"Start by doing what's necessary, then what's possible and suddenly you are doing the impossible."
Saint Francis of Assisi
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Gee! It´s great to keep in touch. Here are the questions Adriana promised to send us. I´m more than happy to have Adri as an assistant teacher and when you read her work you will figure out why.

Congratulations to Adriana and to you the best Holy Week ever.

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Questions for Reflection and Discussion/April 2001

Curtain, Helena & Carol Ann Pesola.1994. Language and Children: Making the Match.White Plains, New York: Longman. Chapter 4

Linguistic and Psychological theory

1.Why do Curtain & Pesola state that "simply to place the child in the target language setting(...) is not an approach that will make it possible to bring languages to every child"? (Chapter four:51). Use some hypotheses of second language acquisition theory to back up your argumentation.

2. What are the conditions for effective monitor use?(Curtain &Pesola:52). Do these conditions apply to everyday speech? Give examples to account for your answer.

3.Comprehensible output (Swain 1985). To what extent do you think that output is important for students acquiring a language? Discuss in relationship to Krashen's Input theory. See The Input theory: Issues and Implications.1986:35

4.How do the findings in the field of cognitive psychology support Krashen's affiramtion that "hypotheses are tested on a subconscious level". (Krashen 1986:36)

5. How can you as a teacher make sure the language presented will be comprehensible to the students?

6.Discuss Leslie Hart's definition of learning. What are the dangers of simplified input?

7.Whithin the categories of Whole Language as presented by Edelsky 1992: beliefs about language, beliefs about language development and beliefs about learning, choose two aspects of each and discuss them in relation to your experience as learner and future teacher. Which aspects seem to be the most difficult to apply?

Krashen, Stephen & Tracy Terrell.1983. The Natural Approach. Language Acquisition in the Classroom. Hayward, California: Alemany Press. Chapter 1, 2 & 3

1. What is the evidence Krashen gives for considering the Natural Approach as a 'traditonal approach'?

2.The Audiolingual Method. What were the components of the Army language course? Discuss the basic tenet of audiolingualism.

3. What are Krashen's criticism to the cognitive movement? Particularly in relation to this quote: "learned competence cannot directly 'become' acquired competeence" (Krashen 1986:38)

4.Discuss the following quotation from Newmark& Reibel (The Natural Approach:17) in relation to Krashen's Natural Order Hypothesis.

(...) Sistematic teaching of structure (as in structure drills) imposes a formal rather than useful organization of language material (...)

5. The Silent period is considered to be an acitve period. Why is this so? What is the acquirer building up? (Krashen 1986:9)

6.Why cannot spoken fluency be taught directly but rather it emerges? Contrast cognitive psychology to behaviourist principles.

1."Some individuals, it is believed, have a special aptitude for second language study". (Krashen 1983:38) Why is this debatable? What are the two different skills that Krashen associates to acquisition & learning?

2.The Role of First Language. According to Krashen, why are interferenced errors produced? Contrast the two possible cures for this (drilling or more input).

3.What are routines and patterns useful for?

4.Individual variation. Discuss the three types of adult second language acquirers.

5."(...) the ability to think abstracty may be related to the ability to posses a mental representation of a language, or a conscious grammar (...) Not everyone attains formal operations and formal operations does not arrive at the same time in everyone." (footnote 42:51)

Discuss in relation to the role of instructed grammar in the classroom.

6.Age Differences.What are the factors that differentiate children from adult acquisition? "The theory of second language acquisition described here posits a basic uniformity in language acquisition..." (Krashen 1983:44) What does 'basic uniformity' refer to?

7. Why is puberty considered a turning point for language acquisition?

1.What are the implications for classroom practice of the Input Hypothesis?

Krashen, Stephen.1986. The Input Hypothesis:Issues and Implications. New York: Longman. Chapter 1&2

1.Age Differences: According to Krashen what are the three strategies adult fall back to?

2.Input and Exposure. Discuss.

3."Comprehensible subject matter is language teaching". (Krashen 1986:16) Discuss.

4. What is the importance of first language in relation to Cummins (CALP) 'cognitive academic language proficiency'?

5. Discuss the following quote: "writing competence comes only from large amounts of self motivated reading for pleasure and/or interest"(Krashen 1986:19)?

1.How does acquisiton occur for the Output Hypothesis? Why is this hypothesis inappropriate to describe ill formed versions in children's speech?

2.Where does the testing of hypotheses take place according to the Input Hypothesis and the Output Hypothesis respectively? (Krashen 1986:36)

3. What are the characteristics of the Output filter? (Krashen 1986:45)

4.According to Krashen, what are cases of 'understanding without speaking' due to? (Krashen 1986:53)

5. What are the possible causes for Fossilization? (Krashen 1986:52)

6.Discuss the role of the language teacher within the Natural Approach.

7. Discuss the differences between an international ESL student and an adult immigrant.