Stephen Krashen (1941)

Stephen Krashen is mostly famous for his strong opinions around how to teach. He has also published more then 350 papers and books that contribute to the fields of second language acquisitions and reading. His opinions have been highly discussed al over the world.
Krashen's Theory of Second Language Acquisition consists of five main hypotheses:

1. The Natural Order Hypothesis:
“We acquire the rules of language in a predictable order,” That means that the acquisition of grammatical structure proceeds in a predictable order. Things go on as expected and the old way of teaching.

2. Acquisition/ Learning Hypothesis:
This hypothesis claims that adults have to ways to gain competence in L2; acquisition and learning. Acquisition is very similar to the L1 development, where they use the language for real conversations. Learning means the way that L2 is learned like throw rules and practice.

3. The monitor hypothesis:
Where learning functions as a monitor or an editor of the output.

This shows how the monitor works. Where you have a goal or something that is acquired for you to learn and you see yourself on this line and that has been learned throw an input. There are many different ways of input. Just continue reading this text.


4. Input hypothesis:

Can be explained in four different ways;
- It relates to acquisition.
- Learners acquire new or more language only by being exposed to comprehensible input, which means that the learner exceeds what is expected of him/her. The learner first knows what the meaning is and then he learns a new language.
- When there is enough comprehensible input, the i+l will be acquired automatically.
- That fluency can’t be taught directly, but is comes over time. Where it can be influenced by a lot of things like social factor. If most of your friends and family speak an dialect it is most likely you would speak the same way as them.

5. Affective filter hypothesis:
Is a filter that prevents the input from reaching the language acquisition device. For this to work the learner has to not focus on the language and only on the content. Where teachers make assignments that lets the students speak without think about the language they are using and the language becomes natural to them throw these exercises.

I haven’t been quit able to write everything in my own words because I think that these facts take time to learn and that this is a way for me to start learning about Krashen. I have used our books and also some pages on the internet. Like this one; http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/Krashen.htm
I hope that in some short time I will be able to tell this in my own words, and to be able to know this so much that I can learn somebody.