Acquisition and learning

More recent investigations of how people become language users have centred on the distinction between acquisition and learning. In particular Stephen Krashen(1981, 1982, 1984) characterised acquisition as a subconscious process which results in the knowledge of the language whereas learning results only in ‘knowing about’ the language. Acquiring a language is more successful and longer lasting than learning.

The suggestion Krashenmade is that second (or foreign) language learning needs to be more like the child’s acquisition of its native language. But how do children become competent users of their language? Although there may be some limits on the language that they hear, they are never consciously ‘taught it’, nor do they consciously set out to learn it. Instead they hear and experience a considerable amount of the language in situations where they are involved in communicating with an adult – usually a parent. Their gradual ability to use language is the result of many subconscious processes. They have not consciously set out to learn a language; it happens as a result of the input they receive and the experiences, which accompany this input. Much foreign language teaching, on the other hand, seems to concentrate on getting the adult student to consciously learn items of language in isolation – the exact opposite of this process. Schematically these two processes can be illustrated as follows:

Krashensaw successful acquisition as being very bound up with the nature of the language input, which the students receive. Input is a term used to mean the language that the students hear or read. This input should contain language that the students already ‘know’ as well as language that they have not previously seen: i.e., the input should be at a slightly higher level than the students are capable of using, but at a level that they are capable of understanding. Krashen called the use of such language to students ‘rough tuning’ and compared it to the way adults talk to children. Mothers and fathers tend to simplify the language they use so that the children can more or less understand it. They do not simplify their language in any precise way, however, using only certain structures; rather they get the level of their language more or less right for the child’s level of understanding. There are similarities in the way people talk to ‘foreigners’. Perhaps if students constantly receive input that is roughly-tuned – that is, slightly above their level – they will acquire those items of language that they did not previously know without making a conscious effort to do so.

The suggestion made by Krashen, then, is that students can acquire language on their own provided that they get a great deal of comprehensible input (i.e. roughly-tuned in the way we have described). This is in marked contrast to conscious learning where students receive finely-tuned input – i.e. language chosen to be precisely at their level. This finely-tuned input is then made the object of conscious learning. According to Krashen, such language is not acquired and can only be used to monitor what someone is going to say. In other words, whereas language which is acquired is part of the language store we use when we want to communicate, the only use for the consciously learnt language is to check that acquired language just as we are about to use it. Consciously learnt language, in other words, is only available in highly restricted circumstances, as a monitor. Learning does not directly help acquisition.