Stephen Krashen has, from
what I can gather, three main areas of interest, 1) second language
acquisition, 2) literacy and the importance of free reading, and 3)
bilingual education. While I largely agree with Krashen on his basic
views of language learning, and the need to encourage people to read
without artificial interference from teachers with their reading
strategies and analysis, I differ with him in certain regards.
I believe that meaningful input is crucial, and the most important
activity in language learning. However, we can and should do things to
increase the attentiveness of the brain, the ability of the brain to
notice what is happening in the language, as the new language is absorbed through massive amounts of meaningful input.
That is why it is useful to review words and phrases, not
because we will remember them, but because we start to notice them
better in our reading and listening. That is why we should try to write and then speak, just a
little at first, and then more, so that we discover what we lack, and
look for it in our listening and reading. That is why we benefit from
being corrected, not in the hope that we will immediately improve, but
so that we will be alerted to things to look for in the language, as we listen and read.
I think that reading is powerful, but listening is more powerful.
New language content should be heard, often, especially at first, before it is read.
Listening can also increase the emotional involvement with the content we are learning from. This improves the learning efficiency of the brain.
I am not in favour of bi-lingual education for immigrant children, in the sense proposed by
Krashen, as I understand his ideas. The child of an immigrant to a
country like the United States is better off studying in English, as
early as possible, and being encouraged to belong to the English
speaking mainstream. This does not prevent the child from learning the
ancestral language, if the child, or as is more often the case , the parents, want that to
happen. In fact, in my view, the child should be encourage to learn
languages, period, whether the ancestral language or some unrelated
language. The choice should ideally be left to the child.