Developing ESOL Language Proficiency: Fourth Estate

TexTESOL IV Publications –

Building Global Bridges between Educators,

Researchers, and Classrooms

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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Thank you to the many TexTESOL VI Board for their vision and support and the Fourth Estate Editorial Review team for taking time to review and edit these documents. 

Your service to the ESL in Texas and beyond is appreciated:

TexTESOL IV 2015-2016 Board:

Irma Rohatgi, Karen Lewis, Arleigh  Kalinowski, James Moore, Rosemary Anthony, Alex Monceaux, Rezvan Khoshlessan, Stephen White, Madhulika Tandon, Troi Ferguson,  Trudy Freer, Farideh Nekoobahr

The Fourth  Estate  Editorial Team:

Alex Monceaux & Rita McClelland

The Fourth Estate  Editorial Review Board:

Alan Larson, Carol Williams, Jahnette Wilson, Jennifer Guertin, and Kathryn Jones

An Interview with Stephen Krashen:

The Affective Filter and Reading

Dr. Stephen Krashen, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

Teaser: Dr. Stephen Krashen discusses the affective filter and practical applications of the affective filter’s uses in reading instruction and materials selection

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AM: Nearly 50 years ago you introduced five key hypotheses. What is the status of these hypotheses today?

SK: The idea in science is to propose hypotheses and test them, that is, see if they make correct predictions. In all cases, the five hypotheses have done well. They were designed originally to account for adult second language acquisition, but since then have been confirmed for child second and first language acquisition, and for literacy development (Krashen, S. 2003). They also help explain why some bilingual education programs work and others don’t (Crawford, J. and Krashen, S. 2007).

There is also some evidence that the five hypotheses may be useful in explaining aspects of animal language (Krashen, S. 2012 Yang). There is now little doubt that the acquisition-learning hypothesis is correct. In fact, researchers in other areas have concluded that both implicit and explicit learning exist and are different (J. and Li, P. 2012).

The Monitor hypothesis, the idea that the use of conscious knowledge is very limited, has been challenged by a parade of studies claiming that grammar teaching is, in fact, effective. I have responded to these claims by pointing out that in each instance where this is claimed to be true, the strict conditions for monitor use were met and the impact of grammar study is weak or modest (Krashen, S. 2003).  Critics do not say that the Comprehension Hypothesis is false. Instead, they say that everybody always knew it was true. This is called adumbrationism, denegrating of new ideas by pretending to find them old (Adumbrationism: Merton, R. K. 1961). Or they say that comprehensible input isn't enough, that students need direct instruction to improve after a certain point. So far, there is no evidence supporting this. In the most famous case, French immersion in Canada, I have pointed out that students rarely do free voluntary reading in French outside of school, have little social interaction with native speakers, and that direct instruction has yet to prove that it can do the job (Krashen, S. 1995).

AM: What about the affective filter hypothesis? Are there other filters?

SK: I think it is useful to distinguish two kinds of affective filters: An input filter (usually called the affective filter) and an output filter. When acquirers are anxious, the input filter prevents input from reaching the language acquisition device, even when the input is understood. The output filter prevents us from performing our full competence, from using what we have acquired. It is most noticeable in accent: Adults might not use their best accent in their second language because they feel uncomfortable doing so – accent is a marker of group membership, and they may not feel like a part of the group. The strength of the output filter varies: It depends on the social situation. Sometimes, usually when I am alone with one or two friendly French speakers, my French accent is not bad. Other times I am sure I speak French without a trace of a French accent.

The output filter is also present in native speakers, who say that they are capable of speaking other dialects of their first language, but say, they would feel silly or self-conscious speaking that way when talking to speakers of that dialect. Like most speakers of American English, I can, to at least some extent, speak with a British accent. I would never do this when conversing with somebody from London. It would feel wrong (Krashen, S.. 1997).

AM: How can we best deal with a high affective filter?

SK: There are several ways. The most obvious is to put students at ease. This happens automatically when teaching is consistent with the Comprehension Hypothesis: e.g. make input easy to understand, do not force students to speak before they are ready, and avoid obvious and heavy correction.

I think that the most powerful way is to make input as interesting as possible, to make input so interesting that students actually forget that it is being delivered in a second language. I have referred to this as compelling input, a concept very similar to what Csikzentmihalyi refers to as flow. We are in flow when we are so involved in an activity that the activity is all that matters; our sense of self and our sense of time is diminished (Csikzentmihalyi, M. 1990).

TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) educators have hypothesized that this happens when we involve students in interesting stories and when the input is personalized, when it involves the students themselves. 

My hypothesis is that compelling input can at least weaken the affective filter and might even temporarily shut it off.  When input is compelling, acquirers are not thinking about their anxieties, not concerned with understanding every word (they have more tolerance for noise in the input) and less concerned with speaking with total accuracy. In fact, I suspect that they are not even concerned about acquiring the language; they are only concerned about understanding the message. 

I have been collecting case histories of people who have acquired other languages without any motivation to acquire the language; they got plenty of compelling comprehensible input i.e. TV shows, movies, books. Of great interest is that they were often not even aware they were getting better and were surprised that they could speak the language so well. A zero-anxiety approach (Lao, C. and Krashen, S. 2008)!

There is very suggestive evidence that compelling comprehensible input in the form of reading for pleasure and interest, getting Lost in a Book may be the real path to literacy development as well as language development (Nell, V. 1988).

AM: What are the real-world implications of these ideas?

SK: We need to provide students with compelling comprehensible input. Let