Foreign Language Acquisition

1. Text-Words-Rules-Exercises used to be the most popular method of teaching and studying foreign languages. Can something be better than that? What about communicative approach?
2. What do you think of Petrov's "Polyglot" method? You can know Petrov by the TV Culture Channel.
3. What do you think of Dragunkin?

Now some questions about Krashen's hypotheses...

5. Do you believe that comprehensible input is sufficient?
6. Do you prefer to acquire or to learn?
7. Do you monitor your speech? What is the best way to become fluent?
8. What psychological barriers hamper our learning?
9. Should we find and fallow some natural order of the acquisition? What will it look like?

Additional questions

10. How can we learn words effectively? How can we improve our vocabulary?
11. How can we learn grammar effectively?
12. Are there any people who are phonologically absolutely stupid?

About Stephen Krashen from Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis

The five hypotheses that Krashen proposed are as follows:

1) The input hypothesis. This states that learners progress in their knowledge of the language when they comprehend language input that is slightly more advanced than their current level. Krashen called this level of input "i+1", where "i" is the language input and "+1" is the next stage of language acquisition.

2) The acquisition–learning hypothesis claims that there is a strict separation between acquisition and learning; Krashen saw acquisition as a purely subconscious process and learning as a conscious process, and claimed that improvement in language ability was only dependent upon acquisition and never on learning.

3) The monitor hypothesis states that consciously learned language can only be used to monitor language output; it can never be the source of spontaneous speech.

4) The natural order hypothesis states that language is acquired in a particular order, and that this order does not change between learners, and is not affected by explicit instruction.

5) The affective filter hypothesis. This states that learners' ability to acquire language is constrained if they are experiencing negative emotions such as fear or embarrassment. At such times the affective filter is said to be "up".