Merril Swain's Theory Of Language Acquisition

We have read, discussed, or heard people about different language theories, most of them providing their ideas on how language is learned or acquired. I do not think there is one theory that will explain everything about a successful acquisition of a language, to have this success we want, teachers and students involved in the learning / acquisition process, we need to use a great variety of techniques and strategies from one and many other theories or approaches.

This paper is intended to compare and contrast Merril Swain and Stephen Krashen theories: Krashen's Input Hypothesis and Swain's Output Hypothesis.

Both theories support each other. Language acquisition is “the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce

The Natural Order hypothesis: Very similar to the way learners acquire a language in their early stages in terms of grammatical structures, final -s in the conjugation of verbs...

The Affective Filter hypothesis: Motivation and emotions (positive) take an important part in language learning / acquisition and the way how they respond to their environment. If students are motivated they will learn better than those who are bored or nervous, since negative emotions will interfere in their learning process.

Now, “Is it possible to reconcile these two seemingly opposite views as to what constitutes second language acquisition or ‘learning’, as Swain puts it? Or do the two views represent two extremes of both theory and

Krashen says that language will come naturally, fluency of the language will come later, either in oral or written form, once the learners have enough competence to build their knowledge that is input. There is also the term intake which is linked to emotional and affective factors and how they affect the acquisition of a second language. This input is represented with the following formula I + 1 ( where I means Input). This input according to Krashen has to be comprehensible, if the learner receives comprehensible understanding then he / she will learn in a very effective way. He continues explaining that the ability to communicate will emerge as a consequence of that comprehensible