Hypothesis On Second Language Acquisition

Steven Krashen’s Hypothesis on Second Language Acquisition

Stuart Edmund Davies

Thongsook College

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Steven Krashen’s Hypothesis on Second Language Acquisition

The second language classroom is full of theories of how to get students to acquire the target language (L2). These theories have been around for many years and have been debated and revised numerous times. Theories such as the grammar translation theory, used up until the 1940’s, are no longer in favour because of their inability for learners to use the language in colloquial situations have been superseded by new innovative ideas. At the time of writing this paper, there are three main theories used in the second language classroom: Behaviorist, Innate, and Interactionist. In the late 1950’s, Skinner’s behaviorist theory of language acquisition was fully accepted and linguists agreed that language acquisition came from “external influence” (Kurzweil & Hawkins, 1983). Skinner argued that, “children acquire language based