Welcome to the Listening Time podcast. Hey everybody, this is Conner, and you’re listening to Episode 40 of the Listening Time podcast.

I hope you’re all doing well. I’ve been a little bit busy this week. I’ve had to do some extra work recording extra episodes and things like that because next week, I have to take a short trip. I need to travel next week, so I won’t have time to record episodes or do much editing or those types of things. So, I have to get ahead now. In English, when we use the phrase “get ahead”, it just means that we’re going to do something before it’s necessary so that it’s already finished and we don’t need to do it later.

So, I need to get ahead and record a couple extra episodes. And now, I have to record more episodes in general, because now I have the membership program for the Listening Time podcast. And so, those of you who become members have access to extra episodes, an extra episode every month. So in general, I have to record more episodes now. And this week, even more because I’m going to travel next week.

So, I just want to remind you all about our membership program that I talked about in the last episode. So, if you want to become a Listening Time Member, it’s just two dollars per month, and you go to our Patreon page. I’ll put the link in the Episode Notes (https://lt.tubacode.com). And you just go there and sign up for just two dollars a month, and you’ll receive an extra episode of the Listening Time podcast and one of our new Listening Practice Seminars every month. Or if you want to become a Super Member, you can donate three dollars per month, and you’ll have access to an extra episode, a new Listening Practice Seminar and one other listening or pronunciation seminar every month. So, if you’re interested in that, just click on the link in the Episode Notes and you’ll be able to sign up there. So, I hope this can be a great opportunity for all of you who really want to improve your listening even more, even faster.

Okay, so in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about second language acquisition. What does the word “acquisition” mean? Well, this comes from the verb “acquire”, “to acquire”. To acquire something means to get it or to obtain it. So, for example, if I say, “In my last job, I acquired a lot of skills and knowledge”, this just means that in my last job, I got these things. I got new skills and I learned new things, knowledge. So, we’re going to talk about second language acquisition. And in specific, we’re going to talk about Stephen Krashen’s theory of second language acquisition. Stephen Krashen is one of the most famous linguists in the world. A linguist is someone who works with language. So, he’s one of the most famous linguists in the world because of this theory.

And so, this theory is something that people debate about. Not everyone agrees with it 100%, but it’s a very important theory in the world of language learning. So, we’re going to talk about that today, and we’re going to talk about the five hypotheses that he includes in this theory. So, each of these hypotheses gives us a little bit of information about the process of acquiring a language. So, this should be a very interesting episode for all of you since you’re all learning English. So, I think this will be fun for you to learn about. Alright, let’s get started.

Okay, so the first hypothesis that is included in this theory of language acquisition is the acquisition/learning hypothesis. So, this hypothesis talks about the difference between acquiring a language and learning a language. So, acquiring a language is a subconscious process. It’s something that we don’t realize is happening. It’s happening, but we’re not aware of it. In English, when we say that you’re “aware of” something, this just means that you know that it’s there, you know about it, you’re conscious of it. So, we’re not really aware of the process of acquiring a language. Right. Like when babies start speaking their first language, they don’t really realize how they’re learning that language. They don’t realize that they’re acquiring vocabulary and grammatical structures. They don’t really know that this is happening. They just start speaking and they start to get better at their first language. So, this is acquisition.

Learning, on the other hand, is the process where you actually learn the rules of the language. You actually learn the grammar, you learn the structures, you learn about the language. So, Stephen Krashen makes a big distinction between these two processes. So, acquisition is the process that actually makes you fluent in a language. Learning doesn’t actually make you fluent. This is something that just teaches you about the language, You know the rules, you know about the language, but this doesn’t mean that you can actually speak the language fluently. So, he makes a big difference between these two processes.

One interesting example that he includes to demonstrate this difference is an experiment that was done. I might not remember correctly, because it’s been a couple of years since I read his book, but if I remember correctly, they did an experiment where they had English learners sit down and look at a screen. And on that screen, they showed them multiple pictures of things, of objects or animals or things like that. And then, they asked the student, or the learner, to say what they saw on the screen, but in a full sentence, like “that is an orange”, “that is a dog”, etc. And then, after they did this with all of these learners, they asked them if they knew the rule about when to use the article “a” and when to use the article “an” right, “a” or “a-n”.

And what was interesting is that many of these English learners who knew the rule, who knew that “a” is used before nouns that start with a consonant sound, and “an” is used before nouns that start with a vowel sound… these students who knew these rules didn’t actually say the sentences right when they saw the image on the screen. So afterwards, they were able to explain the rule correctly, but when they weren’t thinking about the rule, when they were just doing this experiment, they didn’t actually use the rule correctly. However, there was another learner who didn’t know the rule. Afterwards, he gave the wrong answer about when you need to use “a” and when you need to use “an”. He gave a completely incorrect answer, but he actually said all of the sentences correctly when they showed him the pictures.

So, this demonstrates that you don’t need to know rules in order to speak correctly, or speak fluently. This is the difference between acquisition and learning. When you acquire the language, you don’t necessarily learn the rules. Right. And if you learn the language, this doesn’t mean that you actually know how to use the rules in real time when you’re not thinking about them. So, this is one experiment that shows the difference between acquiring a language and learning a language. So obviously, we want to acquire the language that we’re trying to learn. We don’t want to just learn the rules. We actually want to acquire it and become fluent in it.

Alright, so the next hypothesis is the monitor hypothesis. So, a “monitor” is someone or something that tries to observe and see if everything is going okay. This is a monitor. So, this hypothesis is that, as language learners, we have this type of monitor in our brain. And when we’re speaking the language that we’re trying to learn, this monitor can tell us what the rule is, or it can tell us that we just made a mistake, or we need to use a certain structure. It’s that little voice in your head that is trying to correct your grammar while you’re speaking. And this comes from learning. This is not part of acquisition. This is part of learning. Once you learn some grammatical rule, for example, your monitor in your brain might try to tell you the right way to use that structure when you’re speaking. Okay.

So, the problem with this is that there are only certain occasions when the monitor works well. For example, if you don’t have enough time to think about the rule, this monitor can’t help you when you’re speaking, right. It will be too fast. You can’t really think about the rule when you’re having a normal conversation. So, you can’t really recall these rules. The word “recall” in English just means remember. So, that’s one problem. And then another problem is that you might not actually know the rule. You might think you know the rule, but you haven’t seen enough real examples of it.

And so, this monitor can actually cause you to say the wrong sentence. I’ve seen this many times with my students, where they say the right sentence correctly, and then they try to correct themselves, and then they say an incorrect sentence after they correct themselves. This is an example of how the monitor can go wrong. And then another issue with this monitor that we have is that most language learners either use this monitor too much, or they don’t use this monitor enough.

So, my students who use this monitor too much… it’s very hard to have a conversation with them because they speak really slowly, and they’re trying to think of all the rules the whole time that they’re speaking, and it’s not an easy conversation. And then my students who use the monitor too infrequently, who don’t use it enough, they just make a million mistakes when they’re speaking, and they just speak as fast as possible without really thinking about what they’re saying. And they make a ton of mistakes.

So, there are very few English learners who actually use the monitor correctly, who can actually correct themselves when they’re speaking and prepare the right structures for their sentences, but who don’t use it too much or slow down their speech because they’re constantly thinking about the rules. There are very few language learners who can really use this monitor correctly when they’re having a normal conversation. That’s why in most of my conversations with students, they’re either taking way too much time to say their sentences because they’re overusing the monitor, or they have millions of mistakes because they’re not using this monitor at all. So, this is the monitor hypothesis, and it shows that we can have knowledge of grammar, and this can help us when we’re in conversation, but this is not what makes us actually speak fluently in conversation.

Okay, so the next hypothesis is the natural order hypothesis. So, this hypothesis says that, as language learners, we acquire different structures and different grammatical elements in a kind of natural order that doesn’t correspond to what we think we learn first and second and third. So, in school, if you take an English class, you usually follow the same order every time in every class, You start with the Present Simple and then you do the Present Continuous and so on. In English, when we say “and so on”, this is like saying, etc. Right. So, we have this idea about what we should learn first and second and third, but this doesn’t actually match up with the natural order of how we acquire things in language.

So, one really good example of this is that in English, when we conjugate a verb in the third person singular, we add an “s”, right? “I walk”, “he walks”, “I run”, “he runs”, for example. And many many students have a lot of trouble with this “s”. Right. Many English learners still say the sentence “he go” or “she talk”, even if they’re at an intermediate level, or sometimes at an advanced level. They still might make this mistake occasionally. And that’s because this rule of the third person singular in English is actually something that is very difficult. Students acquire this very late in the language learning process. And so, because of that, students feel very discouraged. They think this rule is super easy, it’s super basic, and they don’t know why they’re still making mistakes with it.

But in reality, this rule is not easy for learners to acquire. This is one of the last rules that English learners actually acquire. So, this shows you that the natural order of how we acquire grammar does not correspond to our idea of what the logical order is. So obviously, this is a problem because in school, you’re taught in a very specific order, and your teacher might be trying to force you to understand something, or not make mistakes with a certain grammatical element that is actually very advanced, right. So, that’s the natural order hypothesis: that we acquire grammar in a different way than what you’re probably thinking.

And the next hypothesis is extremely important. This is the input hypothesis. So, the word “input” in this context, in the context of language learning, just refers to listening and reading, right, consuming English. So, this hypothesis is that we can only acquire language when we are receiving input… so, when we’re listening or when we’re reading. We don’t acquire language when we are speaking or writing. These things are good and these things are necessary, and we have to practice with them and improve in those areas. But the way that you actually acquire grammar, vocabulary, etc., is through listening and reading. It’s through input.

And you can’t just listen to anything. If you’re at an intermediate level, and you’re listening to something very basic, very beginner, you’re not going to benefit from this. You’re not going to acquire a lot from that content. So, Stephen Krashen proposes this specific model called “i + 1”. So the letter “i” represents your current level of English or your current level of listening comprehension. And then, the “+ 1” just refers to one level above, one level above your level. So, he says that the best way to acquire language is when you’re listening to or reading content that is just one level above your current level.

So, for example, if you understand 80 or 90% of something, and you don’t understand 10 to 20% of something, this will be really good content for you to use to help you acquire more vocabulary and more grammatical structures. Because if you understand 80 or 90% of something, you have enough context to help you understand the other part that is new for you. But if you only understand 40% of something, you don’t have enough context to help you understand the other 60%. So, when you listen or read, the best content that you can use is content that’s a little bit above your level, right? If you can understand maybe 70 to 95% of that material, it’s probably very good for you to use because you’ll learn a lot of new vocabulary and grammar just through context, just through listening.

So, this is why I created this podcast, because I hope it’s a very good resource for you to listen and to try to understand content that probably isn’t too difficult for you, but there’s probably 5%, 10%, 20% of the episode that you might not understand without using the transcript. And then, you can look at the transcript and see those words that you didn’t understand the first time. Or maybe, you can already understand those words from just listening and hearing the sentence, and you already understand 90% of the sentence, and that helps you understand the other 10%. So, this type of resource is very helpful for you in acquiring language. So, this podcast is very good input for you to help you increase your level of English.

So, the last hypothesis is the affective filter hypothesis. This just refers to the fact that there are certain factors in our lives that make it easier or harder to acquire a language. For example, when we’re anxious, when we have anxiety, or we’re nervous or stressed, this is very bad for language acquisition. Our brain doesn’t acquire much if we’re in this state of mind, if we’re anxious, if we’re stressed, etc. So, it’s very important to try to lower your anxiety level, lower your stress level when you study a language because you’ll acquire more.

Another example is if you’re an extroverted person, meaning you like to socialize, you like to talk to people, it’s actually easier for you to acquire a language than someone who’s an introvert, right? An introvert is someone who doesn’t like to be in social situations too often. They like to be by themselves a lot. This type of person is going to have a harder time of acquiring a language. But of course, they can still do this, right? They just need to try to maximize their other strengths to help them. And one other factor could be motivation. If you have really good motivation, a reason why you’re learning a language, this really helps you succeed in acquiring that language. If you don’t have good motivation to learn a language, then you’re probably going to have a more difficult time acquiring that language. So, that’s the affective filter hypothesis.

So, those are the five hypotheses of Stephen Krashen’s theory of second language acquisition. So, just to summarize, it’s really good for you to use input, right, texts or audios that are a little bit above your level to try to acquire vocabulary and grammar naturally, right? Not to just learn rules, but to actually acquire the language. Your brain is going to do this without you even knowing. You won’t even realize that it’s happening. This is what we want when we’re trying to acquire a language, right? Try not to be too stressed. Make sure you’re in a good state of mind. Make sure you’re not pressuring yourself to learn certain grammatical elements right now, because maybe that’s not part of the natural order of how we learn grammar. And make sure that your monitor is not overactive or underactive. Try to use this knowledge of rules in the optimal way to improve your ability to converse, right? Don’t try to correct yourself too much. But make sure that you’re thinking a little bit about your correctness when you’re speaking. Okay?

So, hopefully this episode was interesting for you, and hopefully you understand, now, why this type of podcast is such a good resource for you. This is why I’m making these episodes… because I really believe in this method. If you listen to these episodes and repeat them, and learn the new vocabulary from them naturally, this will be an awesome way for you to acquire English. Alright, remember to become a member or super member of the Listening Time podcast on our Patreon page. You can find the link to that in the Episode Notes（https://lt.tubacode.com）. So if you become a member or super member, you’ll receive extra podcast episodes and seminars and it will help you improve your listening even faster. Okay, thank you for listening to this episode, and I hope you’ll come back for Episode 41 of the Listening Time podcast.