The Natural Approach: Krashen's Model of Second Language Acquisition

Description

Over the last thirty years, second language acquisition theories and language educators havegenerated various theories in an attempt to better understand and explain human behavior.Academics conducting research in disciplines such as sociology, psychology, linguistics andeducation have made significant contributions in the field of second language acquisition (SLA)research. Like those in other social sciences, SLA theoretical perspectives are dynamic in thathypotheses are constantly evolving as new information about language is produced. First, thispaper begins by briefly contrasting two main SLA theoretical perspectives, nativist and inatisttheories of second language acquisition. It then shifts focus to Stephen Krashen’s naturalapproach hypothesis, also known as the monitor model. The purpose of this paper is to outlineKrashen’s main hypotheses which constitute the natural approach to SLA. Moreover, this paperwill analyze Krashen’s theory in terms of its weaknesses, strengths as well as address some ofthe obvious pedagogical implications that the model has had in teaching English as a foreignlanguage (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL).