disclaimer - and this is a biggie. I've not been able to get my hands on a copy of Krashen's book. I'm in Spain and haven't been able to find it anywhere. So, inevitably I'm one of those blind men who are groping around the proverbial elepant trying to figure out what it is.
To me this is obviously confusing accuracy with fluency. KR is comparing apples with oranges.Krashen’s emphasis seems to be that classroom learning does not lead to fluent, native-like speech. Gregg’s account that his memorization of a verb conjugation chart was “error-free after a couple of days”(p.81) seems to go against this spirit.
I find this sort of negative commentry very off-putting. It's pure rhetoric, and I'm not in this so that I can score points off someone. Some people go out of their way to misunderstand, I think this is a case in point.If the classroom situation is hopeless for attaining proficiency, then it is probably best not to start.
What KR seems to misunderstand is the role of the language teacher in the classroom. I believe that teaching language is unlike teaching other subjects. We can teach students procedures and principles to learn the sciences, we can teach students to memorize facts for subjects like history and biology, but this is not sufficient for language teaching.
In my opinion, language teachers have two essential roles, which I chose to describe as Structuralist, and Mentor. When students start learning language they need lots of support (or structure) from the teacher. Over time, students become able to express their basic thoughts in the target language - in a same way that a baby takes its first few steps. Once the student is able to explore for themselves, the teacher should encourage them to spend time outside of the classroom investigating aspects of new culture and language that interests them.
Most teachers would agree that spending a couple of hours a week learning a new language isn't sufficient to achieve fluency. My old German teacher suggested 15 hours a week was the right amount. I suggest this is a minimum. At this point the teacher should stop controlling how and what the students learn, but instead they should guide and encourage them to do it for themselves.
Does Krashen actually suggest unconscious learning? This has been tested and found to be wrong. Students need to be conscious of new language.Krashen’s conscious/unconscious learning distinction appeals to students and teachers in monolingual countries immediately.
When I used to cycle to work in the Netherlands I would listen to Dutch radio, mostly for the music. However, while I didn't understand much of the commentry I did notice some words that used frequently and others which seemed similar to words I already knew. So I looked them up and made a few small steps of progress. This is acquistion, not the ludicrous suggestion quoted above.
Here, I disagree with Krashen.However, when called upon to clarify, Krashen takes the somewhat less defensible position that the two are completely unrelated and that grammar study has no place in language learning (Krashen 1993a, 1993b).
In conclusion, there are many things I feel that KR has gotten wrong. However, he doesn't offend me as much now.
Iain