11. Krashen and Acquisition
Krashen is probably popular among teachers because he writes in a clear English style and refers to practical teaching situations. The evidence of the English Block seems to support his ideas where they are based on practical experience. But there are features of the Kenyan situation which differ from Krashen's situations. The East Africans were learning English at the same time as getting a general education. This is a good deal more complex than someone learning a language who already is educated in his mother tongue. Krashen's theories are probably much influenced by the kind of students he has seen and the teaching situation he has been in, so that they are not necessarily of universal application. His books suggest that he has worked with students already in the United States and who are therefore surrounded by native speakers. Most of these are probably people already educated in their mother tongues. The East African situation where the mother tongues are not used for literate education is quite different.

Krashen postulates a need for what he calls meaningful input and also has proposed a mechanism of learning - the Monitor hypothesis - in which he distinguishes what he calls learning from acquisition.

Krashen distinguishes 4 stages of acquiring a language. Of these, the first two stages seem to be sensible though I think the second two are more debatable. In the real world I think it would be wise to remember that such things are a continuum so that argument about exactly which stage a person is at should be avoided. Stage one consists of language teaching to beginners, which he says, should provide meaningful input from the first - that is, the teacher can (though he argues that most classes don't) provide nothing but comprehensible language from the first lessons.

In The Input Hypothesis# (14) he says, to criticise those classes which don't work:

...while much 'language teaching' seems to go out of its way to prevent second-language acquisition, several excellent methods already exist that provide comprehensible input to beginners in a low anxiety situation and in an organised way, and comparative research has confirmed their efficacy. (P.70)

However, in the same book he argues that the aim of the language teacher should be to produce students with enough basic knowledge to emerge as Intermediate level people able to continue learning (acquisition, he says) on their own.

In my view, the goal of the language class is to bring the student to the point where he or she can use the language outside the classroom in understanding and communicating with native speakers. If the student reaches this level of competence, he or she can continue to improve from the comprehensible input received 'on the outside'. The language class thus need not produce students who speak the second language at native levels, but only 'intermediates', students who can use the language for real communication with its speakers. Students need not acquire the entire language in the language class; when they finish the class, they will still make mistakes. Their acquisition will continue as they interact with and receive comprehensible input from native speakers. (Ibid. P. 70)

The English Block project was concerned with what students need when they are past the beginning stage. The Kenyan primary school was doing the work which Krashen calls stage 1 (though it did it so inefficiently that after 3 years - at that time English began in Standard 4 - the students still only had a vocabulary of between 1500 and 2000 words and a shaky knowledge of structures). The English Block had some of the characteristics which Krashen describes in the Canadian method of teaching French through immersion - teaching ordinary school subjects through the medium of the second language. (Of course in a Kenyan secondary school this was the situation anyway as English was the medium of instruction).

But the English Block also provided experience in other modes of language use - genres - which would not be found in a subject immersion class. He calls this a sheltered class because it does not expose the student to the full range of the language - vocabulary, idioms and social situations - while still providing enough meaningful input to allow the student to enlarge his repertoire.

Krashen's Stage 3, which he calls the Limited Mainstream, is the stage when the student can understand much of what he hears but lacks background knowledge in many areas of subject-matter so that some of what he hears will be misunderstood. It may correspond to the stage of university students needing ESP. Krashen argues that in this stage the student should deal mainly with language in the areas of his special interests - such as in his own specialty if he is an adult learner. However, he argues that a wide range of genres at this stage is less useful than a period of what he calls narrow input, concentrating mainly on his own specialty or interest. This is debatable, as different people have different needs. Nevertheless he argues that if a student is made to do Stage 3 work when he hasn't done stage 2 he will be in trouble. This is certainly the reason for many university students' inability to cope with university work. Krashen is more useful to us here than Swales(15), who points out the strategies inadequately prepared students used in Khartum - using cribs, getting others to do their work, cheating and so on - but fails to identify the cause or specify a suitable remedy - which is to provide students with the work they need even this means that the institution must adapt to the needs of the students. English Block work, at least at Kakamega where it was done only in Forms one and two, corresponds here more to Stage 2 than to Stage 3.

#(14) Stephen D. Krashen The Input Hypothesis (Longman) 1985

(15) J.Swales The Educational Environment and the relevance to ESP Program design