Krashen's Theory Of Second Language Acquisition

The pronunciation sh [ʃ] and ch [tʃ] sounds has been considered really difficult for second language learners to overcome because of the lack of real life situations performed during class. Since sh [ʃ] and ch [tʃ] sounds are not include in Spanish Language is really difficult to get accustomed to use it in the target language. Nordquist exposes in his article “Cultural Transmission” that "while we may inherit physical features such as brown eyes and dark hair from our parents, we do not inherit their language. We acquire a language in a culture with other speakers and not from parental genes” (p. 2). This is the reason why learn a language is difficult because it depends on external factors that are in the environment which influence in the

Krashen 's Theory of Second Language Acquisition There are different factors that can influence the way in which students acquire a second language; for that reason, Krashen developed five hypotheses that explains some aspects that can be used inside the classroom as a way to improve students acquisition. Those theories will help to understand in a better way sh and s sound acquisition. The first hypothesis is The Learning/Acquisition Hypothesis. In this theory, Krashen mentions two ways of developing a second language. The first is learning process, and the second is called acquisition. According to this hypothesis, the last one is when students acquire the second language in a more spontaneous way. While the first one which Krashen calls learning, is what many students experienced at school or college when they are learning a new language. (Yule, p. 34-35). This theory can explain us a little bit about why speaking is harder than writing.

[When a nonnative is learning a language], spoken language is more difficult to monitor that written language. Editing during the writing process represents an ideal situation to apply the monitor because there is a time and one can focus specifically on the correctness of the language to be sure that sentences are complete and words are spelled right (Yule, p.

The last hypothesis is the Affective Filter Hypothesis. There are some affective factors that can have a negative or positive impact in the language acquisition. Sometimes students do not feel comfortable, they do not like the language, they do not have good relationships with their classmates or with the professor, because is a new language they may feel intimidated and all these problems have influence in the learning process. "Boredom and anxiety are affective factors that can have serve as a kind of filter to block out incoming messages and prevent them from reaching the language acquisition device" (p. 39). As a result, if a student has some affective problems this is going to block his/her input even if the topic is presented in a very comprehensible way. This is why it is important to give to students interesting and creative activities because that will influence their performance. If students have problems with grammar, pronunciation or speaking the filter must be open in order to improve the language acquisition