人类到底是如何习得语言的? A Simple Guide to Stephen Krashen's Theory

in my last video we touched on dr krashen's second language acquisition theory in a nutshell he believes that we human beings don't learn languages we pick them up naturally we acquire

them but for this natural acquisition to happen we must first expose ourselves to comprehensible inputs that is we always have to understand the

messages behind in order to acquire the language to acquire the linguistic forms now in today's talk not only will i break his theory down

for you and walk you through dr krashen's every hypothesis but also i will show you their implications and and how we can take them and revolutionize the way we

acquire any languages so prepare to be amazed well if you're still wondering what exactly comprehensible input is then let's first see what incomprehensible olympus looks

like [Music] well what do you think i'll be very surprised if you have understood anything except that these two are simply gorgeous now let's take a

listen to this mini lecture in german see how much you can understand this is mr spock yeah mr spock well of course you didn't understand every word of it but more or less you

got the gist of it um you could take a very good guess about what's going on and that's the whole point that's what we call comprehensible input and now with that definition sorted i

think we're ready to dive in the five core hypothesis in dr crash's theory but before that i'd like to give a shout out to the sponsor of today's video boya i'm using their latest wireless

microphone solution boya xm6 it's got a very compact and trendy design phenomenal audio quality an operating range up to 100 meters and of course a

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impressive so if you're also looking for a wireless microphone solution then i'd say this boya xm6 gives you the best value for money in each segment well actually i

think we have already covered the first two hypotheses in my last video first up we have this acquisition learning hypothesis you see if we want to develop our

ability in a language we either learn it or we acquire it but learning is a very conscious process we know what we're learning and we're working very hard towards it just like

what we did back in schools acquisition however is highly different it's the product of a subconscious process we think we are watching a video like what we're doing right now or we are

reading a comic book of course we're doing these things but in the meantime we are acquiring the language so we're not aware of it when it happens

it it requires no energy no effort no nothing just that all that is necessary is for you to understand the message that brings us to the second hypothesis

comprehension hypothesis we acquire language when we understand messages when people speak to us in another

language and we understand what they say or we read something in another language and we understand the message language acquisition will take place

more specifically if we understand messages that contain certain aspects of the language that we haven't yet acquired but are ready to acquire then we can acquire this bit of new

knowledge let's say your current level is at um i i for input and if you expose yourself to

comprehensible input at i plus 1 level it's not i plus 10 it's not i plus 100 just something slightly above your current level then if you can understand the meaning

behind first you will stand a chance to acquire the forms the linguistic structures by which the i plus one is expressed take that many lecture in german as an

example um it's very simple uh you of course your current level in german for most of you is at nearly zero but it's very simple so just slightly

above your level and um with of course with the help of your knowledge of the woes with the help of it's more importantly the context you can

understand more or less everything and we understand it you can pick up lots of things and let's not forget you do have your knowledge in english to fall back on because you see the

pronunciation of cigarette for the word three for mr spock are very similar to those in english so you can understand everything and then you can gradually acquire it

speaking of i plus one it's related to the third hypothesis now the remaining three hypothesis are even more interesting than the previous two let's start with this natural order

hypothesis you see dr krashen and his school of thoughts believe that um we all acquire languages especially grammatical items in a

specific order some grammatical items are required very early on while others are quite later now take english as an example

the ing the ing thing the progressive marker is always among the first items to be acquired meanwhile other seemingly simple rules

but just as simple as that ing thing is always acquired later because there's a lot of stuff that we hear that we're not going to acquire for another two years take for example english

certain grammatical items are there all the time and they're very late acquired like the third person singular ending he goes that can take six months to a year for children first language second language

sometimes it doesn't come ever some dialects don't have it and a beginner's going to hear that all the time you can ignore it yeah wait until it's time has come well like i said in

my last video your grammatical accuracy will only come in time it will only come when you are ready but somehow some teachers seem to think that they can change the natural order

by providing you with lots of explanations drills exercises and so on i mean a teacher can um drill the third person singular for a month without

making any progress on the students speaking ability because the students are not ready i mean they can do very well in the test but if they want to speak they have to

apply those consciously learned rules on the spot they're not fluent they're not going to use them even if they know the rules very well they hear the third person singular every day they're not

ready and the next hypothesis is all about rules the monitor hypothesis according to dr krashen those consciously learned knowledge grammar

that sort of things at best can serve as monitors or editors for your output let's say you're writing a speech or an article you don't want to embarrass yourself by making lots of

mistakes especially if you have to read them out loud later you don't want to make any mistakes and that's when grammar comes in very handy

um but in your daily conversation it's extremely hard to monitor yourself because three very stringent conditions must be met for you to do that

first you must know the rules of course and second you must be able to think about correctness all the time while you're producing the output no it's not very easy for some people

because you have to think about what you're saying and how you're saying it at the same time it's like multitasking like simultaneous interpreting

and thirdly you must have ample time let's say your friend asked you um where is gavin and you want to say oh gavin leaves for the park

but hang on you'll be like no he it's not he go to the park it's he goes to park right and somehow we need a definite article

here so he should be he goes to the park and gavin did mention he will be going to two parks so he should be he goes to the parks

oh by the time you figured out how to say it you look up trying to tell your friend the answer he's already gone he's already gone looking for gavin because because he can't be there waiting you uh all day

long so that's um what happens in the real world um and that gives an idea how effective those consciously learned language is in your daily life as we all

learn languages the same way back in schools through learning the old approach we all monitor ourselves all the time and the more we monitor ourselves the

more we realize i'm just an idiot despite years of efforts i still can't speak this bloody language properly and that's when we start losing confidence

meanwhile our teachers still shoving down our throat those things like third person singular things we're not ready to acquire and and they're wondering why didn't work

and scold us a lot and that's when we get the pressure we get more anxious so now we're getting less confident and more anxious and

that's when the last hypothesis comes in the effective filter somewhere in the brain chomsky tells us is a language acquisition device

our job is to get input into the device so that's input here low motivation low self-esteem high anxiety the block goes up the filter goes up

and the input cannot get in this explains how it can be that we can have two children in the same class both getting comprehensible input

one makes progress the other doesn't one is open to the input the other's closed simply put if you're not motivated we're not confident and we're

very anxious no matter how much comprehensible inputs we've got we're not going to acquire anything and there you go those are the five key

hypotheses in dr cratchen's theory he put together his theory around 1975 1976 so it's been around for nearly five decades

during which time his theory has been evolving and has been supported by a wide body of research and and i've seen myself how it works on

me and on many other polyglots and that's why i've been a very passionate missionary of this theory for quite some time well normally when a person has just been brainwashed by me

he or she has lots of questions which i think you must share and that's why before any keyboard warriors jump on me calling what i've just said uh you know useless or a hoax

i'd like to start with some of some of the most frequently asked questions hopefully i can address some of your concerns now the first question well actually it's not a question is some people's

typical response to this theory they simply don't believe it saying that that can't be true at best it might work for first language

acquisition you know a baby growing up picking up his or her mother tongue but definitely not for sla and let's hear what dr krashen has to say on that the applications of the

theory it started with adult second language acquisition then to my amazement it worked for child second language every three four years

now i'm convinced it works for language acquisition in general it laid the foundation for successful bilingual programs and a couple years ago i started looking

at research in animal language and wrote a paper on it a couple of papers and it fits fairly well it's something that could guide the research so you can see his theory has held up very well

over the five decades has been supported by an increasing number of research uh also his theory could be applied in many other areas now the second question or the

second typical response is that people say okay i'll take a word for it but if that's true do we need to learn grammar at all that's a good question isn't it

let me give you some more backstory over the years many researchers trying to find evidence for the traditional language teaching theory the skill building

hypothesis ended up gathering more evidence for natural acquisition they found out that even after substantial grammar study

even for the most motivated student they showed very modest gains in grammatical accuracy the readers were better the second year

of the project this nine disappeared these groups were identical and even farther ahead of the audio lingual group they were better in

reading they were better in writing they were better on tests of grammar in other words the readers did better on grammar tests than children who studied

grammar this has been replicated again and again in the professional literature this is simply one of many studies um i think

there's still a place for grammar you see if we acquire languages through comprehensible input we we learn the language the way native speakers do

but even for the most well-educated native speakers they still have certain gaps you know bits and pieces where their grammatical competence differ from the accepted use

in that language and that's when grammar should step in if you have watched my last episode i think you can recall when i was a boy i always thought as if

it were was a single word well i uh i do recognize there were some different variations you know people some people say as if it were some people say as if it was um sometimes

it's as if she were or he were but i i had no idea what subjunctive was i could use it but it just never occurred to me as if could be two separate things you see that's when i

need grammar and personally now i only use grammar as sort of you know a reference like dictionaries like like these things

um you don't spend all your time reading dictionary do you you just look at words in it when you run into troubles and that's how you treat grammar dr krashen examined very carefully in his

papers the value of grammar teaching and i quote when we examine the impact of grammar study on grammar test performance it is very modest and therefore he concluded that i recommend

delaying the teaching of these rules until more advanced levels i would first give acquisition a chance and then use conscious knowledge to fill in some of the gaps there's no sense teaching rules

for monitoring that will eventually be acquired grammar this is not excluded it is however no longer the star player but has only a supporting role now the third question is very similar

now that we can acquire all languages on our own is there still a place for teachers well um i think now this is me thinking out loud

here this is not dr crash and talking for me i think um of course teachers teachers are still indispensable but their role will have to change

you see teachers are not supposed to be the ones who you know teach us how to say this in english and say that in french um all these bits and pieces could be otherwise acquired

by comprehensible input so what do we need to hear it from you teachers should be responsible for providing students with lots of comprehensible inputs you know interesting books movies whatever it is

that just might interest students and is also comprehensible on top of that a teacher should should be really good at making incomprehensible complicated things

comprehensible i say if i want to study italian then people normally would say then go to italy if i did go to italy i would understand

nothing because it would be just like noise incomprehensible things for me pretty much like um the video in slovak i showed you at the very beginning

um if instead i followed a good teacher who can make things really comprehensible then i'd say i would make a lot more progress in my first lesson than i would have in in my first year in italy

so what do i mean by a good teacher so apart from making things comprehensible and providing students with lots of sources i think a good teacher should make this thing very clear for

his students your progress in the language does not come from anywhere else but comprehensible input so you can't just sit here you know

doing nothing waiting to be fed thinking okay i'm gonna learn a language this way no you have to be very proactive now your progress does not come from grammar

study does not come from how much vocabulary we've got it doesn't even come from your output because research has shown to a large extent that output doesn't help very much

the contribution of conversation in your language study mainly comes from what the other person says to you not so much what you say to them so a good teacher should never force speaking in his classroom as that will

only raise the effective filter among his students and lastly a good teacher should aim to bring students up to a level where they are now autonomous acquirers

meaning their language proficiency is now at a reasonably good level where they can now access those authentic real words material that should be the true aim for any foreign

language pedagogy and the next question where can i find those comprehensible inputs well i think this is the most relevant one for you and i'd like to see the answer to this question as the key takeaway for you

today so let's say if there's only one thing you can remember from my talk today and then you would be this the short answer is i don't know because uh comprehensible input is

highly customized what works for me may not work for you but i don't think you'll be very happy about that onset so let me give you the long one

and there's something called optimal input coined by dr crashing um as his theory evolves till today naturally there are some new terms and

this optimal input for me is what's most pleasant for both the teachers and students there are four characteristics for this optimal input idea first

of course it has to be very comprehensible but that doesn't mean it should be 100 transparent remember i plus 1 it should be slightly above your current level it may contain some

unknown words unknown grammatical items but it's okay as long as it doesn't impede your comprehension then it's okay

the second characteristic is compelling compelling in the sense that it is so interesting that you temporarily forget it's in another language if that's the case then

despite all this noise you'll be drawn in to this story to this content you won't even notice those noise the third characteristic for optimal input is that it must be rich in language that

contributes to the message and flow of the story now the language included in the input also gives the readers support in understanding and therefore acquiring new aspects of the language if we can do

that then it's not necessary to make sure that certain grammar or vocabulary are used because reach input automatically includes new unacquired language at i plus one level so let's

say your teacher asks you a question in the classroom like what is this oh it's a mouse uh what is that that's a deer well

as we use these props so it's very um comprehensible but it's not rich in language it involves very repetitive language pattern and the language used

contributes nothing to the whole story that's what we want to avoid and the last attributes for optimal input is quantity it takes a great deal of comprehensible compelling rich input to

achieve competence therefore the optimal input must be abundant which will provide more opportunities for acquisition of the new language many polyglots i know use serious books as

their optimal inputs say you're a big fan of harry potter you've read books like these for thousands of times and you've watched movies for thousands of times then good what i recommend you

doing is start reading these books in your target language um english japanese french whatever it is when you're reading them what happens is that

given you're so familiar with the story you won't be looking at those linguistic features you're just trying to enjoy uh the story because you're you're so familiar with the story the

whole context make it even easier for you to understand things so this book is now much more comprehensible for you and this practice has been supported by many studies showing that better readers in

english as first language tend to read more serious books and a number of studies on second language acquisition also confirmed this so what are you waiting for you can always start with these serious books or

the graded readers available on the internet or in the bookstores i hope you've enjoyed today's video so far i'd like to take this opportunity to thank today's sponsor borya for making this video possible actually it's not my

first time to use boya's product my previous videos were all shot using this vg330 package what i like about this xm6 system though is that it comes with two lavalier microphones meaning you can

either choose his setup using the building mic and clipping on your shirt or do what i do using the lavalier connecting to your transmitter for better sound quality okay that's it thank you very much for

watching today's video i know be like oh god another long video well for me um is very very short because you see this topic is the most

important thing i've always wanted to cover in this channel that's why i've been doing a lot of research in the past few months i i have read dozens of dr crash's paper i have

watched almost all videos featuring him on the internet and i've gathered a lot of a lot more empirical evidence just in case you don't believe me

um yes i am fishing for isaiah stanley and here for my efforts um but what i'm trying to tell you here is that today's video and last episode

are the cornerstone for this channel as they form the architecture of my words of language acquisition so going forward when i make

more specific content when i say things like um or comprehensible input will be on the same page hopefully now again thank you very much for your

patience hopefully you've learned something i'll see you next time