Terms Explained
Acquisition vs. Learning
What is the Difference between...
Acquisition & Learning
The terms Acquisition and Learning describe two different processes in regards to language. When we acquire a language, we are engaging in a natural process, one
without effort, when we receive messages that we understand. It can be totally unconscious (implicit). The focus is on meaning and comprehension, not production or output.
Learning, however,
is conscious and requires a lot more effort than Acquisition. It is often output oriented where vocabulary and grammar are taught explicitly and then practiced and/or memorized. Judith Dubois expresses the difference eloquently in her blog post:
"In the United States it is easy to find students with two or more years
of language study who admit they don’t speak the language. What they are
saying is that they have not acquired it. They may remember grammar
rules and verb conjugations that they memorized, but they are unable to
communicate in the language. We might conclude that while it might be
easy to Acquire another language, it can be very difficult to Learn a second language. The distinction between Acquisition and Learning is a fundamental part of Dr. Krashen’s hypothesis.
Dr. Krashen calls the conscious part of our mind that looks at language the monitor. When we remember words that we have previously studied and apply the
grammar rules that we have learned to make a sentence, we are using our
monitor. This conscious effort takes time, so our output may be
laborious. On the other hand, acquired language will come to us
spontaneously, without any effort. The monitor can be helpful in
producing output under certain conditions... but rarely
helpful in a conversation."
Bryce Hedstrom wrote a fabulous series of short posts on Stephen Krashen's 6 main hypotheses of language acquisition, presented in simple form. You can find the series on his website.
When talking about learning vs acquiring language, the role of explicitly teaching grammar often comes up. It is important to understand that grammatical knowledge does not correlate completely with fluency, but it can be helpful in some situations. Krashen's Monitor Hypothesis describes that when students are consciously aware of grammar they can sometimes monitor their language use and make corrections as they write, and to a lesser extent, as they speak. That doesn't mean they will always apply the rule, nor does it mean they will always improve accuracy.
Why is it common for Europeans, Africans, and Asians to grow up multilingual while Americans rarely speak more than one? Judith Dubois offers a theory:
The
methodology of learning is derived from the study of Latin during the
Middle Ages. There were no longer any native speakers to promote natural
acquisition, so scholars had to memorize texts and vocabulary. They
analysed the grammar and created rules to explain how the word forms
changed. It took highly motivated students to invest the mental energy
involved, but their reward was an opportunity for a career in the
Catholic Church, more powerful than many states at that time. It became
accepted that languages were something to be learned with hard work and
perseverance, not accessible to the weak-minded. (Of course, at the same
time, aristocrats who wanted their children to speak more than one
language simply hired nurse-maids and servants, so that their offspring
could acquire French, German or English.) In the early United
States, as schools developed, the popular languages among the early
scholars were Latin and Greek. When modern languages like French and
German were introduced, they were taught with the same methods used to
teach the dead languages of antiquity.
Dive Deeper
To learn more about language acquisition, see the following resources:
