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MA TEACHING ENGLISH TO SPEAKERS OF OTHER LANGUAGES

MA TESOL & CREATIVE WRITING
2016-17

LANGUAGE AND LEARNING: DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS

(7TESL003W.1)
UNIT 2

Student: Vitória Prochet Student number: 160823571

NAME OF LECTURER MARKING THE ESSAY: Mark KRZANOWSKI

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CRITICALLY EVALUATE KRASHEN’S MONITOR MODEL

For many years applied linguists have been trying to reach a

consensus about the best approach for teaching English as a Foreign

Language (EFL). Several different theories regarding how one learns a

language have been presented and challenged, such as the Universal

Grammar theory (Chomsky, 1980). However, one of the first and most

discussed theories regarding Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is Stephen

Krashen’s Monitor Model (Krashen, 1981; Krashen, 1982).

The monitor model basically approaches the difference

between the two systems for developing linguistic abilities in adults: acquisition

and learning. The basic difference between them is that while acquisition

happens naturally and unconsciously, learning a language is a conscious

process. The researcher posits that “these systems are interrelated in a definite

way: subconscious acquisition appears to be far more important.” (Krashen,

1981:1)

Krashen (ibid) also believes that formally learning a language

only works as a monitor to the learner’s output, as Johnson (2013) states, “ the

Monitor allows a language user to alter the form of an utterance either prior to

production by consciously applying learned rules or after production via self-

correction.” In other words, the Monitor will edit the production of a learner who

is using the acquired language.

Krashen (1981) defends five hypothesis about SLA: the

Acquisition – Learning Hypothesis, the Natural Order Hypothesis, the Monitor

Hypothesis, the Input Hypothesis, and finally the Affective Filter Hypothesis.

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Each of the hypotheses relates to a different aspect of the Monitor Model, and it

is relevant to consider all five of them since they complement each other.

However, many linguists also criticize Krashen’s model. “We

have seen that each of Krashen’s five hypotheses is marked by serious flaws:

undefined or ill-defined terms, unmotivated constructs, lack of empirical content

and thus of falsifiability, lack of explanatory power” (Liu, 2015). For this reason,

this essay is divided in two parts. Firstly, it aims at theoretically discussing the

characteristics of Krashen’s monitor model, focusing on his five hypothesis for

SLA. Secondly, through research of this theory, it is intended to conclude if the

theory is relevant to foreign language teachers and students nowadays.

The first of Krashen’s Hypothesis concerning SLA is the

Acquisition – Learning Hypothesis, which presents two different systems that

influence the output of a language user. It outlines the difference between

acquiring and learning a language. Krashen (1981)believes that “Language

acquisition […] requires meaningful interaction in the target language--natural

communication--in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their

utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding.”

(ibid:1), while language learning is based on rules, formal instruction and error

correction. (Krashen, 1982:10) In other words, while acquirers use the

language, learners learn about the language.

Krashen (1981) posits that the acquirer of a language does not

consider grammar rules and is only driven by meaningful interactions. For this

user mistakes are not relevant, as long as they have fluency. He believes there

is a natural path when it comes to acquiring a language, beginning on the

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acquirer communicative needs, and eventually having grammar join in the

process, resulting in the correct utterance (ibid).

Shresta (1998) states that “second language learners

subconsciously internalize various rules and inductively create new

constructions when they attend to primary linguistic data in the natural

environment.” Moreover, after studying four different groups of students who

learned English in formal and informal environments, Upshur (1968) concluded

that, when it comes to language production, regular courses may not be as

effective as the use of language in other activities developed in the classroom,

and practical activities help the student learn the language faster. Johnson

(2013) adds, “the most important pedagogical implication of the first hypothesis

of the Monitor Model is that explicit teaching and learning is unnecessary,

indeed inadequate, for second language acquisition.”

However, language learning is the opposite. The process of

learning a language requires grammatical structure and constant error

correction (Ellis, 2005). Also, the sequence which a learner goes through is

completely different. While the acquirer has their own linguistic demands to

meet first, the learner goes through a logical sequence of content designed by a

teacher or a publisher, which do not necessarily meet that specific student’s

objectives.

Nonetheless, Shresta (1998) argues that “formal classroom

instruction filled with comprehensible input designed to convey meaning in a

low-anxiety situation is especially beneficial for beginning adult ESL learners for

whom the outside world is not prepared to provide such input for necessary

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intake.” Thus, formal classroom instruction also has significant value towards

teaching foreign languages to adults.

Another important aspect of the first theory is that, although

there are two different processes regarding the use of a language, Krashen

posits that learning cannot become acquisition (Johnson, 2013b). This view

has been extensively challenged. According to Johnson (ibid), a student

analyzed by him “initially consciously learned the conjugations of Japanese

verbs through rote memorization, which ultimately led to unconscious

acquisition. In his case, learning became acquisition. ” That means that this idea

can be refuted through learner experiences.

Although the hypothesis seems to make sense, it is impossible

to determine accurately if a user’s production is actually based on his acquired

or learned knowledge. Bahrani (2011) believes that “Krashen’s insistence that

‘learning’ cannot become ‘acquisition’ is quickly refuted by the experience of

anyone who has internalized grammar that was previously consciously

memorized.” Also, according to Shresta (1998), “One could not say for sure that

the observations made on the basis of such data were strictly products of formal

instruction or informal exposure.” Therefore, there is still space for criticism

towards this hypothesis.

The second point Krashen (1981) makes is the Natural Order

Hypothesis. The researcher believes a formal language student goes through a

predictable order of grammatical structures to learn language, similar to the one

native speakers go through when learning their first language (Krashen

1982:12; Abukhattala 2012:129). Shütz (1998) explains: “Krashen points out

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that the implication of the natural order hypothesis is not that a language

program syllabus should be based on the order found in the studies. In fact, he

rejects grammatical sequencing when the goal is language acquisition.” In

reality, Krashen discovered through extensive research with language acquirers

that the order of grammatical structures and morphemes one learns a second

language is slightly deviant from the order one learns their first language

(Krashen, 1982:14).

Another important aspect of the natural order hypothesis is how

error correction is performed in a natural acquisition environment. The monitor

model accounts developmental errors to not having the structure used

completely acquired. “We can assume, then, that mistakes will always be

present during the acquisition process, especially when dealing with the late

structure. Consequently, the best way to correct students’ mistakes is to provide

more input containing the structure in question” (Abukhattala, 2012:129). It

means correction is performed more naturally, such as mirroring the error in the

correct way, so that the acquirer can notice the mistake and correct himself.

However, Ellis (2005) states that there is no agreement “about what type of

corrective feedback to provide or even when explicit grammar teaching should

commence.”

Considering these points, Krashen (1982) suggests a change in

syllabus. Instead of following a predictable order of grammar functions, he

believes teachers should work with functions, topics and situations. Thus,

transforming the classroom environment from conscious grammar-based

teaching into more natural and situational, “copying” real life situations in which

the learner will have to deal with the language, not with the rules. Abukhattala

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(2012:129) adds to this belief: “What I fell should be done with most published

material is to include more recycling of the material so that late structures can

be properly received by students.”

Although the natural order hypothesis defends a more natural

approach, the importance of learning in a formal context cannot be ignored.

Zafar (2009) believes that Krashen’s theory is wrong to separate learning from

acquisition. “Instead of drawing a borderline separating acquisition and learning

into two discrete disciplines, the cross-currents of both the systems constantly

at work in second language acquisition (SLA) are to be acknowledged and

explained” (Zafar, 2009:141). As Ellis (2005) states, “a complete language

curriculum needs to ensure that it caters to the development of both formulaic

expressions and rule-based knowledge.” As the next hypothesis will show,

conscious learning also plays a role in students’ linguistic performance and,

therefore, should not be disregarded.

The monitor hypothesis is the central idea in the monitor model.

As mentioned previously, Krashen (1981) believed formal grammar based

learning would be used as a monitor for the acquired language, as an “editor” to

the output. The author highlights three focuses for the success of monitor: time,

form and rule. Burden (2006) agrees: “In order that the Monitor may work, three

principal conditions must be met. They are: the monitor needs time, a focus on

form and an appropriate knowledge of the rule.” In a situation in which all three

focuses are detected to work together, it is possible to detect the importance of

a grammar-based approach into the teaching of a language. “When they have

time, are focused on form, and know the rule, the error pattern changes,

reflecting the contribution of the conscious grammar” (Krashen, 1982:17).

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As acquirers of language are so concerned about the message

and the interaction, they do not have the time to monitor their speech. This

develops the student’s “feel for grammaticality” (Krashen, 1981:3), which means

knowledge of the rules will serve as a monitor for self-correction. However,

Krashen (1982:16) believes that a user does not have time to monitor each and

every one of the sentences produced in regular interaction. He states that “The

over-use of rules in conversation can lead to trouble, i.e. a hesitant style of

talking and inattention to what the conversational partner is saying” (ibid).

However, Zafar (2009) criticizes this idea. He states that “to

activate the learned/Monitor system, three conditions (i.e. time, focus on form,

knowledge of rule) need to be met which makes it all the more difficult either to

implement or to test the hypothesis in real-life situation.” It means that it is

difficult to assess to which extent Krashen’s hypothesis is actually true. He adds

that “Had speech been solely generated by the acquired system, L2 learners

would have ended up throwing words together in random, without making much

sense. Therefore, in communication, the frequency of the learned system-

activated utterances cannot be denied” (ibid).

Krashen (1981) divides the users of the monitor into three

distinct types: (1) Over-monitor users, who do not have confidence in the

language they have acquired and continuously check their production, impairing

their fluency; (2) under-monitor users, who are the extreme opposite. These

students rarely monitor themselves and have more grammatical errors than the

first group, but usually convey more meaning in their speech, are more talkative

and have more fluency. According to Wilson (no date), “although error

correction by others has little influence on them, they can often correct

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themselves based on a "feel" for correctness”; and (3) optimal monitor users,

who manage to use the monitor only when the situation is appropriate, as

Abukhattala (2012) mentions, when writing a speech or a letter. The acquirer in

the third group usually appears to have more knowledge of the language than

an acquirer in the second group in the same level because they know how to

properly use the monitor, they know how to use their learned and acquired

competences together to convey meaning.

Although the theory initially seems to match real life situations,

Krashen has been extensively criticized for not providing enough data or

empirical study (Bahrani 2011; Zafar 2009; Liu 2015). Also, as Bahrani (2011)

argues, “Krashen fails to take into account the role that monitoring plays in the

reception of language.” Therefore, it is not possible to conclude if Krashen’s

theory has appropriate supporting background to be even considered a theory.

Krashen (1981) also believes that language acquisition

happens only through comprehensible input, that is, “second-language students

acquire language competence by exposure to language that is both

understandable and meaningful to them.” (Tricomi, 1986) It can be translated as

the i+1 theory, “where i represents language at the students' current level of

competence” (ibid), in which the input the apprentice of a language receives is

slightly above the structures they have already acquired. Liu (2015) explains:

“The hypothesis has two convictions: first, speech would emerge, rather than

being taught, as a result of acquisition through comprehensible input with

competence successfully built; second, grammar is automatically acquired if

comprehensible input is received and there is enough of it.” Thus, to Krashen

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(1981) the input should be constant so that the student can internalize what he

hears and, finally, comprehend the grammatical rules contained in that speech.

For Krashen (1982), the input hypothesis is the ultimate answer

to how languages are acquired by students. As Zafar (2009) explains: “A

mechanism is devised to explain how L2 learners gradually acquire language

beyond their current level of competence (i+1) through contextual and

extralinguistic information.” Once more, Krashen (1982) holds that acquisition is

above learning, and points out that formal learning has little to do with user

performance. This theory has also been extensively criticized by many

researchers, such as Zafar (2009), “L2 learners would have to depend on

guesswork to understand certain grammatical rules beyond their present level

of acquisition (i+1), but that does not mean that such guesswork would

gradually be transformed into acquisition.”

However, Liu (2015) believes the researcher is obscure

concerning the meaning of his statements and theories. Zafar (2009) also

challenges, it is “indeed difficult to test empirically since nowhere does Krashen

define ‘comprehensible input’, or tell exactly how to measure the ‘level of

competence’ in ‘sufficient amount’ or ‘right quantities’. The vagueness of the

terms employed makes his theory all the more nontestable.” So, once again,

Krashen is being criticized for implementing theories without having support of

data or possibility of testing them.

It is commonly known among teachers of languages that

placing a student in a lower level than the one they belongs to can demotivate

them, and placing a student in a much higher level than the one which they

have will not help them. Thus, the i+1 theory seems correct, considering it is
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important to push the student further so that they can actually develop and

move forward with the language. However, “it is unclear how new input interacts

with the learner’s current level of grammar to cause change and how he could

advance to the next stage, apart from merely recognising the insufficiency of the

current one.” (Liu, 2015) Therefore, since Krashen defends a natural acquisition

setting and is against ordering contents based on difficulty, it seems difficult to

determine both, the linguistic level of the acquirer (i) and the level immediately

above it (+1).

The last hypothesis in the monitor model is the affective filter.

This theory can originally be credited to Dulay and Burt (1977), and was revised

by Krashen. For this theory, the researcher recognizes students’ motivation,

self-confidence and anxiety as three variables which influence on their success

or failure at learning an L2 (Zafar, 2009:144). To Krashen (1982:30) “that part of

the internal processing system that subconsciously screens incoming language

based on" the three variables mentioned. “Krashen claims that learners with

high motivation, self-confidence, a good self-image, and a low level of anxiety

are better equipped for success in second language acquisition” (Bahrani,

2011:282), while learners who show the opposite tend to mentally block the

comprehensible input to be turned into acquisition. Thus, to Krashen (1982:31)

“even if they understand the message, the input will not reach the part of the

brain responsible for language acquisition,” so a high filter could, in fact, impair

learning from taking place.

This hypothesis complements the input hypothesis. It confirms

that input is the main medium of acquisition of a language, but explains why

some learners have more success than others. Krashen (1982:32) maintains

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that the affective filter can act “to impede or facilitate the delivery of input”, to

what Tricomi (1986:60) adds that “acquisition will not occur if a student's

"affective filter," or collection of emotional responses that impede

comprehension of meaning, is raised.” Thus, if the affective filter can determine

how much a student will learn, than “the effective language teacher is someone

who can provide input and help make it comprehensible in a low anxiety

situation” (Krashen, 1982:32). So this hypothesis also relates to the question of

how the teacher will conduct their lessons.

Although Krashen holds a very strong point about the role of

input in student’s acquisition of a language, it is undeniable that he fails to

consider the role of output as well. The researcher believes that all stages a

student goes through when acquiring a language depend mainly on input, but

“despite an initial silent period, the major thrust in language development comes

when [children] start using and playing with words in their early years” (Burden,

2006:195). That is, output cannot be ignored.

It is clear that Krashen has brought many significant

contributions to applied linguistics and SLA theory, such as many aspects of the

monitor model and its theories. However, the researcher has failed at filling

many lacunas in his research, as well as testing and proving his hypotheses.

Firstly, the researcher makes a clear distinction between

acquisition and learning, claiming that acquisition happens naturally and

unconsciously, while learning happens through formal instruction. It seems very

extreme to draw a line between the two means of developing linguistic ability

and completely disregard formal learning. Yes, the communicative approach is

very influenced by this “real-life situations” reproduced in the classroom and

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making the student use the language to learn how to deal with it (Richards,

2006), but it is also very important to have formal instruction to help students

cope with linguistic elements and structures faster and more easily.

Secondly, when portraying the monitor hypothesis Krashen

believes that the learned language serves as a monitor for self-correction of the

acquired language. The researcher seems to be falling into contradiction. As

mentioned before, when describing the learning-acquisition hypothesis,

Krashen clearly divides learning from acquiring and dismisses formal learning

completely. However, in the monitor hypothesis formal learning reappears with

some kind of importance. This kind of contradiction seems to make the monitor

model be taken less seriously by other researchers (Gregg 1984; Liu 2015;

Zafar 2009; Bahrani 2011).

Thirdly, the monitor model glorifies input, but completely ignores

the importance of output for the development of linguistic abilities. It is clear that

input plays a very important role in language acquisition, but the way a learner

plays with words and tests hypotheses is also important for student

development. Output is how the student is going to do it. Thus, as much as

input seems to be a a better way of learning a language, it is also impossible to

disregard the importance of output in the process of learning/acquiring an L2.

Also, he believes there are five different stages a language user

goes through when acquiring a language: The silent period, the early production

period, the speech emergence period, the intermediate production period, and

the advanced production period. These stages define the evolution of the

language in an acquirer, going from only listening and internalizing speech

(silent period) to active fluent production (advanced production period).

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In the silent period input is very important, however, as the

student moves through the stages, output becomes even more important for

their development, being it for testing theories or even for correction, after all, a

learner will not be corrected if they do not produce any utterances at all.

Krashen seems to completely ignore the importance of output in both learning

and acquisition.

Finally, as already mentioned in this essay, his hypotheses are

very difficult to be proven for the simple reason that they are difficult to be

tested. Krashen is not very clear about the meaning of some key concepts in his

model (Gregg, 1984). i.e.: Krashen claims that the monitor serves as an editor

to acquired language, it works as a self-correcting tool for user production.

However it seems impossible to know accurately if the student is self-correcting

or editing his speech based on formally learned language or not. To some

researchers Krashen’s model cannot even be called a theory, since it cannot be

tested.

Word count: 3380 words

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