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Dr. Stephen Krashen on Language Acquisition

There's a lot of talk about comprehensible input and how language acquisition works. I came across this video and thought it was interesting to hear it directly from the researcher that pioneered the idea.

(On balance: I think he's a little too gung-ho in saying speaking practice and many other things are unhelpful. But that's just my speculation. It's an old video, even 15 years ago when uploaded, and may be outdated in ways. Also, sorry for the delightfully terrible VHS level video quality; but it's kind of appropriate I guess.)

Watching his little drawing while he speaks German is a good reminder of what good, beginner-level comprehensible input videos should look like. The comprehensible part is important!

1 comments

  • There's a lot of good info in the video. And I recommend people to watch it fully, before taking conclusions about the content.

    A few highlights:

    • Speaking practice actually helps a fair bit. At the least with phonetics (training muscle memory) and grammar (you catch patterns you otherwise wouldn't).
    • The three factors he mentions near the end (motivation, self-esteem, anxiety) are what a lot of teachers and professors do wrong - because they make you feel like you're in some group therapy.
    • Even if you don't understand what is said, focus on the situation. He shows this rather well with the Spock example. (i.e. since context dictates the meaning of the text, even if you don't get the text you can still retrieve info from the context.)