Kraut wrote:https://www.lucalampariello.com/comprehensible-input/
Cracking the Comprehensible Input CodeAccording to linguist Stephen Krashen, comprehensible input is that kind of input that is "a little beyond" our current level. This is how we acquire language and it certainly makes sense, but does it tell the whole story?
Is comprehensible input all we need to learn languages successfully, or are we still missing other pieces of the puzzle?
Let’s find out!
Warning: the line "Let's find out!" is like a red rag to a bull here. I don't expect Luca to actually do anything approaching research
or investigating, and instead to simply state his opinions. That would make this line dishonest, as it would mean he's misrepresenting his opinion column as a piece of investigative journalism.
Is it true? Let's find out!
LL wrote:What’s behind Krashen’s Comprehensible Input?
If you've never heard of Stephen Krashen before, then he's someone whose work you should really get to know. Krashen is a widely-published linguist whose ideas form the backbone of Second Language Acquisition (that is, language learning) as we know it today.
In particular, Krashen is known for his many conjectures, hypotheses, and other ideas, two of the most popular being the concept of "comprehensible input", as well as the Input Hypothesis that goes along with it.
"Comprehensible input" is input that is slightly above your current language skill. In Krashen's writings, you also see this referred to as "i + 1", where "i" is your level right now, and the "+1" refers to whatever the next level above yours might be.
With that in mind, let's now dig into the "Input Hypothesis.”
Krashen is not a "widely-published linguist" -- he is a widely-
cited linguist. His Wikipedia article lists 12 articles. I mean, that's probably not everything, but the real figure is likely not very high at all.
He is possibly the
most cited in the language teaching literature, but that's not necessarily a good thing: Krashen's writings and appropriation of terminology have dominated so heavily that it's practically impossible to write about language learning without explicitly stating that you totally disagree with him. The constant mention of his name to say he's wrong is a massive confounding issue. Although my dissertation was never published (so doesn't affect his impact factor) I made the somewhat rebellious stance of only citing a book author that stated that the modern SLA field no longer accepted a difference between "learning" and "acquisition". I think I did so in the full expectation of getting feedback from my superviser to cite Krashen's "Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis", but I don't recall that ever happening.
To describe him as someone "whose ideas form the backbone of Second Language Acquisition" is utterly ridiculous. I studied a masters in SLA, and if his ideas are a backbone, then my masters was essentially invertebrate. He was mentioned because he had to be, but the whole course was based around the exact opposite of the comprehensible input hypothesis. Hell, in the first half of term 1, CI was brought up and I was totally on edge. Then the lecturer (who was my dissertation superviser later, incidentally) started talking about i+1 comprehensible input and immediately said "i+1
what?!?!" Krashen talks in pseudoscience -- i+1 sounds scientific and mathematical, but without defining "i", there is no maths.
And talking of pseudoscience, has anyone ever noticed that Krashen's "hypotheses" have remained "hypotheses" for about 40 years? A hypothesis should be tested and evidence gathered to support or refute it. When you have supporting evidence for your hypothesis it becomes a "theory". The term "hypothesis" sounds fancy and scientific to the world and "theory" seems to be negative because you have the common phrase "it's only a theory", but the truth is that the common use of "theory" corresponds to the technical term "hypothesis". If Krashen's hypotheses have remained hypotheses for pretty much as long as I've been alive then at best they are technically true, but have so little practical relevance that it can't be detected by scientific investigation or they're really, really wrong. In fact, in 2001, Wilfried Decoo delivered a
lecture which has been widely distributed, entitled On the mortality of language learning methods in which he challenged the modernity of so-called modern methods by quoting a book, then revealing that it was from the late 19th century. There was a big thing about "natural methods" which were essentially indistinguishable from the input hypothesis, which he pointed out were dropped in the early 20th century because they weren't working, and it didn't matter whether the problem was that the natural methods camp were outright wrong, or simply that the natural approach wasnt practical given the time available in school language lessons. Doesn't matter. They were found not to work at the turn of the century and that was repeated by the Krashenites who had revived the ideas in the 1980s.
His main point about life cycles within language learning methods has been kind of fundamentally altered by the internet. No ideas die once they exist online. Well done to Luca for leading the zombie army.
Input Hypothesis
In Krashen's own words, the Input Hypothesis suggests that:
"We acquire language in only one way: when we understand messages, when we obtain 'comprehensible input'. We acquire language, in other words, when we understand what we hear or what we read—when we understand the message."
According to Krashen, if the Input Hypothesis is true, then a few other things must also be true:
"First, language acquisition is effortless. It involves no energy, no work. All an acquirer has to do is understand messages."
"Second, language acquisition is involuntary. Given comprehensible input, and a lack of [emotional] barriers, language acquisition will take place. The acquirer has no choice".
If you've never heard these ideas before, then they might seem pretty shocking. It's rare to hear anyone use words like "effortless" and "involuntary" when it comes to language learning; in fact, I think we're more used to hearing words like "difficult" and "frustrating" whenever the subject comes up!
Right. This is twisting a truth. First of all, it ignores the fact that a lot of people find comprehensible input approaches quite "difficult" and
extremely "frustrating" . I mean, if you expect people to know what a word means when they know they don't know it, you can predict a frustrating experience... but then you still choose to deny that? You can only do that by
blaming the learner. Notice Krashen's words (and I've removed the minor paraphrase here):
"Given comprehensible input,
and a lack of affective barriers, language acquisition will take place. The acquirer has no choice".
He's admitting that it doesn't work,
but he's blaming the learners. They have an "affective barrier", and Luca has quite aptly paraphrased that as "emotional barriers". Krashen was hiding behind using an effectively invented technical term to pretend that he wasn't blaming the learner, but he was.
So what gives? Where is the disconnect between Krashen's theory and the apparent "reality" that so many of us language learners face every day?
Notice how here Luca is arguably using the colloquial term theory correctly, but in doing so is arguably also promoting Krashen's hypotheses to a higher status. Notice how he uses scare quotes around "reality", and in doing so further promotes Krashen's hypotheses beyond their evidence-free status by implying that Krashen has the "real truth". (And yes, I realise I'm using scare quotes for something Luca hasn't actually said.)
To better understand where Krashen is coming from, I think it's useful to define a couple of terms. First, let's talk about explicit learning, and second, let's examine implicit learning.
"Explicit learning" is the kind of learning that takes active effort. If you studied a language in school, this is likely the type of learning that you engaged in, most of the time. It involves deliberately trying to take what you don't know and drill it into your memory.
"Implicit learning" is quite the opposite. This type of learning is done passively, usually through mere exposure to the information you are trying to learn. A good example of this is how you learned your mother tongue. When you were a child, you probably never had to do grammar drills to learn the verb tenses of your first language. It just happened naturally!
When Krashen says that comprehensible input makes language acquisition "effortless", he's saying that it provides an optimal environment for "implicit learning"—again, learning that is done passively, rather than actively. By contrast, the effortful language learning that you're used to most likely involves little comprehensible input and a lot of "explicit learning", which is by definition more difficult.
...and here we have a problem that is pervasive in modern education.
"Active learning theory" is seriously misunderstood, and this has led to the notion that there is such a thing as "passive learning". "Active learning" boils down to one thing: you can't learn passively, because
your brain needs to be active to learn. You cannot learn implicitly without an active brain -- implicit vs explicit and active vs passive are totally orthogonal ideas. If you do explicit instruction well, your students are active and learn; if you do implicit instruction well, your students are active and learn. If you do
either of them badly, your students are passve and don't learn.
There is so much talk about teaching and learning methodologies that mischaracterises the favoured theories by relating them to good teachers and demonises the unfavoured theories by equating them with bad teachers.
While the idea of "effortless language learning" certainly sounds more appealing than the frustrating learning experiences most of us had in school, I'm not entirely convinced that an all-comprehensible-input-based, implicit learning method is the way to go.
I think Krashen may have missed the mark here for one reason; a flaw in implicit learning that I've encountered often when trying to put it into practice myself:
The flaw? Implicit learning, though effective, is incredibly SLOW—often painfully so!
...
Comprehensible input is clearly useful, but wouldn't it be better if there were a way to—you know—speed things up a bit?
That's where Krashen and I diverge. I believe that's a better way for adults to learn foreign languages—one that can enable most of us to reach a conversational level quickly, without being as effortful and frustrating as explicit language learning often can be.
Luca is evoking Krashen to big
himself up, and he then
completely disagrees with Krashen's fundamental point while minimising how huge this is.
And also minimising how he's completely retreading old ground and shedloads of people more qualified than him have already said what he's daying. No teacher has ever said that reading target language books is bad -- they've only said that there's more to language learning than doing that. All Krashen has ever said is effectively that you just want to read books, and doing anything else is a waste of time.
Luca repeatedly talks about the one person who disagrees with him and completely ignores the people who agree with him. Why, because if he draws attention to people who understand language learning, he's pushing readers away from his naive opinion pieces, and how would he make a living then?!? Why, he'd have to find something useful to do!!
While Krashen believes that knowledge gained through explicit learning (that is, explicit knowledge) can never turn into implicit knowledge, I believe that explicit knowledge can often facilitate and reinforce information gained implicitly.
AAAAARRRRGH!
I could cite so many names that agree with him, and he only mentions Krashen... WHO DISAGREES WITH EVERYTHING HE STANDS FOR!
To be clear, I'm not exactly saying that Krashen and his Input Hypothesis are wrong;
Yes. He. Is.
comprehensible input should be the foundation of any language learning plan.
That is not what Krashen says.
I myself try to get as much comprehensible input as I can, but I always supplement that input with learning tools and aids in my native language (or a language I know well), so that I can make the learning process as efficient as possible.
And this is not disagreeing with a guy that says tools and aids in your native language are useless? Really? That's like saying "I don't disagree with vegan diets, because I eat plants too, but I don't think you can survive without meat." Yes, that's disagreeing with vegan diets, and Luca is disagreeing with Krashen.
Before I read and listen to a target language dialogue, I always make sure I obtain (or create) a bilingual copy of the text (affiliate), in both my native and target languages. This gives me a way to quickly fill in gaps in understanding as I mentally process the target language content.
Disagrees with Krashen.
As I get my input, if I find that there's a grammar structure that I repeatedly fail to understand, I won't just gloss over it until my brain figures it out. Instead, I'll go online and read a short explanation of the grammar point in my native language, and maybe even take a short quiz on it, if one is available.
Disagrees with Krashen.
As my input levels increase, I don't simply let my pronunciation skills grow naturally, based upon the pronunciation of the native speakers I've listened to. Rather, I seek out feedback from others, and even do a little technical research on the sound system of my target language.
Disagrees with Krashen.
Differently from Krashen, I believe that certain "explicit" learning tools (like translations, grammar explanations, and even feedback given in your native language) can help you learn a new language while saving lots of time that you would otherwise spend waiting for your brain to implicitly "absorb" the language!
Dis. Agrees. With. Krashen.
As such, I believe it is best to learn new languages in a way that combines both Krashen's implicit learning methods and some of the more typical methods for explicit learning that we're already familiar with. This is because explicit learning FACILITATES the acquisition of implicit knowledge, which is essential to learning a language well.
No.
No.
No.
Krashen's views are "only this works, nothing else does." If you combine techniques, you are doing What Mainstream Educationalists Do and NOT what Krashen does.
Luca's entire schtick would fall apart if he presented it honestly, because he would basically be saying "good teachers are good... trust them".
[Sorry for a long rant. Just couldn't help myself given the topic.]