An alternative take on Krashen

[Cainntear]

My current light bedtime reading is a wee book called Neurolinguistics written by Giosuè Baggio. Last night, I saw something worth posting here and showed a bookmark at the page to remind me to do it...

We also know that speech processing----like virtually any other perceptual and cognitive process in the brain----is predictive: the brain is never waiting passively for new input to arrive; it is always trying to anticipate the next stimulus in a sequence and the outcomes of the organism's own acts. Moreover, there are different kinds of prediction, which may engage different predictive systems in the brain. Predictions may rely on knowledge of regular phonological properties of speech or, equivalently, acquired phonological patterns in a given language, which would make certain sequences of sounds more likely to occur, that is, more predictable, than others. Based on this prior knowledge, as speech unfolds in time, the brain actively generates a model of the current stimulus and its possible continuations.These internally synthesized representations of spaeech are then compared with the actual input, and the error (the difference between the internal model and the input) is fed back to the system for online correction.

I don't know whether this is something I was told before or it just matches my intuitive understanding... but I suspect both. I'm pretty certain that in my distance degree module covering linguistic principles and the grammar, the concept of "garden path sentences" was used to illustrate the idea that language was predictive, and jokes can be more funny if they lead you to expect something and surprise you with something else -- the name "garden path sentences" references the idiomatic phrase "to lead someone up the garden path" describing exactly that. The common example used was a Groucho Marx line: "time flies line an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." His first clause is a simile and set up a structure of #(noun) flies (verb) like (preposition) a #(noun) that we expect to repeat -- our brains see the second clause as a parallel and it's only when the final noun appears that the semantics break down. (And actually, I think he cheated by saying "a banana" rather than "bananas", because "fruit flies like a banana" is potentially not valid English, but never mind... it still illustrates the point!!!)

So that's a major underlying part of my disagreement with Krashen, because regardless of when I first read about predictive stuff, I had always felt that I didn't fully understand something in a foreign language if I couldn't (theoretically) say the same thing myself. If I didn't know the grammatical structure, I'd be basically guessing at the intended meaning. I say "theoretically", because the real edge of my language development were sentences that I couldn't say spontaneously, but were made up of a combination of features that I could use spontaneously.

But if comprehension relies on being able to anticipate likely next words, how can comprehensible input even exist? That's why I think that Krashen's constant use of German as a demonstration lesson was something of a cheat, a get-out. German is just similar enough to English that you can start off with pretty reasonable predictions without being too far wrong that you can't pick it up in the "correction" phase. French would probably be close enough too. But if he'd done his demo with Basque... what would people have thought?

Hau da nire eskua.
Bi esku ditut.
Hauek dira nire begiak.
Hiru begi ditut: bat, bi, hiru.

"Ich habe" is close enough to "I have" to be assumed to be the same... and assumed correctly. "ditut" is pretty far from "I have", but the assumption is still fairly likely... but Basque is so different that the assumption is wrong.

[leosmith]

If I understand correctly, studying grammar in this way is considered learning, but not acquisition in the terminology of Krashen's publications.

This distinction makes little sense, though. Do we talk about "acquiring" how to walk, or "learning"? Nobody gave us conscious instruction. Is it an error that we teach children how to tie their children with direct instruction? Should they be left to "acquire" that skill? And for that matter, do we not talk about children "learning" how to talk? (Admittedly, we'll more often talk about when they "start talking", but we do use the term "learn".)

By making a distinction that doesn't match with the colloquial meaning of the words, Krashen invented a new jargon -- jargon that has been roundly rejected by the language learning community that a huge number of authors feel obliged to include a sentence rejecting Krashen's distinction and saying they use the two terms interchangeably. My go-to citation in essays was Lourdes Ortega's book Understanding Second Language Acquisition "although in the early 1980s there was an attempt at distinguishing between the two terms, in contemporary SLA terminology no such distinctionis typically upheld." (2009, p5)

The fact is that Krashen was making a distinction that others don't, and by putting words on it, he's reified the thing that people think there's a genuine difference there.

Great post, Cainntear.

Completely agree. And as a non-parent, I especially like the part about children tying up children. That would solve so many problems imo.

[leosmith]

I also find it easier to learn from L2 sentences if I hear or read the translation in L1 beforehand, rather than afterwards.

It's hard for me to understand what you're saying here without a concrete example. Is it perhaps, memorizing the fact that "The car is fast." is "O carro é rápido." in Portuguese is more helpful than memorizing the fact that "O carro é rápido." is "The car is fast." in English? If so, I would say that it depends on whether you are trying to acquire active or receptive skills. It's best to do both, if you're trying to acquire both. If you have to choose one, then I think you are right.

[Cainntear]

Completely agree. And as a non-parent, I especially like the part about children tying up children. That would solve so many problems imo.

Then the joke is on you! I drew you in with talk of tying up children and then once you'd said you agreed with my post, I cunningly replaced the word "children" in the original post with "shoelaces".

Bwahahaha!

Soon nothing will stop me from my plan for world domination!!!

[orlandohill]

I also find it easier to learn from L2 sentences if I hear or read the translation in L1 beforehand, rather than afterwards.

It's hard for me to understand what you're saying here without a concrete example.

I was responding to Granrey's post directly before mine. I wanted to summarise the main point, and say that it matched my personal experience too.

An example of an L1/L2 sentence pair would be the following taken from The Project Gutenberg.

The year 1866 was marked by a bizarre development, an unexplained and downright inexplicable phenomenon that surely no one has forgotten.

L'année 1866 fut marquée par un événement bizarre, un phénomène inexpliqué et inexplicable que personne n'a sans doute oublié.

If I were to hear those two sentences spoken in learning material (a podcast, textbook audio, Glossika, Mango Languages, etc), I would learn to comprehend more of the French sentence if I heard the English sentence first. Likewise, if I read the English sentence before hearing or reading the French sentence.

[Granrey]

I also find it easier to learn from L2 sentences if I hear or read the translation in L1 beforehand, rather than afterwards.

It's hard for me to understand what you're saying here without a concrete example. Is it perhaps, memorizing the fact that "The car is fast." is "O carro é rápido." in Portuguese is more helpful than memorizing the fact that "O carro é rápido." is "The car is fast." in English? If so, I would say that it depends on whether you are trying to acquire active or receptive skills. It's best to do both, if you're trying to acquire both. If you have to choose one, then I think you are right.

idk how to explain it but I have tested it myself.

It might be combination of many things like not knowing the correct pronunciation (and due to that not recognizing the words when said correctly).

I have tried several things like:
1) play sentence in L2 with no subs. Then I do not understand anything. then play it again with subs and me be like: "oh yeah, he/she did say that very clear'.

2) play another sentence muted but with subs. Then play the sentence in L2 without the subs and understanding everything very clearly like if I was fluent.

I repeat, I tend to think it has a lot with not knowing the right or slang pronunciation or accent or speed.

For instance, if I watch this video I'm most likely to understand 85% of it but surely I can follow the conversation.

https://youtu.be/wXKESvKk_QM?si=3XVvQ8ogq4dM_hz9

Now this video, I understand signicantly less but I can follow the conversation.

https://youtu.be/OI1k8HuWQB0?si=QLbAfW-XewqaE-Ux

Now If I watch any content with natives speaking, I cannot even follow the conversation.

I listen to a podcast named: ehoui. When she is talking by herself like she does in most of her videos. I understand 95+ of what she says.

However, when she brings a guest. It totally becomes back to natives talking and I cannot even follow the conversation.

However, in all these cases, If I already know what the person is going to say (or I get that info as they say it). I'm very likely to understand, regardless if I would have used a different set of words.

I have noticed as well, that If I did not understand the initial words of a sentence, I'm less likely to understand the others.

I have noticed as well I'm less likely to understand if the speaker is conveying a meaning that I was not expecting at all. For instance, if the answer to a question is "yes or no". I'm likely to miss "never' if used as an answer.

[Greasaias]

I don't like the idea of 'comprehensible input'. I find it incomprehensible.

My alternative take is to approach the problem from the other (correct ofc) end. What matters is INcomprehensible input. The more incomprehensible items in a given text, the more you can learn from it.

There is no catch. There is, however, a practical issue of using the text. In particular, if you want to learn through extensive reading you need to know ~98% of words in a given text.
Otherwise reading:
1) becomes 'intensive', and - without a parallel text (be it on the opposite page or a separate volume) or extensive notes (a 'reader') - painful;
2) turns, at least partially, into skimming (nothing wrong with that; just saying).

'i+1' isn't exactly comprehensible either.
I haven't conducted any studies (yet…), but in many Japanese learner's experience, including mine, now and again you come upon a sentence you know every constituent of, as well as the grammatical structure of the whole. But - you still don't get it.
(Why despite these experiences people haven't abandoned the very notion of 'i+1' is a separate issue.)
Now, me might claim that we did not understand it precisely because it was i+n where n>1. Fine - but what would that even mean? What's the i, what's the n, and most importantly - what is the +‽

I much prefer professor Nation's meaning-focused input.
Say you're watching an LP of my favourite video-game in your target language. If you don't pay too much attention, just follow the actions more or less, and learn but a few expletives - that was meaning-focused input! Inefficient - maybe.
Say you're reading a book. Half of it is at your level according to the 98% metric, the other half too hard. If you just keep on reading and grab what you can without resorting to a dictionary - congratulations, you just performed a meaning-focused input kind of activity.
The label "meaning-focused input" is IMHO both clearer and more useful.

[Kraut]

a critical review dating from this month
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Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences IMPES 2023
Volume 26 (2024)
130
A Review of Krashen’s Input Theory
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... put_Theory

[Le Baron]

Can't believe that was published in a journal. The writing is terrible. Writing 'info' instead of information and lots of meaningless sentences.

From section 4.1:

The Acquisition-Learning Distinction, which captures the intrinsic link between “language learning” and “language acquisition”, is strongly related to the Monitor Hypothesis. This theory suggests that language learning and acquisition have different processes.

Well then it doesn't describe an 'intrinsic link' at all! It describes a complete distinction, which is probably why it is called the 'Acquisition-Learning Distinction'.
This one is good:

It is interesting that students seem to need such a period to appropriately digest information. At the point when this stage is broken, a negative attitude may appear in students’ hearts when they are learning a new language.

There are various definitions of the word “comprehensible” [...] In many explanations, the terms “comprehensible” and “comprehended” are used in opposition to each other, as the former refers to a potential or a process, whilst the latter refers to reality or the outcome of an action.

What?? How does this make 'comprehensible' a "controversy"? Using another form of the verb doesn't set up some sort of meaning crisis.

[emk]

Can't believe that was published in a journal. The writing is terrible. Writing 'info' instead of information and lots of meaningless sentences.

I tried to look up more information on the journal where this was published. The information was conflicting, but external sites claimed the "impact factor" of the journal was 0.1. For every 10 papers published in the journal, there's an average of 1 citation in another paper. Depending on the field, typical impact factors of reasonable journals often range from 1.0-7.0.

An impact factor of 0.1 usually means one of two things: The journal exists to run up people's publication counts, or it's a niche journal in a field that doesn't interact much with larger journals in the anglosphere. There are two or three other clues pointing at the former.

That doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with the paper—I can think of at least one interesting statistics paper that got passed around as a photocopy but never made it into a journal at all. It's cited in multiple other papers as "unpublished".

But it does suggest that this paper should be read on its own merits, rather than being assumed to be the Final Word of Science.