Leave the Debate About Krashen to the Psycholinguists
The Best Thing About the "Input Hypothesis" is It Works, Says Hasanbey Ellidokuzoglu
Hasanbey Ellidokuzoglu, of Ankara, Turkey, recently posted
a comment on the TESL-L listserv regarding the relevance of
Stephen Krashen's "input hypothesis" for reading and writing
instruction. He agreed to publish his remarks as an article
for the readers of ESL MiniConference Online.
After Patricia Warwick's question (on the TESL-L listserv) as to whether Krashen's Input
Hypothesis is applicable to reading and writing, some gave positive
and some negative responses. Mine would be somewhere in between but
toward the positive side.
Some five or six years ago, I was an active member of the TESL-L and
SLART-L discussion groups. During my first involvement in those
discussions, one of the hotly-debated topics was Krashen's theory. He
was attacked for the weaknesses in his theory. Many suggested that his
theory is an old one and not capable of accounting for certain
aspects of second language acquisition. Last week I renewed my
membership to TESL-L and SLART-L. It seems like Krashen is fresh enough
as always. In the meantime, I have finished my Ph.D. on ELT and my faith
in Krashen's theory is strengthened even more as I have made about 70
third-person -s mistakes in the unedited drafts of my dissertation.
This can only be explained through Krashen's distinction between
acquisition and learning, another weak (!) point of his theory.
First of all, Krashen's theory is far from being complete, just like
many other theories in social sciences. Many critics of Krashen blame
him for not elaborating on the concepts like "comprehensible
input", "subconscious acquisition", etc. Although it is possible to
provide some operational definitions of these terms, I will not focus
on the theoretical issues here (those who are interested may visit our
Natural Approach website at www.maxpages.com/thena). I would like to
point out, however, that the incompete aspects of Krashen's theory
concern the psycholinguists rather than practioners (language
teachers). In other words, Krashen's monitor theory and the resultant
Natural Approach method has put forward invaluable short-cuts to
second language proficiency. A recently published article in ITL shows
this quite clearly (Isik, A. 2000. The role of input in second
language acquisition: more comprehensible input supported by grammar
instruction or more grammar instruction? ITL Review of Applied
Linguistics. 129:225-274). The evidence provided in this article (and
references cited therein) shows clearly that extensive reading is the
key (though not the only) factor leading to the development of
writing ability. I would like to give more info about the article, but
unfortunately I do not have enough time now (nor for a real long
while). But I will be following the discussion.
Comment by
Hasanbey Ellidokuzoglu
2002 ESL MiniConference Online
Turkish Military Academy / Middle East Technical University
Ankara, Turkey