What is unique is that Steven Krashen used empirical studies to arrive at conclusions that are largely intuitive. This odd phenomenon in research can be likened to the work of Carl Jung, a researcher whose conclusions went far beyond the merely observable and were therefore subject to (silly) questioning by the more rational but far more boring, members of his profession.
In fact, I believe that Jung’s contributions to the field of psychology were greater than Freud’s for that reason. In the end, one either accepts or rejects Krashen – there is no middle ground. Either we buy into what Krashen has shown us that human beings acquire languages in a purely unconscious way or we do not. The decision we make based on that one fact could cost us a meaningful career.
Jung wanted to take depth psychology away from the analytical schools of the day and away from Freud, but, when he “went there” he took the science into a realm of the immeasurable, unquantifiable and undefinable, and thus become persona non grata in his field.
I think that this is what happened to Krashen – he rightly pulled his field into the direction of the deeper mind, where language acquisition really occurs but cannot be controlled or quantified as a definable process and trapped in a book or computer program, and, ever since, has been judged by people who want to pull his work back into a safe area of the measurable for them, and the result is Realidades.
I have thought about it a lot, and I can honestly state that I mean no insult in my analysis of why traditional teachers stuck in the book and computer programs aren’t showing a lot of desire to change in spite of the 90% position statement and Three Modes of Communication of ACTFL.
Those people, our colleagues, just don’t get the unconscious part of this seismic change anymore than those who thought the world was flat could not accept the new paradigm and those who rejected Jung could not accept the depth and breadth of his assertions about the nature of the unconscious mind and the world of dreams in forming the human psyche.
They are not to be criticized, and it is not ours to atack them, although I have felt like I’ve wanted to kick their shins hard a few times. It’s just the way things are. Even many of those who buy into CI don’t buy into the unconscious piece, and so fail to organize their instruction around this crucial piece, and so do CI poorly, without style or effect, with corresponding mediocre test scores, which brings a resultant doubt in the mind of traditional teachers that CI is not all that it is touted to be. It’s not the CI, it’s the teacher.
Those who fail to grasp CI simply fail to get that their students’ minds must be focused in an unconscious manner on the meaning and not the words. Thus they do not set up their teaching in the real CI way, usually adding in way too much English and thus breaking up the flow, and they fail at CI while claiming to be its proponent. Then traditionalists jump on their cases,and with good reason, because they aren’t really doing CI.
Just about everybody does this – fails to grasp the unconscious focus on meaning piece, so it would not be inaccurate to say that most of us fail at CI because we break up the flow and never get the kids fully focused on the meaning, too often letting Grammar Man back into our classrooms from those miserable ass days before we heard of Krashen and Blaine Ray. There are many articles here on FLOW, so search for a few of them and read them if you want further insight into this vastly underated aspect of CI.
I know from speaking with Krashen that this area of the unconscious mind and FLOW is of deepest concern to him. He has proven that he can take a lot, but when people start attacking his research that all points to the role of the unconscious mind and FLOW in language acquistion, and fail to grasp it because they don’t want to “go” there, as happened to Jung, he naturally feels bad.
It is my opinion that those who bash Krashen risk looking stupid, since Krashen’s work makes so much sense. It’s almost like those who base all their work on keeping everything in the realm of the purely observable and scientific are keeping themselves from seeing the way language learning really works. How odd they are. How out of touch!