Running head: FUNDAMENTALS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 1

Stephen Krashen's Most Groundbreaking Contributions To The Fields Of Second Language

Deicy Cristina Ramos Hernández

Universidad Surcolombiana
FUNDAMENTALS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 2

Stephen Krashen's Most Groundbreaking Contributions To The Fields Of Second Language

During the conference, I understood that to advance in language acquisition, it is

advisable or necessary to comprehend Stephen Krashen's theory. Krashen devises a way to

acquire a foreign language without the need to speak or write to learn. Krashen's distinction

between acquisition and learning is based on the difference between the unconscious and the

conscious. According to his proposal, production in one language, however small, is based on

acquisition. The fundamental idea of Krashen's first contribution is that all this new

knowledge is learned; this is a conscious knowledge, the same type as any other knowledge

in the world.

Krashen distinguishes between "acquiring" and "learning" a second language.

Language is acquired naturally and unconsciously through its use in real communication.

Thus, children are not aware that they are acquiring their mother tongue; they only realize

that they are communicating with it. Having developed linguistic competence in this sense,

the child will use the language correctly, even if he cannot explain the rules. In contrast to

this acquisition process, learning a second language occurs by making its linguistic rules

explicit. In this way, the student develops a formal knowledge of the language.

Another fundamental contribution is that error correction can affect the conscious

"learning" of a language, but not it's unconscious "acquisition." The order in which the

grammatical structures of a language tend to be "acquired" (not learned) is innately

predetermined. In this way, the mother tongue's influence does not modify the natural order

with which a second language is "acquired." Although teaching favors the development of

"learning" and not the "acquisition" of a language, Krashen believes that a language can also

be "acquired" in the classroom. In the classroom, "acquisition" can also be developed, the

teacher's role will consist, according to Krashen, in facilitating this process as a teaching

objective.
FUNDAMENTALS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 3

This author maintains that we "acquire" a language by understanding a linguistic

"input" that allows us to advance in our level of competence. Therefore, comprehension

language skills take precedence over overexpression skills, since the student does not learn to

speak and write a language directly but through oral and written comprehension.

For Krashen, the acquisition process is independent of learning. Despite being a

general idea among teachers, Krashen denies that the practice of what is learned produces

acquisition, that is, learning some grammatical rules does not apply that they know how to

use in real communication. The "acquisition" of these grammatical rules follows a natural

order that their "learning" cannot modify. This position is justified, among other reasons, by

the fact that students may know some grammatical rules ("learning") that they do not use

correctly in communicative situations ("acquisition"). The student can "learn" the

grammatical rules of a language as a consequence of the teacher's formal teaching. Still, he

only "acquires" them according to an internally pre-established natural order.

Krashen distinguishes between acquisition as a spontaneous, natural, and unconscious

process of internalization, as a consequence of exposure and the natural use of language for

communicative purposes and with express attention to form. And learning understood as a

conscious process that occurs through classroom teaching, and which implies an explicit

knowledge of the language as a system.

And this is how I create my concepts through this conference given by Stephen

Krashen on Friday, June 5 of this year, and I appreciate that the professor Carlos Muñoz for

inviting us to these participatory and learning spaces.