A Big Pill
The idea that we have no control over how languages are acquired and cannot think our way to acquisition is a big pill to swallow for many language teachers.
After all, many of us who are not native speakers learned our second languages by reflecting in high school and college on how they are built, and received praise and good grades when we were good at it. But we weren’t good at the language – we were good mechanics of it, good editors. The result was that we learned about languages but
we didn’t acquire them (Krashen’s Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis).
We conjugated verbs and memorized lists of words and filled out worksheets, but the research has now debunked that approach and that is understandably not an easy pill to swallow.
Those who implement the needed changes in our profession will be the ones who have the courage to do what is right for their students in full alignment with the research, and to say no to the failed methodologies of the past.