Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Krashen
We have talked a lot about Krashen, especially in our small group of FL teachers. When discussing it as a whole class there are a lot of negative feelings on the subject. I think that a major reason for our disagreement deals with what subject we are teaching, FL or ESL. The goals in each are totally different. In ESL you are trying to assimilate the students into a culture as quickly as possible. In FL you are working a lot slower. You are building on language from the beginning, they will never be asked to test on something they don't know in the language. ESL students are tested on English they may or may not know every single day. There are some really valid points in the Krashen hypothesis when viewed from the FL perspective. There are also really valid arguments against it from the ESL perspective. Sometimes we treat ESL and FL like they are entirely the same thing, this is one instance where we really see the differences between the two.
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4 comments:
I agree with your comment that many of the theories do not necessarily work for both ESL and FL. That is one problem with the classes that group that as if they are the same. You mentioned the pace of the classes and that English surrounds ESL students, so the preparation needs to be different. I wholeheartedly agree. Our FL students are not surrounded by their target language and it is much easier to control the input. In a FL class, it is much easier to do "i+1" where we know what language the students have mastered. Additionally, FL students are all at approximately the same level of skills. Unlike an ESL class, where there may be a variety of levels and native L1's, FL students tend to be more similar to each other.
I agree with you and David. The motivations instigating the learning/acquiring of another language. I think that I would have taken Spanish more seriously had I needed it to communicate on a daily basis to basically survive (in school, job, etc.).
I agree that there is a big difference between FL and ESL environments. One of the problems I have with Krashen, however, is with regard to a FL environment. Krashen posits i+1 as the only causitive variable in second language acquisition. Because of the limited input available to students in a FL environment I think more is needed to develop student’s proficiency than “comprehensible input”. Even if students may be able to acquire a second language on the basis of comprehensible input alone, It seems to me that this cannot possibly be the most efficient way of developing second language proficiency in a FL class.
I totally agree with you. I hadn't thought about this until class. I love Krashen for FL though I can totally see how this is not realistic for EL. My FL students come to class at almost entirely the same level, great for me, not so for EL. The FL exposure starts and stops at my door, unlike EL.
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