 pm

https://geof950777899.wordpress.com/sla ... responses/

Krashen 5: Summary of Responses

by

Geoff Jordan Stuff

-----------

I think that Krashen has never had any followers among the language teaching crowd in Germany. With 2 languages being required for university entrance the publishers here make enough money in the school book sector. When exchange students come back after a year in the US, their English often is excellent, the traditional didactic mix they received can't have been bad. The only outsider method that comes to mind, is the Birkenbihl method, which makes use of the mother tongue, a bit like Lampariello.

The Krashenites are Internet "influencers" that try to cash in on Krashen's "reputation":

Die revolutionäre Input-Hypothese von Stephen Krashen für erfolgreiches Sprachenlernen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU6jq5Ulodw

5 COSAS que debes saber para hablar un IDIOMA sin estudiar (Teoría de Stephen Krashen)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygm2oXfGwzw&t=108s
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby aaleks » Mon Jun 28, 2021 9:02 pm

Cainntear wrote:1, though, was relevant to this discussion: obtain vs obtained. (I wasn't going to bring it up, but it's on the table now...)

Cainntear wrote:-ed may not be fully redundant, but it's a non-syllabic bound morpheme, and it creates a consonant cluster that doesn't exist in a great many languages. It is not something the non-native ear can pick out, so it's not something that will be learned from exposure. ...


What if that was just a typo? I often make this kind of mistakes/typos, with both -(e)s and -ed, just because I can't type in English as fast as I think.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Le Baron » Mon Jun 28, 2021 9:46 pm

aaleks wrote:What if that was just a typo? I often make this kind of mistakes/typos, with both -(e)s and -ed, just because I can't type in English as fast as I think.


It may well have been a typo, it's very possible.

As for 'ever having' I stand by it. It's not nitpicking, it's correct, more common and natural sounding. Just because some person will mosey along and say: 'Hold on! I'm also a native speaker and I think it's equally correct!' My answer is: you are wrong and should go back to school immediately. Or failing that should stop trying to increase the possibilities to accommodate the litany of errors committed in the name of 'international English'.

edit: someone I know just read this (over my shoulder) and said: no-one will likely see that you are taking the p*ss. On the other side of the screen it probably looks more like you're suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect...' Then sauntered off to the kitchen to make some tea. :shock: :lol: I think I may now be be an actual troll, even if unwittingly.
Last edited by Le Baron on Mon Jun 28, 2021 10:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Iversen » Mon Jun 28, 2021 10:04 pm

I like the concept of "comprehensible input", and I don't feel any need to give a precise definition of "n+1" - if you feel that a certain text or speech is slightly too hard for you, but still within reach then it is n+1 (or j+1).

It is unlikely that the pure grammar-translation method (with no free output) could produce pupils capable of using their target languages actively - I know that from my own Latin studies. On the other hand I learnt to understand Low German, Norwegian and Swedish from watching TV and reading stuff, but I had to do some formal study that included the use of grammars and dictionaries to get that fuzzy cloud of knowledge organized into something that could be turned into active skills. And acquiring those passive skills was only possible because the languages in question were related to High German and my native Danish. I can't see how it could have functioned with for instance Albanian or Chinese.

Today I am able to understand many dialects and related languages which I haven't studied formally, but I can't speak any of them - just understand them more or less well, depending on my level of passive training AND occasional lookups.

And now you may say that I did learn to speak Danish without the help of dictionaries and grammars. Well, yes - but it took me several years and cost me half my cerebral neurons to learn that first language, and I still needed formal training to learn to write it, and I wouldn't have acquired my present vocabulary and stylistic savvy if I hadn't used dictionaries on a regular basis both during and after my school years. To go through the same thing with every new language on my list would not have been feasible - especially when I didn't live in a place where that language was spoken all around me.

So much for learning languages from input alone ... at best you will end up with a passive language, but more likely just with a collection of survival strategies. However apply a wee bit of formal study plus a shitton (sic) of active practice to a passive language, and then you may eventually end up with an active language. Hurray.

Denoument wrote on the preceding page "Krashen is the entry-point of second language acquisition theory, right?". Answer: no. He is closer to being the exit-point. If you start your language learning with just n+1 input and no reference to dictionaries or grammars then you have years of confused problem solving ahead of you, which a few quick peeks in dictionaries and some selective grammar studies could have spared you. The pure input model can only be relevant for people who already are through the formal part of their language studies and now just have to finetune their pronunciation and pick up a few more idioms and maybe some specialized vocabulary from suitable sources - and even for these advanced learners looking things up would save them time and possibly save them from drawing a lot of false conclusions along the way.

My attitude to Krashen resembles the one I have to people like Chomsky or Freud: I respect them for their courage, but not for their theories.

PS to Cainntear: there are no nasal vowels in Danish, but I have never had problems distinguishing them in French or Portuguese, so the mere fact that certain sounds aren't represented in your native language doesn't necessarily mean that they will cause you trouble in a target language. And if they do, then the cure is to listen closely to minimal pairs without too much surrounding babble, maybe in combination with some facts regarding mouth positions (though hardcore Krashenites would presumable frown at both propositions).
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Re: Krashen and "Krashenite"

Postby Pikaia » Mon Jun 28, 2021 10:49 pm

The original post was completely comprehensible, so I find it odd to see corrections that weren’t requested by the author. More importantly, that sort of welcome might not be the best way to encourage newbies and lurkers to stick around. Out of curiosity, I perused the forum rules post:
It's common to give and receive corrections on the forum. If someone hasn't publicly asked for that, it would be best to send a PM before correcting them. Don't use corrections as a way to make your point or to derail a discussion.
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