Dr. Stephen Krashen

We acquire languages when we understand messages.

📌 这个系列此前的文章：二语习得 (1/3)

前言

‘只有当我们真正理解的时候我们才习得了语言’. 这个观点是二语习得理论的核心. 这几天我学习了 Youtube 上 Stephen Krashen 教授对于二语习得理论的一个 讲座视频 , 因为年代比较古老, 而且因为国内的网络环境无法直接观看, 国内主流的视频平台也没有收录这一段令人印象深刻的演讲. 于是我陆陆续续的听译了讲座的内容(原讲座没有英文字幕), 在这儿分享给各位. 有条件的话, 强烈推荐你看一遍原视频. 以下是讲座内容和对照翻译, 采用段落对照的这种方式主要是为了阅读上的方便, 在思路上借鉴了北京航空航天大学出版社出版, 由方振宇担任主编的「英语睡前五分钟」系列(ISBN: 978-7-5124-0119-8, 这个系列对我本人的英语学习有很大的启迪). 单词的校对工作则主要参考了 Cambridge Dictionary. 水平有限, 纰漏很多, 望不吝指教.

正文

… A few minutes to briefly go over some of the fundamental concepts in what I work in language acquisition. I’m going to divide the presentation into three unequal part. First it’s our theoretical work and I’ll be going through four basic hypotheses about language acqusition, then I’ll be talking about briefly the application and today I’ll be focusing mostly on the elementary level (beginning level) language class and finally I’ll take a few minutes and discuss why even though I think the theory is correct, even though the theory is proved very fruitful, their difficulties in applying it and I’ll say that some of the difficulties come from our students and some of them come from us.

我们花几分钟简单的了解一下我在二语习得领域的一些概念. 我将把这个讲座分为三个不一样长的板块. 首先是我们的理论工作, 这里我会讲一下关于二语习得的四个假说, 然后是简单的应用. 今天我们重点关注的还是基础的语言教学, 最后我会花几分钟讨论一下二语习得实践起来的困难(一些来自于我们的学生, 不过一些来自于我们 - 语言老师自己), 尽管我认为这个理论是正确的, 尽管这个理论被证实收效非常大.

Vocabulary:
hypotheses [haɪˈpɑː.θə.sɪs] n.
  hypothesis 的复数形式
  an idea or explanation for something that is based on known facts but has not yet been proved
acquisition [ˌæk.wəˈzɪʃ.ən] n.
  the process of getting something

To the theory. The theory begins (the cornerstone of the theory is) a hypothesis that we’ve called the acquisition learning hypothesis. It says that we have two very different ways of going about the jobs of getting better in another language. You can acquire language, you can learn language, and they are very different. Acquisition are described as a subconscious process and subconscious really means two things, means first of all while you are acquiring you don’t know you’re acquiring. It goes on below your level of awareness, for example, you are reading to a book, you’re listening to a conversation, you’re listening to presentation such as this one(ps. This is a presentation speech.). You are of course listening to the presentation, you are reading the book but without realizing at the same time you are acquiring.

接下来进入理论部分. 这个理论首先提出了一个假说, 一个我们称之为(语言)习得的学习假说. 假说认为, 我们有两种非常不同的方法在另一门的语言的学习上取得进步. 你可以习得语言, 你也可以学习语言, 但是它们之间是有很大的不同的. 习得是一种潜意识的过程, 而潜意识意味着首先当你在习得的时候你并不知道你参与其中, 这个行为并没有被你意识到. 比方说, 你在看一本书, 你在听一场对话, 你在听一个讲座的时候(比如说我们现在的这一个), 你确实是在进行听讲座的过程中的, 可是在这个过程中你没有丝毫意识到你在习得(知识).

cornerstone [ˈkɔːr.nɚ.stoʊn] n.
  something of great importance that everything else depends on
subconscious [ˌsʌbˈkɑːn.ʃəs] n.
  the part of your mind that notices and remembers information when you are not actively trying to do so, and influences your behaviour even though you do not realize it

Second once you’ve finished acquiring you are not always aware that anything has happened. A good demonstration of this is the universal experience we’ve had of hearing someone make a mistake of our own language. Now when you hear someone make a mistake in your own language, very rarely can you tell exactly what rule was broken. When I hear someone make a mistake in English, for example, my first language, most of the time I can’t tell what rule was broken， I have a PhD in linguistics which in grammar in fact, which some people find a strange thing to study. But even despite this training in grammar I can’t exactly tell what rule was broken, instead I have a feeling that something is wrong but I can’t quite put my finger on it. That feeling for correctness, that feeling for language is what we call ‘language acquisition’. We think everyone can acquire language, everyone can pick up language subconsciously. Children acquire the first language, children acquire the second language, adults acquire languages… The ability to subconsciously pick up language does not disappear when you enter school, does not disappear when you become a teenager, it doesn’t disappear when you get older. It’s with us forever, we think the language acquisition never shuts off.

再者, 当你完成了习得这个潜意识的行为时, 你并不总是能够意识到发生了什么. 一个很好的例子常常发生在当我们听到别人在我们的母语上犯了一个错误. 当你听到别人说错的时候, 你很少能直接说出那个错误具体是什么. 比方说, 当我听到别人犯了一个英语(我的母语)上的错误的时候, 很多时候我也不知道他错在哪儿了. 而事实上我有一个很多人觉得很奇怪的语言学博士学位, 在语法方面的. 但是尽管有这些语法上的知识背景, 我仍然无法准确的说出哪儿不对, 相反, 我有一个强烈的意识, 虽然这个意识没法具体陈述, 但是我知道一定有哪儿出错了. 这种对于语言正确与否的意识, 正是我们所说的‘语言习得’. 我们认为每个人都可以习得语言, 在潜意识层面上. 儿童可以习得母语, 第二门语言, 大人也可以习得其他的语言… 这种潜意识的语言习得能力从未伴随着我们进入学校而消失, 也没有因为你从小孩变成青年, 年纪变大而消失. 这种能力是始终伴随着我们的, 我们认为, 这种能力从不会被关闭.

Very different from acquisiton is what we call learning, that’s what most of us did in school. Learning is knowing about language, conscious knowledge of language, in English public schools for example we learned a noun is the name of a person place thing or idea, we learned that the subject and the verb is supposed to agree. This is conscious language learning. Language acquisition and language learning are very very different, in fact I think very different psychological processes are involved. Of the two, acquisiton and learning, the research has been telling me that acquision is far more important. Here’s how we think they interrelate. When you are about to say something in another language, and it’s easy to see in a language you don’t speak very well, you can put yourself in that postion, when you come out with a sentence easilly, it comes from what you’ve acquired, not from you’ve learned.

与习得不同的是我们通常所说的’学习’, 这也是我们在学校经常做的. 学习是认识语言, 对语言有意识的了解, 在英语国家的公共学校, 比方说, 我们学习到名词就是一个人对东西或想法的称呼, 主语和动词要保持数的一致（单数或者复数）. 这是意识层面的语言学习. 语言习得和语言学习是非常不同的, 事实上我认为这里面有非常不一样的心理过程参与其中. 对于习得和学习, 研究告诉我们习得更为重要. 这儿有我们如何考虑这两者之间的关系的. 当你要说一门其他的语言(与母语不同)的时候, 不难预见, 你可能说的不怎么好, 你可以把自己代入那个场景, 当你很轻易的脱口而出一个句子的时候, 它其实来自于你习得的知识, 而非下意识学习的内容.

All the rule you’ve learned from school do only one thing for you, they act as a monitor or an editor, so let’s say you’ve picked up(you’ve learned) a little French in school, you speak French as a low intermediate, you’re about to have a conversation in French, the sentence you’re about to say pops into your mind subconscious somewhere, then just before you say it the theory says you scan it, you look at it, you inspect it, you think of the rules you learned in school and you make corrections.

This isn’t, I should emphasize, that simply an idea came from ivory tower, it’s based on research and the evidence for it is in the technical books and journals in the professional literature but also happens to correspond with the intuitions that many people have about what happens to them when they try to speak other languages.

所有你在学校学习到的内容在这儿都只做了一件事, 它们更像是一个方向盘, 一个编辑器. 举个例子, 你在学校学了一点法语(是学习, 而非习得), 你的法语口语在中等水平, 当你要在法国展开一段对话的时候, 有一句句子从你的潜意识某处涌入你的脑海, 而当你即将把那句句子说出来的时候, 你学习到的理论告诉你, 你先观察一下这个句子, 紧接着你回忆起你在学校学习的内容然后你即时的纠正了这个句子.

我需要强调一下, 这个理论并不是当初从象牙塔里纸上谈兵出来的东西. 它基于研究, 教材, 期刊科学著作里的研究证据, 同时也很好的符合了大多数情况下人们在学习第二门语言的实际情况.

Rather than go through all the research now that I prefer to do is talk immediately a little about the pedagogy what went through my mind eleven years ago when I first thought of this idea that there are two processes and they’re related in this certain way. My original idea was this and I thought it was good common sense, acquisition gives us our fluency, learning gives us our accuracy. It’s an attractive idea, we have two components, they make two very different contributions. Clearly we want both. We want language to speak easily and fluently but we also want the grammar to be there, we don’t want a grammar list pidgin. So what I thought then is what we need is a balanced program: two days a week acquisition and two days a week learning, two days a week conversation and two days a week grammar. Now that sounds very fair, the truth must be somewhere in the middle, it has intuitive appeal. Unfortunately it’s wrong fact, it’s all wrong.

与其把所有的研究都说一遍, 我更倾向于先简单的聊聊我对于教育的一点看法, 这些想法来源于11年前, 那时候我刚意识到有这样两个不同的学习过程, 以及它们相互之间的联系. 我最开始是这样想的, 而且我觉得这种想法是一个常识, 习得赋予我们(语言的)流畅度, 而学习则赋予我们准确性. 这是一个颇具吸引力的想法, 我们有两个方法在不同方面帮助我们学习外语. 很显然我们两个方面都想要, 我们既想要说的流畅通顺, 也想要正确的语法, 我们不想要混杂语言. 于是我想我们需要的就是一个稳定的程序: 一周两天的习得和一周两天的学习, 一周两天的对话和一周两天的语法. 这听起来非常公平, 事实也可能就在其中, 至少从直觉看来确实如此. 不幸的是, 这种想法是错误的, 完全错误.

pedagogy [ˈpedəˌɡäjē] n.
  the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept.
pidgin [ˈpɪdʒᵻn] n.
  pidgin language 皮钦语，又称混杂语言，一种简化版本的自然语言，这种语言来自于两个或两个以上的群体，他们之间没有共同语言，为了彼此沟通而发展出的语言，跟一般语言相较，皮钦语的地位通常较低。
intuitive [ɪnˈtuː.ɪ.t̬ɪv] n.
  based on feelings rather than facts or proof

What the research has been telling me for the last ten plus years, no matter where you turn no matter where you look, the important role is with acquisition. Acquisition gives us fluency and accurracy. For the adults, for the analytic thinking grammar loving adults it’s at least 95% acqusition, possibly more. For the child, it’s a hundred percent. And I also like to make this to you, no one was more disappointed to discover this than me as I mentioned briefly of the discussion, my graduate look was in grammar, my PhD was in grammar, like many language teachers today, I love grammar. My life used to revolve around grammar, my best friends are Marions, I love to discuss relative clauses. The problem is that that’s not how language acquisition happens. Language acquisition does not happen by learning grammar rules, by memorizing vocabulary lists. This leads them to our major point, if acquisition is more important than learning, we must ask how it happens, how do we help people acquire languages. This is of course the theoretical point for the universities and it’s also the major pedagogical point if acquisition is more important than learning, that’s what we want to have happen in our classrooms.

十几年来的研究成果告诉我们, 无论你怎么看, (语言学习中)最重要的角色还是’习得’. 习得同时赋予了我们流畅度和准确性. 对于成年人, 对于理性思考的喜爱语法的成年人来说, 习得在语言学习中可能占95%, 甚至更多. 而对于儿童呢? 100%是通过习得的. 需要说明的是, 没有人比我更失望, 就像我在前面提到的一样, 我在语法上的研究工作, 我的语法博士学位, 就像今天的很多语言老师一样, 我热爱语法. 我的生活里少不了语法, 我也喜欢讨论关系从句. 问题是这并不是语言习得. 语言的习得从来不是因为学习了语法规则或者记了单词表. 于是我们来到了今天很重要的一点, 如果习得比学习更重要, 那我们必须问清楚这是如何发生的, 我们如何帮助人们习得语言. 这是大学的理论方向和主要的教育学观点, 习得比学习重要, 同时也是我们所希望在我们的课堂里所实践的.

Let me begin this discussion by making what may appear to be outrageous claim, I think we all acquire language in exactly the same way, the reason this is an outrageous thing to say is that these days in education as many of you have been validly noticed we’re living in an age of individual variation. We are very concerned with how our students are different not how our students are the same, we’re concerned about individual variation and cognitive style and learning style which side of the brain people are using etc, and there’s a lot of very good research and individual variation. Nevertheless there are some things we all do the same and languages are just one of them, it’s fundamental as universal as breathing, as eating, as working, we all do it and we all require it the same way. The way we acquire language is amazingly simple: we acquire languages when we understand messages. When people speak to us in another language and we understand what they say, when we read something in another language and we understand the message, language acquisition will take place. In fact, it’s an amazing thing, language takes place necessarily. It’s unavodiable, you can’t help it. Given people messages understand what we call comprehensible input the language acquisition device goes to work. It happen subconsciously, automatically and inevitably. Some of you will recognize some of these ideas from Chomsky’s philosophizing especially from his book Reflections on Language. My contribution to the Chomsky way of thinking is to claim that not only is there language acquisition that works in children but it works for second languages as well and as I mentioned in the beginning of the talk, it doesn’t degenerate, it’s function is full to the end of our lives. OK so we acquire language when we understand it.

接下来的讨论, 我想先从一个看起来令人十分震惊的观点开始. 我认为我们对于语言的习得是完全一致的, 之所以说这是一个出于人们意料的想法, 是因为近些年来的教育, 正如你们可能已经意识到的一样, 我们生活在一个追求异质性的时代. 我们非常关心我们的学生是如何异于常人的, 而不在于他们的互通性. 我们关心异质性, 我们想知道聪明的人都在用什么认知方法和学习方法, 而且基于这点也有很多的研究. 然而尽管如此, 事实上还是存在一些东西, 我们的对策没有什么不同, 语言正是其一, 它同呼吸, 吃饭, 工作等很多日常琐事一样, 我们都会去做, 而且在具体的做法上没有什么不同. 我们习得语言的方法惊人的一致: 只有当我们理解信息的时候我们才习得了语言. 当人们用另一门语言同我们交谈的时候, 我们理解他们所说的; 当我们阅读的时候, 我们理解文本的内容, 在这种情况下, 语言的习得便自然而然的发生了. 事实上, 这是一个有趣的事实, 语言习得不自觉的发生着. 它无法避免, 你对此无计可施. 通过给予人们他们所能够理解的信息, 我们称之为’可理解性输入’, 这时候语言习得的引擎就会启动. 而且它是发生在潜意识下的, 自动且无可避免. 你们其中一些人可能已经认出了这里的一些观点来自 Chomsky 的心理学理论, 特别是在他的著作Reflections on Language. 我对于 Chomsky 的理论主要补充说明了语言习得不仅适用于儿童, 正如我在讨论开始之前提到的一样, 二语习得同样适用于第二门外语, 这种能力本身是不会消退的, 它会一直作用到我们生命的尽头. OK, 这里的结论是, 只有当我们理解的时候才会习得语言.

inevitably [ˌɪnˈev.ə.t̬ə.bli] n.
   in a way that cannot be avoided
degenerate [dɪˈdʒen.ə.reɪt] n.
  to become worse in quality

This major idea of comprehensible input has two corollaries. One corollary has to do with speaking. Speaking, talking is not practicing. The ability to speak another language is a result of acquiring it not its cause. For example, if you want to improve your English, it will not help you to speak English to yourself as you drive to work in the morning in your car. If you want to improve your French it will not help you to close the bathroom door and speak French to the mirror. I used to think these things help now I am convinced they don’t. The ability to speak a language is a result of getting language acquisition, not its cause. In fact you can look at your own experience to see that this is so if you’ve ever been a student in a language class, you can see this if you gives adults comprehensible input if they understand the messages in a good language class, after a week or two, 115 hours on the average, my experience has been, that talking simply comes, it emerges on its own. You literally can’t hold it back unless there are some kind of block which we’ll talk about later. Again evidence for this is all over the theoretical literature in my opinion. Many of us have practical experiences which demonstrate that it so as well children new come to countries, immigrant children for example, limited English proficient students in the United States for example, typically when they arrive they don’t speak right away. There’s usually a period of several months until they start talking, well we typically see then when children do start to speak is that their speech follows a certain natural development and language acquisition, certain things come earlier, certain things tend to come in the middle, certain things come later and after a year or so they’re typically, if they’re in an input rich situation, speaking fairly well. What they start to speak is not the beginning of their language acquisition, what they start to speak is the result of the comprehensible input they’ve gotten over the few months of what we call their silent period.

关于’可理解性输入’的理论主要有两个成果. 第一个成果跟’说’有关. 说本身并不是练习. 会说另一门语言的能力是习得的结果而非原因. 举个例子, 如果你想要提高你的英语, 在开车去工作的路上跟自己用英语对话对此是没有帮助的. 如果你想提高你的法语, 关上宿舍的门一个人对着镜子练习也是没有用的. 我之前以为这多少有些帮助, 不过现在我很确信这并不奏效. 需要重申, 会说一门语言是习得的结果而非原因. 你同样可以回顾当你还是语言课上的一个学生的时候的情况, 你也可以看到, 当你在一堂生动的语言课上给成年人’可理解性输入’之后, 大概一个或两个星期, 按照我的经验约115个小时左右, 他们就能够开始简单的对话了, 而且是自然而然产生的. 你无法阻止它的发生, 除非有一些我们待会会提到的壁垒的存在. 同样的, 这些观点的证据有充分的理论资料可以支撑. 我们很多人都有这方面的亲身经历, 当一个儿童来到一个新城市的时候, 移民的儿童, 没有很充足的英语知识, 来到美国. 大多数情况下在一开始他们都不会说英语. 一般要经过几个月, 他们才会说, 这种情况通常是因为他们自然的适应了这里的语言, 伴随着语言的习得, 某些事情有序的进行着, 于是他们习得了英语(假设他们有一个丰富的语言环境), 而且可以说得相当的好. 他们开始说英语的那个时候其实比那个不是语言习得的开始, 相反, 是在几个月(我们称这几个月为静默期)的’可理解性输入’的作用之下产生的结果.

corollary [ˈkɔːr.ə.ler.i] n.
   something that results from something else
literally [ˈlɪt̬.ɚ.əl.i] n.
  You use literally to emphasize that what you are saying is true, even though it seems exaggerated or surprising

Another corollary of this important idea of comprehensible input has to do with the kind of input we present to people. We have in language classes the principle of grammatical sequencing, we’re all family with this for example in our first week of language class everything is in the present tense, we can only talk about objects in the room, what we’re doing at this time, at this moment in class. Suddenly in the end of the first month we become obsessed with the past, we can only talk about last week and last year. Eventually we can, in third month you can only talk about the future, what will you do when you finish school etc. We call this gammatical sequencing and its goal is to aid in the acquisition of grammar. The theory says it has exactly the opposite impact, the major sub hypothesis says if we give people comprehensible input and we give them a lot of it, grammatical sequencing is not only not necessary, it’s probably harmful. Let me repeat that a major goal of language class is not just to bring about grammatical fluency, it’s also to get the maximum level of grammatical accuracy. My postion is that the way to do this is to give students a great deal of comhensible input. They’ll produce both fluency and accuracy. The theory says that if enough input is present, if there’s a rich source of comprehensible input, all the rules that students are ready to acquire, examples of all these rules will be there in the input. If you compare, I think the grammatical sequencing has insurmountable problems that comprehensible input handles with ease. Let me just give you the feeling for a couple of these problems, let’s say you are taking a standard language class, say it’s French and it’s the beginning level and today is past tense day, today we’re going to review the past tense in your absence. You’re sick, you can’t come to class, something’s wrong. Well the way we currently teach language is too bad, you’ve missed the past tense, you’ve gotta wait till next year when we go through the whole language syllabus again. With comprehensible input, that’s not a problem if you miss class one, then don’t worry, come back tomorrow, you’ll hear comprehensible input, you’ll hear more of the rule that you happen to be ready for no matter what that rule is, you’ll see it in the readings. It’s the same idea as the well-balanced diet as compared to single doses of individual vitamins with a much better chance of supplying the student exactly what he or she needs. Probably the worst problem though with the grammatical syllabus is that it’s boring.

另一个成果是’可理解性输入’的观点对于传统教学的纠正. 在之前的语言课上, 想必我们都很熟悉语法学习的先后顺序, 比方说第一个星期所有的东西都是现在时态, 我们谈论的东西局限于教室, 我们正在做的事情等等. 紧接着这个月结束, 我们开始沉迷于过去时态, 我们只讨论过去一周或者过去一年做了什么. 最后在第三个月我们终于开始讨论将来时, 你放学后要做什么之类的话题. 我们称这种方式为’语法序列’, 它的作用是辅助我们的语法学习. (然而)理论告诉我们这只会起到反面效果. 与此相关的假设提出, 如果我们给学生足够的可理解性输入, 语法序列不仅没有必要, 而且可能对语言习得本身有害. 这里我需要再度申明, 语言课的主要目标不仅是给学生教授语法上的流畅度, 语法上的准确度也至关重要. 我认为要做到这两点需要给学生大量的可理解性输入. 这样可以帮助学生同时取得流畅和准确上的进步. 假说认为大量的可理解性输入同时也包含了大量的语法规则的案例. 如果你要比较的话, 我认为语法序列的方式有难以取代的困难, 而可理解性输入却可以处理得很好. 我举个你可能会有直观感受的例子(注: 更直观的例子可以参考这里), 你在上一门初级水平, 时态是现在时的法语课, 你今天因为生病缺课了, 可是我们介绍了过去式. 你错过了过去式, 于是你可能需要再多等一年知道我们把整个语言课的教学大纲重新讲一遍, 这也是我们现在的语言教学中令人遗憾的一点. 而通过可理解性输入呢? 错过一两节课的话也不用担心, 这不是什么大问题, 第二天再回来, 然后你还是可以通过可理解性输入学习到更多的语法规则. 这个观点跟平衡饮食对比单一剂量的维生素摄入对学生的作用是类似的. 而语法序列的教学方式最大的问题可能是这种方式太过无聊了.

Youtube 上有完整的讲座视频(28min), 也有分割成两部分的视频(14min), 这里是第一部分的内容翻译。第二部分请戳这儿