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Krashen and Comprehensible Input | ||
Tags: Comprehensive input | Poll | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7204 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 1 of 12 23 March 2015 at 1:25am | IP Logged |
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Stephen Krashen on Comprehensible Input.
One of Stephen Krashen's contribution is the popularization of the theory that languages are acquired through comprehensible input. Did Stephen Krashen get it right? What do you think? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5344 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 2 of 12 23 March 2015 at 1:38am | IP Logged |
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Yes, comprehensible input is the most important factor.
I could learn any language for which there are suitable graded reading materials with accompanying audio. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 12 23 March 2015 at 1:55am | IP Logged |
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It's an important notion, but I still think you need a measure of active production to
improve 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5261 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 4 of 12 23 March 2015 at 1:56am | IP Logged |
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I haven't read Krashen, though I am familiar with his theories from HTLAL posts.
I believe a lot in comprehensible input as an important part of a multi-track approach. The other tracks are important as well if I want to fully engage with a language. Output, writing and speaking, is necessary for me in helping to consolidate knowledge that is learned passively in new pathways. Without using what I have learned through comprehensible input, I may understand it when I see it, but it isn't mine in the same way as when I use it actively. My knowledge of Spanish, Portuguese, Ladino, English and Haitian Creole helps me to understand French passively to a large extent. I could probably learn the language passively rather quickly if I devoted some time to it. Emk's subs2srs would work well for me. To have a high level, to actually speak the language, I would need a lot more than just comprehensible input. I would need to make my output comprehensible. That's just me. YMMV. Edited by iguanamon on 23 March 2015 at 1:57am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Paco Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 4276 days ago 145 posts - 251 votes Speaks: Cantonese* | Message 5 of 12 23 March 2015 at 2:05am | IP Logged |
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Like Juan, as far as there is comprehensible input with recordings for me to do shadowing (aka
input plus quasi-output) I am fine, since they are what let us associate sound patterns with meanings at the end of the day. But a neat reference grammar would do us a great service. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 12 23 March 2015 at 10:04am | IP Logged |
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Comprehensible input is a great improvement on incomprehensible input, but in his fanatical opposition to traditional learning methods Krashen has systematically discouraged people from using the tools that could make texts comprehensible AND make the things you learn from them stick - like grammars and systematic vocabulary study.
And although he and his followers have claimed that people learn to speaker better/faster with his methods than with traditional methods (which actually cover more terrain than he allows for) these claims have a fairly weak basis. He has as far as I know never really explained how a stream of input suddenly makes a tiger leap and becomes an active output channel. But that doesn't diminish the value of comprehensible input, including the version where comprehensibility is achieved through the use of bilingual texts. Edited by Iversen on 23 March 2015 at 10:34am 9 persons have voted this message useful | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6150 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 7 of 12 23 March 2015 at 10:20am | IP Logged |
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I voted for Read, Listen, Speak, and Grammar is best. While I think comprehensible input is very important, feedback and feature awareness are critical for language acquisition. My main problem with Krashen, is that any evidence which may refute his hypothesis, he counter argues that this is due to affective filters on the part of the learner. In other words, he’s made his hypothesis unprovable, thus breaking a fundamental notion in science.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 12 24 March 2015 at 4:18am | IP Logged |
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Like DaraghM, I voted for Read, Listen, Speak, and Grammar is best. And pretty much for the same reasons. But I
would also like to add that I think that the formulation of the questions in this poll is faulty. I had a look at the video, and I was particularly interested in Krashen's trademarked German lesson. I should first point out that Krashen did not explain how he learned to speak German, but that is a minor point. What was really important was the fact that he first presented an "incomprehensible" sentence in German, pointing out that regardless how it was presented, it remained incomprehensible and therefore useless for teaching the language. Then he demonstrated, using a drawing, how certain nouns and numerals could be taught in German using comprehensible meaning. It's important to note that he did not teach the same sentence as in the incomprehensible example. The contrast here was between incomprehensible and comprehensible input. It's very obvious that comprehensible input beats incomprehensible input all the time. But nobody has really ever disagreed with this. I've never seen anybody arguing in favour of incomprehensible input. It seems to me that all language learning has to start with some form of comprehensible input. What other possibility is there? But I don't think that this is really what Krashen is all about. His contribution has to be put in the historical context of foreign language classroom teaching in the 70s and 80s. What he opposes is explicit formal language teaching. And in this sense I think he had made a very important contribution. What he has shown is that spoken language can be acquired spontaneously in the course of natural social interaction with native speakers. He has popularized the idea of a silent period during which the learner absorbs the material and then is able to correctly reproduce the language. In my opinion, this is actually plain common sense in the context of a class of young learners. I believe that things are different for the independent adult learner like most of us at HTLAL. Comprehensible input is of course a starting point. But I believe that explicit language instruction that addresses the specific problems of learners can accelerate the learning process. Immersion, tutoring, corrective feedback, speaking or articulating from the beginning can be very effective. Let's take something like pronunciation. If you are in an immersive environment, I believe that through sheer exposure, you will develop a pretty good accent with time. If you are not in an immersive situation, it is going to be longer and more difficult. But working with a good tutor on specific difficulties, in my opinion, can make a huge difference. Why wait for nature to take its course when you can speed things up with some explicit work? It's the same thing for writing. I would think that you have to read as much as you can to be able to write properly, but I think it's preposterous to believe that lots of reading will spontaneously produce a good writer. I believe that the best, and I would even go so far as to say the only, way to learn how to write well is to write a lot and have lots of correction. It's as simple as that. It has always been like that. If you want to write, write. In summary then, I believe the questions are incorrectly framed. They should be along the lines of: Comprehensible input is all you need. Comprehensible input is the most important factor Incomprehensible input is useful Explicit language teaching is best 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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