Lucas Joseph Joseph 1

Professor Riordan

WRIT 2

30 May 2023

PERM: 4395034 Written in Blood: A Detective Story

Saturday, April 8th, 20XX: I’ve been called in this morning to investigate the murder of a

linguistics professor at the University of Southern California. If it weren’t for the dogs barking at 4 AM, I

probably would have slept through the call, but I guess I woke up on the unlucky side of the bed this

morning. An A/V tech called it in, said he forgot the power cord to his camera from a faculty event the

previous night and found a body tucked in the corner of one of the school’s auditoriums. The linguistics

department was holding a conference for a bunch of high profile names in the field, invite only type

event. I wasn’t told much that morning about the victim besides the fact that he was a professor.

I drove over to the scene at 6:00 AM. Finding my way to the auditorium took more time than it

should have, but then again I hadn’t been on a college campus in years. After lifting a program guide from

the entrance and I realized I recognized one of the names on the front: “Stephen Krashen”, I’d read some

of his papers when I was still in school. I used to study Korean hoping I could live abroad after

graduating. I spent so much time reading about how to study languages, I must have completed the

reading for the first year of linguistics courses in a couple months, and yet here I am chasing killers.

Funny how financial aid can set our lives astray.

The program was my first clue into understanding the crime; the name of the event was “The

Fight for Fluency: What Kind of Classroom Environments Are Best at Preparing Second-Language

Learners?”, with Krashen as the main speaker. The inside cover included his picture with a rather lengthy

bio, but I’m not one to complain. Back in the 80s, Krashen authored a number of papers and books about

his famous “Input Hypothesis”. The short of it is that we all acquire language only when we understand

what we’re given. He called it “comprehensible input”, and you could find it in a foreign novel, when

your French teacher is talking to you, or when you’re watching a foreign flick late at night. Point is
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you’ve gotta be able to understand it, if you don’t know one or two words, you use context to figure out

the meaning.

I read further along in the guide, both in the hopes it could help solve the case and out of my own

curiosity. He spent his life after doing more studies on it with other researchers, testing his theory out in

the wild of language classrooms. Part of his speech was about a paper he authored back in 2004 with

Victoria Rodrigo and Barry Gibbons, the program again gave an introduction. It studied a group of

students learning Spanish, some of which were given graded readers to study. They’re textbooks made for

students filled with stories exclusively in a foreign language(I read a lot of these back in the day and they

tend to be as boring as you’d expect). They had them discuss their thoughts afterwards. Another got

graded readers, but also had the opportunity to choose books that interested them. The last group had

neither, going through class as usual. The team found the kids that were doing the reading did far better

on tests compared to the normal students. Interesting stuff. I was always on Krashen’s team, it seems like

input based learning was the way to go, after all, it’s what I did.

I tucked the program into my back pocket to save myself from reminiscing any more and

sauntered over to the front of the hall. I only saw a glimpse of the victim before forensics zipped up the

body bag, but sure enough, it was Krashen. They let me know there wasn’t much to go off of: multiple

stab wounds with a steak knife from catering. It must have happened sometime during the event. I took

out my program and looked at the list of speakers, they were likely the last to see the victim, which meant

the rest of my morning would be spent running around trying to get these linguists to talk.

The university put up all the guest speakers at special on-campus guest housing. Having them all

in one place certainly makes my job easier. It wasn’t far from the conference hall at all, and as far as sites

of murder go, not many are as visually pleasing. I stepped through two automatic glass doors and was

immediately drawn to the high ceiling above. The place was practically a hotel, complete with a concierge

desk and expensive furniture. I approached what seemed to be an underpaid student working behind the

desk, and asked for the room number of everyone on my list of speakers. She seemed shocked and

disturbed at the request, I would be too at that age, but she gave me the info nonetheless.
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It was 8 o’clock at this point, early enough so that I could catch most of the speakers before their

busy days started. My first stop would be with one Pauline Baird, a professor visiting from Japan just to

attend the conference. Her flight back to Japan was scheduled for the evening so I lucked out as far as

seeing her in time. As expected, she was shocked to learn what happened to Krashen. I asked her for an

account of their interaction, she told me she saw him late into the evening for a discussion with a handful

of other speakers regarding their works. She was the most distraught when I broke the news. Baird

seemed to be a fan of the victim. The conversation began after dinner when she wanted to talk about some

developments in her English classroom. Krashen used to write about something called the “affective filter

hypothesis” which said when students are fearful about using the language they can’t make any progress

in acquiring it. She said she saw students with high filters firsthand, and came up with a card system

where students could track their participation so they were more motivated to participate in class. Smart

system. Said her students participated more often and she was excited to share it with Krashen and give

her thanks.

I asked her about anyone else that joined her that evening, she mentioned Shawn Loewen.

Loewen gave a speech reviewing Krashen’s ideas earlier in the night. He specialized in instructed second

language acquisition and couldn’t keep himself from eavesdropping from a room over when he heard

them talk about classroom approaches. Loewen shared that he thought pure comprehensible input wasn’t

the only way to acquire language, and that feedback from others was a good means of doing so through

speaking. He also mentioned how frustrated students can be going “input-only”, and how hard it can be to

gauge one’s improvement.

Despite their differences in ideas, Krashen appreciated the depth Loewen put into analyzing his

ideas and respected his work. Baird left towards the end of that conversation and didn’t catch anyone else

besides Loewen in the room. I thanked her and took her contact information before making my way for

Loewen’s room to corroborate the story.

Loewen would be guest lecturing at the school later in the week so I still had time to get his side

of the story. He gave me a similar sense of shock when I came to his door with the news. He had clear
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respect for the victim. I asked about the conversation that took place before his death, everything of his

account lined up with what Baird said. He added that he stayed with Krashen for quite a while and was

joined by a few others. He had an enjoyable conversation with a researcher from the Islamic Azad

University in Iran, Ehsan Namaziandost. Apparently. Namaziandost had a great conversation with

Loewen and Krashen. He talked about the research he did a few years back building on Krashen’s ideas,

and comparing students using input based methods with those using output based language learning

practices. The debate never ends, it seems for these kinds of linguists. Krashen would say that output

doesn’t do much for acquisition, but Namaziandost stood by his findings. He saw immense progress from

both input and output-based learners.

Every person that I interviewed had nothing but praise and respect for the victim. I couldn’t find a

hair of suspicion on anyone. This wasn’t some group of murderers, they were linguists and researchers.

They used words like “L2” and “confidence interval”, no one would peg any of these guys as capable of

doing something like this. Above else, they were colleagues with the shared goal of advancing the

knowledge of second language acquisition. I was at a complete loss.

Loewen gave me one more detail before we parted, a single piece of info that would make this

thing begin to make sense: a fight broke out, a verbal one. Loewen and Krashen were joined by Kate

Tzu-Ching Chen and Martin Guardado late into the evening. Guardado took the opportunity to talk about

his research with Japanese students learning English. He was interested in researching how online forums

could be used as a means of peer feedback for writing projects, but found mixed results. That’s when

Chen spoke up. She did similar research apparently, finding that online feedback helped students come

out of their shell and be more confident in giving feedback and how to improve their writing. The night’s

conversation quickly became heated as the two discussed their differing findings, rife with passive

aggressive remarks from both sides. Loewen decided it was time to interject, and left with Chen. The two

walked back to the guest house before things got out of hand.

It’s my job as a detective to be both unbiased and think critically. It wasn’t anything close to

concrete, but I began to see that this disagreement among researchers was the sole source of conflict
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throughout the whole night. I’d be able to confirm Loewen’s story with Chen later in the day. At that point

I had done three interviews between Baird, Loewen, and Chen. Namaziandost was already boarding a

plane at LAX by the time I tried to call. The last person I needed to talk to was Guardado. So far, the prior

interviews pointed to him as the last person to see the victim. Guardado hadn’t answered the door when I

arrived at his room. I managed to peer into the room through the crack of some open blinds, no sign of

Guardado. It’s funny, the student at the front made no mention of an early checkout. I jogged back to the

front desk and asked her for the phone number Guardado left when checking in. I made three calls, all

straight to voicemail. Should have expected that. At that point I was restless, I asked to see surveillance

footage, or a record of e-key activity from IT, but it was nothing the concierge could have helped me with.

It’s 10:58 in the morning. I'm consolidating my thoughts on this all as I’m waiting for the daytime

security manager to come in. I usually don’t write about my cases like this, even other homicides. The

whole event just seems so strange. Guardado stood by his research regarding the use of output in his

classroom, could his disagreements with Krashen really have led to something like this? This case is

fascinating, but it’s also disgusting. I’ve learned a lot about my old ideas of language acquisition. Maybe

there is something to output. Loewen’s ideas that students have a hard time gauging their progress with

only input spoke right to me, and Chen and Guardado, although having differing opinions, have me

thinking about the value of a feedback environment for language learners. It’s a shame this is what it’s

taken for me to learn that.

Finally, at 11:02 security arrived, and it was time to find something, anything to set things

straight. I finally got the info that I was looking for, Guardado came back at 3:01 in the morning, but

made no more entrances during the rest of the day. If he had just been sleeping in, I surely would have

seen it when I looked inside early. If he left with the intention of coming, we would see another instance

of his e-key open the door in the system. If there was a camera pointing outside his room's entrance then

the footage should answer my questions. Just my luck, I found just the right angle with his room in view.

I’ve never been so glued to a screen. I scrubbed over to 2:56, five minutes before he entered his room and

I waited patiently as his shadow grew into a larger figure. The footage was so blurry it was hard to make
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anything out, but regardless I couldn’t help but think he looked frantic. I thought for a second I was just

framing things that way as some sort of mental bias, because I wanted it to be him so I could put this case

to rest, but I quickly threw that idea away. At 3:00 Guardado reaches for his e-key and at 3:01, I see a

bloody hand hover over the key in front of the reader. It was unmistakable, his other hand was a lighter

hue, and the lamp light shone on them both equally. He was our man. Within another 5 minutes, Guardado

left the scene in a new change of clothes and a duffle under his arm. I wanted to chase him through the

computer screen, but I knew he was long gone, and now it was up to me to track him down. Who would

have thought that academia could get so ugly. I have a feeling linguistics wasn’t the place for me after all.
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Works Cited

Baird, Pauline. “Tools to Reach the Student in the Corner.” JALT Conference Proceedings,

Japan. 2005

Chen, Kate. (2012). Blog-Based Peer Reviewing in EFL Writing Classrooms for Chinese

Speakers. Computers and Composition. 29. 280–291. 10.1016/j.compcom.2012.09.004.

Guardado, Martin & Shi, Ling. (2007). ESL students’ experiences of online peer feedback.

Computers and Composition. 24. 443-461. 10.1016/j.compcom.2007.03.002.

Loewen, Shawn. “Was Krashen Right? An Instructed Second Language Acquisition

Perspective.” Foreign language annals 54.2 (2021): 311–317. Web.

Namaziandost, Ehsan, Elham Saberi Dehkordi, and Sajad Shafiee. “Comparing the

Effectiveness of Input-Based and Output-Based Activities on Productive Knowledge of

Vocabulary Among Pre-Intermediate EFL Learners.” Asian-Pacific journal of second and foreign

language education 4.1 (2019): 1–14. Web.

Rodrigo, Victoria, Stephen Krashen, and Barry Gribbons. “The Effectiveness of Two

Comprehensible-Input Approaches to Foreign Language Instruction at the Intermediate Level.”

System (Linköping) 32.1 (2004): 53–60. Web.