Stephen Krashen

Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California, is a highly acclaimed linguist, educational researcher and activist. Krashen is best known for his contributions to the fields of second language acquisition (SLA), bilingual education, and reading.

Krashen was born in Chicago in 1941. After spending two years in the Peace Corps in Ethiopia where he taught eighth grade English and science, Krashen pursued a Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, culminating with his 1972 dissertation Language and the Left Hemisphere. Krashen accepted a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, then went on to serve as Professor of Linguistics at the CUNY Graduate Center and the Linguistics Department of the University of Southern California. In 1994, Krashen joined the USC School of Education. Krashen has published over 350 papers and books, and has presented keynote and plenary addresses at the National Association for Bilingual Education, Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), the International Association for Applied Linguistics, the International Association of School Librarians, the Georgetown Round Table on Languages and Linguistics, and many other conferences.

Krashen is best known for his work in establishing a general theory of second language acquisition, commonly called the Monitor Theory, as the co-founder (with Tracy D. Terrell) of the comprehension-based natural approach to second language learning, and as the inventor of Sheltered Instruction. A central element of Krashen’s approach to second language acquisition is the view that it occurs naturally, just like first language acquisition, under appropriate conditions. This view constituted a dramatic shift from an earlier position in Krashen’s published work reflecting a commitment to direct instruction and consistent error correction.

In a seminar at the CUNY Graduate Center in 1975, Krashen and his students sought to make sense of data pertaining to a fixed pattern of acquisition of grammatical morphemes from second language speakers. During the seminar, Krashen came up with the idea that two systems, an acquired one and a learned one, must be postulated to explain the data.

One of Krashen's most important ideas is that in order for a learner to acquire a language, he must be exposed to 'comprehensible input' which is roughly tuned to a level slightly higher than he can himself produce. He distinguishes this from 'learned' language. 'Acquisition' occurs in communicative situations in the 'real world'. 'Acquired' knowledge is readily available to communicate meaning. 'Learning' occurs through formal training (the classroom); it cannot be used to communicate meaning. Instead, it monitors the grammatical use of 'acquired' language knowledge.

Krashen believes that language learners must build on their knowledge through processing language at a level slightly beyond their ability: 'current competence + 1' (i +1). This is also known as instructional scaffolding.

Krashen and Terrell also penned a piece on the natural approach (1983), which is more or less a continuation of the comprehensible input theme with the added idea that affective filters or emotional barriers must be lowered in order for learning to take place.

Krashen has also contributed extensively to an approach in reading known as Whole Language, which similarly posits that children learn to read by reading, and that reading develops naturally under appropriate conditions. Krashen has advocated Free Voluntary Reading programs (known as Silent Sustained Reading) as an approach to literacy development, and has stressed the importance of libraries.

Krashen maintained that bilingual education serves to fill in a contextual space against which input may be effectively and efficiently processed by learners. Hence, he maintained that bilingual education was an important component of an immigrant child’s educational program, serving to provide academic content knowledge as well as an understanding of school subject matter which improved the child’s comprehension of English-mediated teaching. Krashen has been a strong advocate of both Heritage Language Education and the Graduate Exit Model, a kind of bilingual maintenance program.

As education policy in Krashen’s home state of California became increasingly hostile to bilingualism, he responded with research critical of the new policies, public speaking engagements, and with letters written to newspaper editors. During the campaign to enact an anti-bilingual education law in California in 1998, known as Proposition 227, Krashen campaigned aggressively in public forums, media talk shows, and conducted numerous interviews with journalists writing on the subject. After other anti-bilingual education campaigns and attempts to enact regressive language education policies surfaced around the country, by 2006 it was estimated that Krashen had submitted well over 1,000 letters to editors.

In a front-page New Times Los Angeles article published just a week before the vote on Proposition 227, Jill Stewart penned an aggressive article titled "Krashen Burn" in which she characterized Krashen as wedded to the monied interests of a "multi-million-dollar bilingual education industry." Stewart critically and incorrectly spoke of Krashen as the father of bilingual education, and made a number of inaccurate statements. Krashen has been widely criticized in conservative and nativist political circles due to his influence on the field of language minority education, second language acquisition, and his tireless effort to educate the public on matters related to English language learners in schools.

Krashen has been an advocate for a more activist role by researchers in combating the public's misconceptions about bilingual education. Addressing the question of how to explain public opposition to bilingual education, Krashen queried, “Is it due to a stubborn disinformation campaign on the part of newspapers and other news media to deliberately destroy bilingual education? Or is it due to the failure of the profession to present its side of the story to reporters? There is a great deal of anecdotal evidence in support of the latter.” Continuing, Krashen wrote, “Without a serious, dedicated and organized campaign to explain and defend bilingual education at the national level, in a very short time we will have nothing left to defend.”

Krashen plays the piano, holds a black belt in Taekwondo, and was the 1978 Incline Bench Press Champion of Venice Beach, California.

References

Krashen, Stephen (1982). Principles and practice in second language learning and acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon. 

External links

• Stephen Krashen's website Includes articles by him.