Second language adquisition

Second Language Acquisition
and

Second Language Learning
Stephen D Krashen
University of Southern California

Copyright © 1981 Stephen Krashen All Rights Reserved. This publication may be downloaded and copied without charge for all reasonable, non-commercial educational purposes, provided no alterations in the text are made. First printed edition 1981 by Pergamon Press Inc. PrintEdition ISBN 0-08-025338-5 First internet edition December 2002 i

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following journals and organizations for granting permission to reprint material: Newbury House, the Center for Applied Linguistics, Language Learning, TESOL, the SPEAQ Journal, Academic Press. I have had a great deal of help and feedback from many people in writing this book. Among the manyscholars and friends I am indebted to are Marina Burt, Earl Stevick, Heidi Dulay, Robin Scarcella, Rosario Gingras, Nathalie Bailey, Carolyn Madden, Georgette Ioup, Linda Galloway, Herbert Seliger, Noel Houck, Judith Robertson, Steven Sternfeld, Batyia Elbaum, Adrian Palmer, John Oller, John Lamendella, Evelyn Hatch, John Schumann, Eugene Brière, Diane Larsen-Freeman, Larry Hyman, Tina Bennet, AnnFathman, Janet Kayfetz, Ann Peters, Kenji Hakuta, Elinor Ochs, Elaine Andersen, Peter Shaw, and Larry Selinker. I also would like to express my thanks to those scholars whose work has stimulated my own thinking in the early stages of the research reported on here: John Upshur, Leonard Newmark, and S. Pit Corder all recognized the reality of language "acquisition" in the adult long before I did. Iwould also like the thank Eula P. Krashen and Judy Winn-Bell Olsen for their special contributions. ii

Contents
Introduction 1. Individual Variation in the Use of the Monitor 2. Attitude and Aptitude in Second Language Acquisition and Learning 3. Formal and Informal Linguistic Environments in Language Acquisition and Language Learning 4. The Domain of the Conscious Grammar: The MorphemeStudies 5. The Role of the First Language in Second Language Acquisition 6. The Neurological Correlates of Language Acquisition: Current Research 7. On Routines and Patterns in Language Acquisition and Performance 8. Relating Theory and Practice in Adult Second Language Acquisition 9. The Theoretical and Practical Relevance of Simple Codes in Second Language Acquisition Bibliography 1 12 19 40

5164 70 83 100 119

138

iii

Introduction
This book is concerned with what has been called the "Monitor Theory" of adult second language acquisition. Monitor Theory hypothesizes that adults have two independent systems for developing ability in second languages, subconscious language acquisition and conscious language learning, and that these systems are interrelated in a definite way:subconscious acquisition appears to be far more important. The introduction is devoted to a brief statement of the theory and its implications for different aspects of second language acquisitions theory and practice. We define acquisition and learning, and present the Monitor Model for adult second language performance. Following this, brief summaries of research results in various areas of secondlanguage acquisition serve as both an overview of Monitor Theory research over the last few years and as introduction to the essays that follow. Acquisition and Learning and the Monitor Model for Performance Language acquisition is very similar to the process children use in acquiring first and second languages. It requires meaningful interaction in the target language-natural communication--in whichspeakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding. Error correction and explicit teaching of rules are not relevant to language acquisition (Brown and Hanlon, 1970; Brown, Cazden, and Bellugi, 1973), but caretakers and native speakers can modify their utterances addressed to acquirers to help them understand, and these...