📌第二部分讲座视频：Youtube

It’s very hard to present messages that are interestings and comprehensible to people when our hidden agenda is the relative clause or any other rule. What we are now saying is that if we give people messages that are interesting and comprehensible, grammar to a large extend takes care of itself and as most of us who’ve taught language know this is easily difficult enough. A final hypothesis will conclude the brief review of fundamental aspects of the theory for us, it’s called the effective filter hypothesis, a term I borrowed from Dulay and Bird(ps. the second name Bird is what I’m not sure with, let’s just call him Bird). To go over this hypothesis I first need to give you a very brief review of what we know about effective variables. The research has shown us - I think no one’s great surprise that motivation counts in language acquisition. This is of course a well researched area and I’m only going to give you the tip of the iceberg. Students who are more motivated do better in language acquisition and this is to be expected. Self-esteem also counts, those who better at self-esteem or self-image do better in language acquisition. I’ve noted that self-esteem is a dominant concept today in popular psychology and it’s no surprise to see it here as well in language acquisition. There’s also relationship between anxiety and language acquisition, very simply the lower the anxiety the better the language acquisition, it’s a negetive correlation.

当我们的潜在的动机是关系从句或者其他语法规则的时候（即我们有主观上的动机的时候），向学生传授有趣而且可理解的信息是很困难的。我们其中很多从事语言教育的人可能深有体会，当我们给学生传授有趣而且可理解的信息时，语法在很大程度上也会为学生所习得。这次讲座最后的一个假说将对我们的理论做一个简单的回顾，这个假说被我们称为【过滤机制假说】，这是我从 Dulay 和 Bird 那儿借鉴过来的说法。要讲述最后的这个假说，首先我们简单的聊聊（语言习得的）【影响因素】。研究表示，（我认为没有人会对此表示惊讶）激励对语言习得是有帮助的。这已经是一个广受研究的领域因此这里我所展示的也只是关于激励的冰山一角。学生越是受到激励，他们在语言习得上就表现得越好，这是可以预见的。自尊同样如此，对于自我越是关照，也越能够在语言习得上取得进步。我注意到，自尊在现今的心理学是一个占主流的很火的概念，因此在语言习得领域听到这个概念也就没什么可以惊讶的。同时，焦虑也有一定关系，显然，焦虑越少，语言习得越佳，它们呈现一个反作用的关系。

hidden agenda
  a secret reason for doing something 隐秘的动机，不可告人的理由
self-esteem
  confidence in one's own worth or abilities; self-respect.

My suspicion is for language acquision to really proceed optimally, anxiety should be zero. Now this has happened to some of us if you’ve been in the situation where you’re so involved in speaking another language, a language you may not control very well, that you temporarily forget that you’re dealing with another language, when anxiety is temporarily zero, when you totally focus on the message, that’s when you’re acquiring. Now just a footnote before I go on, misunderstood point about anxiety I think, I don’t think it necessarily applies to everything, I think it applies to language acquisition but perhaps it has its limits. As a parent, as a university teacher, I’m not particularly progressive. I think that children in elementary school should learn the multiplication tables, no nonsense. I think graduate students in my program at the University of Southern California should suffer as graduate students should. In other words I’ve finally learned what they tried to teach me in educational psychology all those years ago, that the amount of anxiety will drives it takes to accomplish a task depends on the task, some things require what we call facilitative anxiety, I don’t believe in torture but sometimes a little anxiety is good. Language acquisition though is different. For language acquisition, the pressure has to be off entirely. Frank Smith in his discussion of what he calls Sensitivity says something very similar and I thinks he says it very well. Since for language acquisition to succeed, the acquirer, he speaking of children, I thinks it’s true for everyone has to assume he’s going to be successful.

我认为要想在语言习得上进步最大，焦虑必须为零。当你全身心的专注于说另外一门语言（尽管你可能掌握得不是很好）的时候，某一刻你短暂得忘记了你在说另一门语言，你丝毫不感到焦虑，你完全关注于对话的内容，这个时候，你便是在习得（语言）。在我继续讨论之前，我需要先声明一下，有人可能会对焦虑有一点误解，我不认为上面关于焦虑的说法适用于所有的场景。我认为焦虑必须为零的这种说法适用于语言习得，但是可能也有它的限度。作为父母，作为一个大学老师，在这些观点上，我并不是一个激进主义者（即左派）。我认为小学生需要学乘法口诀表，而在我的课堂上的南加利福尼亚大学的研究生们也需要做研究生该做的事，或者说我最终认识到多年前我所学习到的教育心理学的意义，以及推动一个任务完成的焦虑程度取决于任务本身，有一些事情需要能够起促进作用的焦虑。虽然我不相信苦修不过有时候一点焦虑是有帮助的。而语言的习得则不同，对于语言习得，我们认为压力不能有。Frank Smith 在他称为 Sensitivity 的讲说里面提出过我认为十分正确的而且类似的观点。对于语言习得的提高对象，他指儿童，不过我觉得语言习得对所有人都是成立的（参考之前的讲述，语言习得不会消退这一观点）。

suspicion [səˈspiSHən] n.
  a feeling or thought that something is possible, likely, or true.
no nonsense
  simple and straight forward
sensitivity [ˌsen.səˈtɪv.ə.t̬i] n.
  the quality or condition of being sensitive

The way we integrate into the theory is this, if the students isn’t motivated, if self-esteem is low, if anxiety is high, if the student is on the defensive to borrow a phrase from Er Stevak（I am not so sure about this name）, if he thinks the language class is a place where his weakness will be revealed, not a place where he’ll get new input, a block goes up. We call this block the effective filter, when the filter is up, the student may understand the input but the input won’t reach those parts of the brain what do language acquisition. The block will keep it out. Somewhere in the brain, according to Chomsky is a language acquisition device. For acquisition to happen, comprehensible input must enter the language acquisition device. If the student isn’t motivated, if anxiety is high, self-esteem is low a block will keep this data, this comprehensible input out, acquisition will not occur. This explains how it can be that we have two students in the same class, both getting the same comprehensible input, in one case there’s acquisition, in another case there isn’t, in one case the child is open to the input, in the other case the block keeps it out.

接下来是这些因素同语言习得理论之间的关系。如果学生没有适当的激励，如果他们看低自己，如果他们感到焦虑，如果他们对语言有所抗拒，如果他觉得语言课是一个会使他的懦弱充分暴露的地方而不是一个可以获得语言输入的地方，这是就形成了壁垒。我们把这个壁垒称之为【有效过滤】，当过滤器出现的时候，尽管学生仍然能够理解信息，但是这些语言输入不会进入他们的大脑，语言习得也便无法完成。壁垒会将输入拒之门外。在大脑的某处，根据 Chomsky 的说法，存在着一个语言习得的引擎。习得的完成需要语言输入能够进入到这个引擎。如果学生没有被激励，如果焦虑依然存在，他们也不对自己抱有信心，壁垒就会拒绝信息进入，可理解性输入被抗拒，语言习得无法完成。这充分解释了当两个学生同时在教室学习，而且都有成分的可理解性输入，其中一个习得了语言，另一个没有习得，一个对信息持开放态度（其一人专心致志，惟弈秋之为听）；而另一个则将之拒之门外（一人虽听之，一心以为有鸿鹄将至）。

Let me now summarizing in a minute what just took me 20 minutes to say, we acquire language in one way, when we get comprehensible input in a low anxiety situation. Now if this is true we then have to consider how we should teach it. The first question that comes up is whether we need language classes at all. Most people say no, most people don’t believe in language classes and if I praise the question correctly I am sure that some of you will find yourself not believing in language classes. Let’s say for example that you’re at a party, someone discovers that you’re interested in language and of course they say to you, you know I’ve always wanted to learn, let’s say French, what do we tell them? Go to the local school and take French one, go to the University and take beginning French, go to the private school and take beginning French? We don’t say that, we say things like, go to France, go to Canada, go to Quebec, go to the country( speak French ). It seems reasonable but it’s bad advice. Let me give you my situation. Even though I live in Los Angeles California, I don’t speak Spanish, que lastima. What would happen if I went to Mexico which is two and a half hours away to try to learn to speak Spanish? I wouldn’t understand anything, it would simply be noise, it’d be waste of time. But if I went to a well taught Spanish class call a tech classes taught correctly. The first day I could get 45 minutes of comprehensible input, that’s what language’s class are for. Language classes are designed to give you the comprehensible input that the outside world can only give you the great difficulty. The beginners belongs in a language class. A beginner can get more from two days in a language class than in a week or two in the country. Now let’s say I take two three semesters, say 50-100 hours of comprehensible input in Spanish, then I go to Mexico, it’s a different story. I can understand a little bit, I can understand when people speak to me, I can have conversations which are very good ways of getting comprehensible input. I can read a little bit, I can then use the outside world to get more comprehensible input. The goal of the language class then is to put you in a position so you can go to the outside world and get more comprehensible input. Now when I first get to Mexico after two and three semesters my Spanish will not be perfect, I’ll make mistakes. The goal of the beginning language class is not to make you perfect, the goal of the language class is to make you an intermediate so you can then get more comprehensible input from the outside world.

接下来我们总结一下20分钟都讲了些什么。我们只有一种情况下能够习得语言，即当我们不感到焦虑，而且有可理解性输入的时候。现在假设这个结论是正确的，我们需要进一步考虑我们如何教授语言。第一个问题首先是我们是否需要语言课程。很多人觉得不用，他们不相信语言课程，而当我更好的提出这个问题，可能在座的各位也都不相信语言课程了。举个例子，假设现在你在一个宴会上，有人发现你对语言很感兴趣，他们问你，他们要怎么学法语，你怎么回答他们？去学校上法语课，或者去大学旁听法语的基础课程？我们并不这么说，我们常常是这样回答的，去法国吧，去加拿大，去魁北克吧，去说法语的国家。这虽然听起来很在理，可这是一个很损的点子。我的经历可以作佐证。尽管我就生活在加利福尼亚州，我却不会说西班牙语，这听起来令人遗憾。那如果我去只有两个半小时路程的墨西哥学习呢？（毫无西班牙语基础的情况下）结果是我什么都不懂，西班牙语对我来说只是杂音，而且浪费时间。但是如果我先去正确教授西班牙语的课上学习，第一天我就可以获取到45分钟的可理解性输入，这就是语言课程的意义。语言课程指在于给你可理解性的输入，而外界（在初期的时候）只会给你带来巨大的困扰，初学者属于语言课堂，这勿庸质疑。一个初学者在语言课堂学习两天的内容，要远比在外语国家学两周多得多。好，现在假设我已经上了两个或者三个星期的语言课程，大概50到100个小时的西班牙语可理解性输入，然后我再去墨西哥，这又是完全不同的故事了。我可以听得懂一些他们的语言，当他们找我聊天的时候我也大概可以理解，我可以展开对话，我也读得懂一些，我可以利用外部世界来获取更多的可理解性输入。这对我来说是非常好的一种获取可理解性输入的方法。语言课堂的目标在于让你的语言水平达到一个足够去到外界，主动去获取学习资源的一个境界。当然，在结束两三个学期的西班牙语课程之后就赶赴墨西哥并不能保证我说一口流利的西班牙语，我还是会犯错。可是初级语言课堂的目标可不是让你马上能够做到完美，语言课堂的目的是让你到一个中级的水平，以确保你可以自主的获取外界的可理解性输入。

Now in case you thinks this is lowering of standards, I think it’s nothing more or less than a common sense of philosophy of education we subscribe to. When those of us who are out in the field finished our university(our college) training, of course we weren’t the polished professionals we are today. If you careers’ve been anything like mine, I’ve learned three times as much every year on the outside as I did all through college of course. But my university training was necessary, without it I could never have begun my career as a professor and the researcher. The same thing is true with the elementary class, the outside world is more valuable, acquisition will come faster on the outside, but our goal is to our students on the position so they can take advantage of the input on the outside. Just a brief review of whats going on now, not from my point of view in elementary language teaching, at the elementary level I think there’s some fine methods that do what they’re supposed to do. They provide comprehensible input in a low anxiety situation and from that I can tell in reading the professional literature these are the superior methods, students are doing better in these methods than they do in grammar programs what we call drill and kill programs. The methods that seem to work where there’s a lot of comprehensible input, low anxiety etc, when I’ve been connected with Joyce Terral’s natural apporach, James Asher’s total physical response methods is another one and Professor Asher has (I think) collected massive empirical evidence in favor of his method. And again I think it works basically because it provides comprehensible input. I’m very positive about suggest Pedia Rosado’s method developed in bulgaria. Again the research reports I’ve been read from the United States confirmed that it’s a good method. I thinks it goes a long way to lowering the effective filter and providing comprehensible input. As good as these methods are, they’re probably not enough. They don’t bring students to the point where they can actually use the language on the outside in sophisticated situations, in academic situations.

为了避免有些人认为这是对于标准课堂教学的一种贬低，我认为这跟我们传统所受的教育没有多大的不同。当我们结束的大学教育的时候，我们很显然并不是现在这样看起来很成功的一个专业人士。如果你的事业跟我相似的话，比方说毕业之后每年我都会外出学习三次，就像我在大学时所做的一样。但尽管如此大学的教育经历仍然是无法取代的，没有这段经历我也不会开始我的教授和研究事业。同样的，对于初级教学，这也是适用的，尽管外面的世界更加精彩，在外面我们确实更能够更快的习得语言，可是语言课堂的目的正是为了让学生能够达到那个能够通过外部世界获取知识的境界。简单的回顾我们刚刚讲述的内容，如果不从我的观点出发，在初级教学方面我认为还有很多不错的方法做到了它们应该做的。这些方法提供了一个安稳的包含可理解性输入的环境，从我了解到的专业杂志上它们都是卓有成效的方法，学生通过这些方式确实比机械的语法课要进步得更快。这些方法有 Joyce 的自然习得，而 James Asher 的完全物理回应方法也是一个。Asher 教授在他的理论研究上收集了大量的经验证据。我同样认为这些方法很管用，因为它们也提供了可理解性输入。我也很赞同 Pedia Rosado 在 bulgaria 上发展的方法，我从美国读到的演技报告证实了它是一个不错的方法。我认为它们在降低【有效过滤】机制和提供可理解性输入上都做的很好。不过尽管这些方法表现良好，它们可能还略有不足。它们并没有把我们的学生提高到一个足以在复杂和学术的环境自主应用外语的能力。

As a method of supplementing the language class we have borrowed an idea from the successful Canadian immersion programs and have been teaching subject matter in the comprehensible way to language students. Just to give you an idea of an experiment we did at the University of Ottawa a couple of years ago, it could appears in the Canadian Modern Language Review with published co-authored with Henry Edwards, Mary Bishop, and we shutted them out. We took English-speaking students and French-speaking at the University of Ottawa, a bilingual University, and taught them psychology in their second language(their weaker language), the English students took psychological class in French, the French students took in English, these were students who are not very advanced but they weren’t beginners in the second language. We found that the students not only learned as much psychology as comparison students, they improve their language competence very satisfactory and it was just the kind of improvement we hope of academic English and academic French. That will help them survive in a regular class. So in other words they got lectures in psychology, made comprehensible in the second language(in the acquired language) and the subject matter at the same time. Other people’ve ever since confirmed our results. Right, this is the basic outline of the theory. There’s a great deal more to it but I think these are the fundametals. I just like to conclude with some comments on what the difficulties are. As I mentioned in the beginning of the talk, there are two major difficulties in acceptance.

作为对语言教学的一个补充方法，我们借鉴了先前成功过的案例 - 加拿大的沉浸式实验，通过一种可理解性输入的方法教授语言学的学生关于主语的内容。这里只是简单的提一下几年前我们在 University of Ottawa 做的实验的思想，你在 Canadian Modern Language Review 可以找到我同 Henry Edwards 和 Mary Bishop 联合署名发表的论文，这个实验已经完成了。我们把母语为英语的学生和母语为法语的学生都带到 University of Ottawa，一个多语环境的大学，然后我们用他们的第二语言教授他们心理学。这些学生并不都非常出色，但是他们都已经不是第二门语言的初学者了。（实验结束后）我们发现，这些实验的学生不仅跟对照组一样学习到了相同程度的心理学，同时他们在第二门语言上也有令人惊喜的提高。后来更多人的实验证实了我们的结论。好了，这就是今天我们所讲的理论的基本框架，其实还有很多内容没有提到，不过这些是核心的内容。接下去我想以实践过程中可能遇到的一些困难作为今天讲座的结束。就像我最初提到的那样，主要有两方面的困难。

One is our students, the second is us. Our students expect grammar, our students expect vocabulary lists, our students expect exercises, and they are laughing when we don’t provide a great deal of grammar, they think it’s a sign of the professional and competence on our part. I can think of part of solutions to this, first of all I would like to go back on what I’ve said in a couple of my previous work. I recommended a little tonge-and-cheek that we engage in deception, we teach our students in the target language but we teach them grammar, we teach them vocabulary, give them what they want, and regradless of their personal philosophy of language acquisition, they will acquire because they’re getting comprehensible input, because it’s being done in the second language. Of former colleague of mine Steve Sternfeld now at the University of Utah forced me to change my position. He argued that this is not the way to go, he said that what does it matter if a student has gained a certain amount of proficiency in a second language if he doesn’t know how he got it. Our goal, Sternfeld argued in his dissertation is not only to teach language but to teach students how to acquire language so they become autonomous and improve on their own. So Sternfeld has convinced me that out goal is not simply language acquisition but to inform our students about the process of language acquisition so they can become autonomous. The second problem is us. For language professionals, acquisition and learning are very very different. For people like us, acquision seems slow, learning seems very quick. For people like us who are familiar with grammar we can pick up a grammar book of a language we don’t know very well and get a good feeling of the grammar of the language in several hour. It seems to come quickly, of course I’ve argued this information is not available to us and actually using the language. Second, acquisiton seems subtle, learning seems very concrete. You can touch it, you can taste it. For people like us, learning is pleasant, we like it. I’ll never forget when I learned consciously, which wasn’t very long ago, the subjunctive in French. Everytime I say the subjunctive correctly, I rekindle the vitory of having first consciously learned it. …what we have to remember I think, is that normal people get their pleasures elsewhere.

第一个困难来自于我们的学生，而第二个则来自于我们（语言老师）自己。我们的学生期待语法，他们期待单词表，期待做题，而且当我们无法提供足够的语法知识的时候，他们会嘲笑我们的专业水平。对此我有一点解决方案。首先我们回到我之前提到的内容。我们偷偷给学生准备一些语法糖，用他们想要学习的语言教授他们语法，教授他们单词表，他们问什么我们就给什么，而且忽略他们在语言习得上面的心理状态，这时他们也会自然的习得语言，因为他们在接受着可理解性输入。我的旧同事 Steve Sternfeld（现在在 University of Utah 工作）质疑了我的观点。他认为这种做法是不对的，他认为一个学生对第二门外语很熟稔但却不知道他是怎么学来的这种学习方式的意义。Sternfeld 在他的学术演讲上陈述到我们教授语言的目标是让学生不仅学会一门外语而且还要知道他是怎么学来的，这样他才可能拥有充分的自主学习能力。Sternfeld 说服了我。第二点在于我们，对于专业的从事语言方面的人来说，习得和学习这两个概念真的是有很大的不同的。对于从事语言专业者，习得看起来很慢，而学习则看起来非常快。对于像我们这种对语法非常熟悉而且只要拿到一本语法书（可能是关于一门我们不是很熟悉的语言的），我们就可以很快的建立起对于一门语言的认知。这看起来非常快。但我早就强调过这一点，这样做是没有帮助的，因为我们的目标是要会用。还有就是习得看起来很微妙，而学习则非常具体，你看得见摸得着的一种方式。对于我们来说，学习是很愉悦的，我们热爱它。我永远不会忘记当我初次初次学会法语上的虚拟语气之后，每次我正确的说出了虚拟语气，我都被第一次在意识层面上学习虚拟语气的那种胜利的喜悦重新点燃了。… 而对于这一点，我们需要记住的是人们一般从其他的地方获得愉悦（而非问题本身）。

注：到这里视频就结束了，关于第二个语言习得实践上的困难 Stephen Krashen 只是提到了一个开头，之后的演讲片段就缺失了。不过最后的这一部分只是一点对于问题的补充。并不妨碍我们对二语习得的认识了解。

后记

这个讲座的翻译契机最早来源于 Stephen Krashen 的另一个更广为人知的授课视频。知乎上的这个回答也简单的提到了 Stephen Krashen 的一些理论。他被很多人称之为世界上最棒的英语老师，虽然事实上他精通多门外语。从我个人的观点，他的理论是具有充分的经验支撑的，至少从我在外语学习（英 / 日 / 俄 / 西，还有方言粤语）的情况来看，我在绝大多数情况下是通过 Learning，而非 Acquiring 来学习语言的，于是结果很显然，Dr.Krashen 的观点几乎全中，我们精通语法，热爱语法，但是却在流畅度上彻底折戟。讲座中用了大量详实而充分的例子（没错，几乎每说一句话都要举个例子的那种，🙂），而且运用了相当多的排比，防止陈述上的偏颇和失实，这也是从事研究和教书育人的教育工作者严谨态度的体现。这里我并不强求读者们能够看完整个讲座的翻译内容，你甚至可以完全不用看这两篇翻译的内容（鉴于我拙劣的文笔等等），不过演讲是值得一看的，在优酷上转载 Youtube 上的第一部分和第二部分的内容，没有字幕（你可以对照着这篇文章的英文板块辅助一部分生僻的内容）。而如果你搞定了网络封锁，有条件进行科学上网的话，我强烈推荐你上 Youtube，因为 Youtube 有一个实时的字幕生成的功能可以非常好的帮助你理解，虽然完全抛开字幕也是可以的，因为你可以看到，上面英文的内容并没有很多生僻的地方，相反整个演讲令人收益匪浅，Stephen Krashen 作为一个外语教授，英语方面是毋庸置疑的，盲听想必对你构不成挑战。关于二语习得，B站上有一个 TED 演讲是一个会说20+以上外语的16岁的小伙子的视频，对上面讲座的很多内容（比如 zero anxiety 和 comprehensible input 的核心观点）都能作为生动的例子补充。语言是我一直以来的兴趣，也希望大家能够有所收获。