Learning Spanish Part Twenty-four: The Acquisition-learning Hypothesis

Dr. Stephen Krashen's foundational principle in hisour native languages. This process is a natural
theory of Second Language Acquisition is calledevent in which the learner of the language is
"The Acquisition-Learning hypothesis." In this idea,involved with the actual act of communication and
a distinction is made in that wonderfully excitingnot so much in a formal relationship to
and gaiety-galore world of linguistics and languagegrammatical structures (the horse before the
pedagogy between learning a language andcart). "The learned system" is a system in which
acquiring it. "The acquired system" is the meansthe learner comes into a possession of a lot of
through which spoken fluency is acquired. I caninformation about the language. Rules of grammar
recall scores of students who come toand cold-memorization of vocabulary are the
Guanajuato, Mexico (where we live), who havethrusts of instruction. It is putting the "cart"
told me they would pay any amount of money tobefore the "horse" and expecting, somehow, the
have the spoken fluency of a Mexican child beingcart to pull the horse. "Acquisition requires
packed off to his or her first day of class inmeaningful interaction in the target language -
primary school. It is, after all, what most of thosenatural communication - in which speakers are
with whom I've spoken are after-spoken fluency.concerned not with the form of their utterances
Sure, they would love to read and write inbut with the messages they are conveying and
Spanish but they seem to have an instinctiveunderstanding." Stephen Krashen If what you
understanding of what comes first. They knowseek is how to exegete a text of the target
the cart does not draw the horse. They are afterlanguage, then go for the cart. If what you want
the horse and then the cart. To acquire theis communication in the target language, then find
target language is the result of a process almostthat horse.
identical to what we all went through in acquiring