I just asked Dr. Krashen permission to quote here on the blog from Foreign Language Education – the Easy Way*. He responded:
Yes, feel free to use anything you want to from Easy Way. It is long out of print, no plans to revive it, too busy trying to resist Arne Duncan’s policies. Best to the gang …!
That the book is out of print amounts in my mind to a mild disaster. It is so clear and to the point and is the kind of primer I want in my classroom during planning periods to remind me what this stuff is all about when I feel lost, which is often. It is my concerted opinion that we can’t grow into our work unless we keep Dr. Krashen’s research at the forefront of what we do. Diana gave me a signed copy and we have some floating around the district. So if you have one don’t lose it.
I will be taking paragraphs from the book and putting them here from time to time. Here is the first one – I’ll just put an indicator of the page after the letters EW for Easy Way as a simple system of citation.
Most entries – the first one below on the Monitor Hypothesis – will refer in some way to various of his hypotheses. Some are just funny in that Krashen way of making complex things so clear that they seem funny. I believe that the man has the capacity to dismantle an entire PhD thesis in one humorous sentence. Here is an example of the monitor:
…some people are able to use grammar rules while conversing. These are people who know the particular rules very well and can occasionally manage the conversation in a way that gives them time to use the rule. This is a very difficult trick, and is also risky: some people plan their next sentence while the other person is talking, which results in a perfect sentence that has nothing to do with what the person said…. (EW, p. 4)
*Krashen, Stephen D.;Foreign Language Education – the Easy Way. Language Education Associates (1997). ISBN 0-9652808-3-7.
The Problem with CI
Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and
8 thoughts on “Krashen – Easy Way 1 (Monitor)”
One may normally be a quite articulate articulate speaker with excellent syntax and so forth, but all that can often go out the window when under the spur of passion, an urgent communicative need, or a pressing interview. For example, there are many transcriptions of oral interviews with very educated people that are almost unfathomable due to garbled syntax and so forth. But when you listen, the speaker’s use of intonation, grouping, rhythm, body language, etc. makes everything so crystal clear that we scarcely notice the problem of form. If, while in the rush of speaking, they were planning each following best word, phrase or sentence, they would probably have lost track of not only the information that they were trying to communicate, but also the intended rhetorical effect.
…but also the intended rhetorical effect….
Right on. We’re not robots after all.
I just LOVE that booklet! It is probably one of my top ten educational books. Too bad it is out of print, but more power to the good doctor fighting Arne Duncan and the Department of Education’s counterproductive policies. I have given away/loaned multiple copies of Foreign Language Education the Easy Way, like 7. People never return them, so they must like it too. It is simple and to the point–you gotta get those stinkers reading!
Just like he says in The Power of Reading with a lot more citation of studies than in The Easy Way. But we must keep this all tied to what Krashen ties it to – poverty. It’s about access to books. It’s about libraries.
Right. And we can begin to ameliorate the access problem by building classroom libraries, and then school libraries with interesting, accessible reading in the target language.
Do you think Dr. Krashen would object to someone posting a scan of the book for use by the members of this blog? Perhaps you could ask his permission.
I will John and then get back to you.
That’s an excellent idea John!