I have developed an interest in reading about foreign language acquisition. I’ve read reddit, language learners, lingq forums, various linguist blogs and anything I can find.
I find it amusing that there are so many language acquisition methods which have now rolled in extensive interesting comprehensible input (mostly reading) with references to Krashen and his hypotheses. In many cases the method seems to be the kind of thing Krashen was saying did not work well, but in light of his research they don’t change what they do but rather just roll in some reading in addition to what was done before.
In fact I am reading a document right now in which the whole ‘extensive reading’ is covered. There are targets for how much needs to be read per week, known-to-unknown word ratios are detailed (1 unknown per 50 words), ratios for reading time with/without looking up words…
It seems to me that Krashen has been pretty clear in many talks that what he is saying is: the learner consumes self-selected comprehensible input at a rate which is comfortable to them without set outcomes or expectations.
Correct me if I am wrong here, but this is what he saying, right? Not only that but he is saying this can replace many other activities to become the primary form of language acquisition?
In any case my wording here is biased because I already believe that comprehensible input* in the form of reading/listening is sufficient for language acquisition. I wasn’t really believing it months ago, but my own progress has shown me otherwise (thus far - its still very early days yet for me).
- Comprehensible Input: Hard to define. What is N+1 anyway? Also I’ve been working with input which was certainly not “N+1” a few months ago but now is fairly comprehensible.